Tornado Alley (PROG)

[StephanieVanbryce]

Paul Ryan is Very Serious About Ballooning The Deficit

J.M. Ashby
on 08/11/2012 at 4:30 pm

The primary causes of today’s deficit and the largest contributor to the national debt
continue to be Bush-era policies. Policies that Paul Ryan voted for.



Paul Ryan voted for the Iraq war.

He voted for Medicare Part D.

He voted for TARP.

He voted for the Bush Tax Cuts. Twice.

And if you want to play the irony card, he also voted for the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (the stimulus).

Paul Ryan is not a deficit hawk, and he’s not a “serious budget cutter.” He’s a fake. A reverse Robin Hood who takes advantage of the media’s malfeasance to push an austerity agenda, which includes austerity for “you people” and none for their betters, designed to funnel money to the top at the expense of the deficit and the national debt.

Or as Charles Pierce put it earlier this week

Every time he comes up with another “budget,” actual economists get a look at it and determine, yet again, that between “What We Should Do” and “Great Things That Will Happen When We Do” is a wilderness of dreamy nonsense, wishful thinking, and an asterisk the size of Lake Huron. At which point, Republicans who’d like to have careers in five years take to hiding behind the drapes when he comes down the hall. Then, a few months later, he’s at it again. And even some putatively liberal commentators shrug and tell themselves that, at least, Paul Ryan is a Serious Person. He gets credit for sincerely wanting to “reform” entitlements, when his entire career makes it quite plain that he doesn’t believe in the concept of entitlements, let alone the ones we actually have.

The only real fiscal conservative in the race at this point, if the phrase still has any meaning, is President Obama.

http://bobcesca.com/blog-archives/2012/08/paul-ryan-is-very-serious-about-ballooning-the-deficit.html