Paul Ryan, Courageously fake

According to Republicans, spending in of itself creates debt, that's why repubs like Rep. Paul Ryan constantly twist the truth with, "we don't have a revenue problem, the country has a spending problem." That is the construct to which the empty-suited Ryan and the Republican Party has hitched our futures on. Most Americans know better of course, that spending in of itself does not cause debt - only borrowing causes debt. But I'll give him that, Ryan's got people second-guessing their own better intuition and values.

So how responsible is a political party that refused to pay the country's bills when it could afford? Obviously they were completely irresponsible, but they are now playing off the popular appeal of the taxed enough already crowd and locked into the Norquist "borrow only" for revenue pledge - there's no turning back. Repubs also think it's courageous to stand up and tell people lies. That's why Paul Ryan is at the top of the heap. That's why he's their star.

In the video below, Martin Bashir shoves facts in the face of Paul Ryan's comical but emotional breakdown for Ronald Reagan's "spirit" and bogus tax reform. You'll see first-hand how Paul Ryan panders and poses with Goober Pyle-like sincerity. You know the kind. Fakes.

NY Times Excerpt: (Krugman)
And the evidence for their fakery isn’t just their bad arithmetic; it’s the fact that for all their alleged deep concern over budget gaps, that concern isn’t sufficient to induce them to give up anything — anything at all — that they and their financial backers want.

Ryan tells out-in-out fairy tales with a dumb face and everyone knows it, but his backers laugh and applause anyway. Perhaps that's his appeal.

You'll also see Ryan doing what he does best as he recasts his perceived enemies with his own budget and tax policy failings. We're all familiar with the constructs of what Ryan is saying, except the names have been changed to condemn the innocent.

Another fine catch from the Democurmudgeon library. Watch it:



ADDITIONAL:
Rock Netroots - Faces of Debt

'Don't put me in coach' said Monday morning quarterback Ryan on debt

Paul Ryan says it's frustrating that the Congressional supercommittee couldn't agree on a solution to reducing national debt. “It's another missed, wasted opportunity,” he said in Oklahoma, where he was raising money for a GOP candidate.

Ryan, the high profile chairman of the House Budget Committee, surely could have been a member of the supercommittee if he had wanted to be. But he said he had asked Speaker John Boehner not to appoint him. Why? There are several theories, including that Ryan knew from the start the group was doomed to fail.

Ryan offered his own spin on the committee's failure to the Oklahoman newspaper:

The problem was the Democrats could never agree with each other as to what they would agree to, so they kept trying to negotiate with each other. And that was just tough negotiating with people who are still negotiating with each other.

Actually, there were reports that one of the Republicans was ready to agree to a Democratic proposal but backed off at the end, The New York Times reported.

Whatever the reasons Ryan decided not to serve on the committee, his comments now certainly smell of Monday morning quarterbacking by a guy who asked the coach not to put him in the game.

Tea Party Induced Stock Market Crash A Paul Ryan Downgrade

Give "Capper" at Cognitive Dissidence the credit through all the other distractions for noticing the troubling relationship between the recent Tea Party/S&P driven stock market dive and Paul Ryan's scheme to shift SS payroll taxes to the highly volatile investment markets. That the markets have proven to be susceptible to congressional brinksmanship and political posturing makes it even less the infallible pillar of trust that is crucial to its existence.

Cognitive Dissidence Excerpt:

You will remember that Ryan, the Republicans' shining star, has, as a key part of his budget from hell, privatizing Social Security and allowing people to invest it in the stock market themselves [...]Even the bullheaded Ryan has to realize that only the extreme lunatic fringe would want to invest their retirement into the market right now. Read more here.

Or invest even a year or two ago. That's twice in the past three years and three times over the past ten years that stock market volatility has eaten away at modest gains. These are precisely the economic times Social Security was meant to protect vulnerable seniors from.

If I recall accurately here, Ryan's Social Security proposal guarantees recipients a return equivalent to a minimum standard SS benefit which means that during times like these, not only would participants lose hard-earned dollars to the profit-takers on Wall Street but government will also have to go into more debt and borrow to restore minimum guaranteed benefits. Under this scenario, Ryan's proposal transforms Social Security into a generous subsidy for private investment firms. But with losses like these, its participants would find themselves enrolled in little more than a welfare program.

"Cleaning out the tax code" for wealthy, wipes out middle class tax deductions.

You’ve heard about the Republican plan to ease the tax burden on the wealthy by reducing their rate from 35 to 25 percent (Pawlenty is going for 15 percent). But that requires doing away with those special “loopholes and tax breaks” in the code that would supposedly put us all on a level the playing field.

It turns out this “revenue neutral” approach is not so neutral, and like I’ve been writing about here, the loopholes effect the middle class more than wealthy income earners. Ezra Klein wrote this about “cleaning out the tax code:”

According to the Tax Policy Center, the largest tax expenditures, in order, are the breaks for employer-provided health care, pension contributions, mortgage interest, depreciation of capital equipment, state and local tax payments, and charitable contributions. We're not talking ethanol credits here, and we're not even talking about tax breaks for special interests. We're talking about tax preferences for the middle class.


So far, the discussion over raising revenues by cleaning out the code has used comfortably vague language about "tax breaks" and "loopholes" and "expenditures." But to see serious money from this effort, these are the sorts of breaks, loopholes and expenditures we'll have to go after.

That’s what Paul Ryan’s Republicans are talking about, lowering the tax bracket from 35 to 25 percent for the wealthy, by eliminating the middle class “tax breaks” and “loopholes.” This revenue neutral scam, now that it's been exposed, is just another unspeakably cruel joke by likes of Paul Ryan and his fellow wealthfare conspirators.

Paul Ryan: Wall Street will be okay with debt default for a few days

Watch as Rep. Paul Ryan explains how Wall Street will be okay with the federal government defaulting on its debt for a few days if the debt ceiling isn't increased.


Cross-posted to Blogging Blue.