I normally hate Americans Elect fluffer Matt Miller, but this is a good point: Paul Ryan isn’t just a granny starver, he’s a granny starver whose numbers don’t even add the fuck up.
[T]he con has worked in part because budgets make journalists’ eyes glaze over, and once the phony Ryan meme took hold two years ago it became hard to dislodge. […]Ryan is not a “fiscal conservative.” A fiscal conservative pays for the government he wants. Ryan never has. His early “Roadmap for America’s Future” didn’t balance the budget until the 2060s and added $60 trillion to the national debt. Ryan’s revised plan, passed by the House in 2011, wouldn’t reach balance until the 2030s while adding $14 trillion in debt. It adds $6 trillion in debt over the next decade alone — yet Republicans had the chutzpah to say they wouldn’t raise the debt limit!
Sixty trillion dollars is a lot of scratch. To put it in perspective, that’s more than twice the amount that Matt Taibbi claims is the government’s potential liability on TARP.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
__
Fixt it, I did.
Mike Goetz
The sugar high is already wearing off, and in the clear light of day people are realizing what the Ryan pick really means.
Not everybody thinks sucking up to William Kristol is a good idea.
MattF
Maybe a small point, but if Wall Street was really in the business of creating liquidity (rather than, e.g., screwing muppets) the bond market would be getting uneasy, right about now.
Jay C
Well then: more fodder for Obama campaign ads: “Paul Ryan’s radical budget plan will INCREASE our debt by trillions of dollars – check the numbers!”
And somewhere, somebody WILL “check the numbers”, and R/R will be left hemming-and-hawing over their bogus claims and whining about Meanie Obama and Media Bias and shut up, that’s why…
spongeworthy
This line of attack is going to work a lor better when Obama and Reid put together their budget and voters can compare the numbers…
Hunter Gathers
Remember when the campaign was going to be all about jobs, jobs, jobs? Now it’s all about welfare, deficits and whether or not those under 55 should be punished for putting a black man in the White House.
shortstop
EARWORM! Mitt’s the one who hates to love, and Paul’s the one who loves to hate.
Anya
Hate to go OT this early but it looks like two GOP water cariers, CNN’s Candy Crowley and CBS’s Bob Schieffer are two the 4 Presidential debate moderators.
Origuy
Gallop Poll on Ryan as VP:
Only Quayle got a worse response immediately after selection.
NotMax
It’s the magic underwear/magic asterisk ticket.
Bulworth
Yes but he’s Very Serious and COURAGEOUS! //
shortstop
@Origuy: And that’s with most voters still having no idea who he is. I spent an hour yesterday telling my jittery mom that I do not want to hear her daily expressions of alarm. I told her to wait until, say, the second week in September and then she’ll see just how dumbass this selection was.
troll
Sixty trillion dollars is a lot of scratch. To put it in perspective, that’s more than twice the amount that
Matt TaibbiNeil Barofskyclaimsstates is the government’s potential liability on TARP.FTFY
Face
Longer: the media is too fucking stupid to do any research or ask any questions, so they just copy whatever the fuck the guy in the next cubicle has written. Multiply by 300 villagers.
Then, 2 years later, they bitch about the result of the very thing they created. High school writ large.
Wow. Just wow.
DougJ
@shortstop:
I’m going all Get Happy today, maybe all week.
Southern Beale
What do you expect from a Washington insider and career politician who’s never held a real job? And no, driving the Weinermobile doesn’t count.
You know, it wasn’t too long ago that Republicans were using “Washington insider” and “career politician” as epithets — even against their own candidates they were primarying. Weird.
The Other Chuck
@Anya: Bob Schieffer is known to commit the occasional act of journalism. But Candy fucking CROWLEY? What, was Nancy Grace already booked?
But really, what does it matter? The debate format is nothing more than the “moderator” reading the question off the script, then allowing the candidates to go off on a 2-minute speech completely unrelated. Followups are never allowed. You could replace the moderator with a chess clock and get a better debate.
troll
@Anya:
Bob and Candy can afford to carry their water.
Medicare will cover Candy’s insulin and heart meds.
Bob’s safe too.
Why anyone listens to these douches is beyond me.
Villago Delenda Est
“Movement Conservatives” are not “conservative” in any way, shape or form. They seem to be a cross between nihilists and feudalists.
Likewise, self-described “fiscal conservatives” nowadays, like the asswipe that is Paul Ryan, have twisted those two words into something quite the opposite of what they once meant.
After all, these are the people who took Bill Clinton’s surpluses and transformed them into additions to the national debt that would have made Ronald Reagan (who taught us, as Dick “Serious Dick” Cheney once said, that deficits don’t matter), blanch.
Southern Beale
USA Today/Gallup:
Ah well. I’m sure they’ll be furiously etch-a-sketching Ryan for the masses and he’s a lot smarter than that idiot Sarah Palin so I’m not uncorking the champagne yet.
Alex S.
@Southern Beale:
Somehow, I think that the Weinermobile is the one thing that people are going to remember about Ryan, after this election.
Martin
Can we have our debate moderators all wear ‘Math is hard!’ Barbie t-shirts?
Southern Beale
@Villago Delenda Est:
Yeah, these days “fiscal conservative” is a more palatable way of saying “tax cutter.” Cuz they never do the math, never balance the budget. Just cut taxes. So just say it, people: you think taxes are too high. You just want to cut taxes. That’s it. It’s trickle-down fairy dust because it sure as hell doesn’t matter any other way.
Villago Delenda Est
@The Other Chuck:
Seriously.
The Crowley bint is one of the most vile Rethug shills of the MSM.
She is an utter waste of skin.
NotMax
@Southern Beale
The YouTube video of Ryan correctly spelling ‘potato’ should be posted any time now.
Anya
@The Other Chuck: Candy Crowley is awful but Bob Schieffer is no better. Every time democrats fight hard he goes all Abbe Simpson on them, and complains about how the world changed from 1000 years ago. When he has dems on, he repeats republican taking points in the form of a question. He’s awful. He really needs to retire.
The Other Chuck
Even with GHWB’s pick of Quayle, they still elected him. It wasn’t til Sarah Palin til we got to see in our lifetime the veep spot really drag down a ticket. (Well okay, my lifetime anyway)
Of course since the primary drag on the GOP ticket this year has been _Romney_, I suppose the #2 pick will have to be relevant this time.
shortstop
@DougJ: I endorse this.
Amir Khalid
The story we’ve been hearing is that Mitt wanted Ryan, despite the objections of his top advisers, because he felt a certain sympatico with the guy. Ryan is now about to get every last bit of his budget bullshit, plus his role in making Congress the dysfunctional entity it has become, hung around his neck. And the Mitt campaign will need to dig Ryan out of a hole, rather than counting on him to boost Mitt’s chances.
There haven’t been any good veep options for Mitt, but surely there was someone less bad than this clown.
Bernard Finel
The Ryan Budget… like all GOP budgets since the early 1980s is pure “starve the beast.”
They are wholly committed to shrinking the federal government, and in their minds ANYTHING that contributes to that end counts as “fiscally conservative” — even if in the short-term it explodes the deficit and increases debt.
None of them ever acknowledge the massive societal and economic costs of deliberately provoking an economic crisis in order to get their ends. They are willing to literally cause a generation of pain and suffering because they think that on the back end, the result will be some sort of nirvana.
It is a window into the mind of fanatics.
DougJ
@Anya:
He did an okay job with the debates last time he did them. Whereas Jim Lehrer was terrible.
shortstop
@Southern Beale: You guys need to stop slandering Ryan about his extensive private-sector experience. He spent one year between political jobs as a “marketing consultant” for his family company. In Republican years, that’s three, so he’s totally in line with the Romney constitutional amendment, so shut up, that’s why.
shortstop
@DougJ: OT, doesn’t Jim Lehrer kind of look like a shark with those almost-black eyes?
bemused
@Villago Delenda Est:
Fiscal conservatives are as phony as compassionate conservatives and basically the same folks for the most part. I wonder what their next persona will be.
Comrade Mary
Could people PLEASE stop the handsprings over the quickie Gallup poll on Ryan? It’s early, the assessments are nearly tied (42%/39%), and the comparison to Quayle should not be reassuring. Quick quiz: what ticket was elected in 1988?
There’s a lot of weeks left in the campaign, with lots of ads, lots of polls, lots of media tempests in a teapot upcoming: do not assume we already have a slam dunk because of one mild bit of good news out of one poll.
Davis X. Machina
@Villago Delenda Est:
Say what you want about the tenets of divine-right monarchy, at least it’s an ethos.
Hill Dweller
@Comrade Mary: While I agree with your call for caution, George H W Bush was a genuine war hero, former head of the CIA, and the VP from a popular administration. Willard is none of those things.
scav
Well, allied to thier trickle-down policies, maybe there’s a silent “bowel” before the words “movement” and “conservatives”. To their minds, it’s a recipe for the punch they’re offering.
Villago Delenda Est
@Bernard Finel:
If they were actual conservatives (ala Bismarck) they would be concerned with increasing social stability, even at the cost of higher taxes on the wealthy. Stability is the key here.
This is why Bismarck co-opted the Social Democrats’ concept of the old-age pension system which is the forerunner to Social Security in this country. His objective was to prevent mass executions of Junkers who were too fucking stupid to realize the peril their stubbornness put them in.
Instead, Rethugs advocate policies that reduce stability, and therefore make more likely the very social upheaval that they supposedly wish to avoid. They have no Bismarck to save them from their own lack of vision.
jibeaux
Look, no one should be able to claim they’ve released a budget that “balances the budget” or “pays down the deficit” or any of that crap when they write whatever projections they want into it and it balances out DECADES FROM NOW WHEN THE DRAFTER IS AS LIKELY AS NOT TO BE DEAD. That just does not fucking count and should be void ab initio as a “debt reduction” proposal.
Gremcat
Do we know how Ryan voted during the debt crisis that resulted in the downgrading of the US’s credit rating?
RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist
@DougJ:
Great record, and one of my favorites by our man Declan. But it was poorly mastered and sounds lousy. Or lousier than it should. But still way worth hearing.
japa21
@shortstop: Besides, rumor has it he ran a lemonade stand two summers in a row when he was 6 and 7. So that does add up to 3 years in private enterprise.
Rumor also has it that the lemonade was terrible and didn’t really start to taste good until 20 years after you drank it.
Jay C
@Comrade Mary:
Q. Quick quiz: what ticket was elected in 1988?
A. The ticket running in a time of prosperity, and headed by a long-time Washington Insider and generally-respected figure whose election could be seen as a continuation of a reasonably popular incumbency. And a ticket running against as lackluster a slate of Democrats as the Party had put up in ages (well, really since 1984).
This time around? A bit different…
liberal
@Villago Delenda Est:
I still think that the best description of the Rethuglicans as radicals was the one by Krugman, where he cites Kissinger’s description of a radical power.
Villago Delenda Est
@Davis X. Machina:
Reminds me of Michelle Bachmann opining that the Renaissance was “a mistake”.
Comrade Mary
@Jay C: Yeah, and a Democrat who was leading in the polls for quite a while.
I’m not playing Doomer here, but there are a fuckload of factors affecting this election in both directions. There’s an excellent choice that Ryan’s rating could get even worse over the next few weeks, but we’re talking about a difference that isn’t even a difference in this one poll, that’s all.
Nickws
@spongeworthy:
Bullshit, the ‘Ryan Budget’ is nothing but a fucking hundred-pages-long party platform, http://budget.house.gov/uploadedfiles/pathtoprosperity2013.pdf , it’s not a real piece of financial-year-spanning omnibus legislation (hint: no OECD country runs its government’s annual program according to a sketchy 100 page not-even-supply-bill-like draft plan that the executive refuses to even sign into law).
Effectively, neither the Dems nor the GOP have true ‘parliamentary’ budgets they can implement, they just have fairly ad hoc plans that determine what goes in the continuing resolutions and such that have to be passed.
It’s just the Democratic ad hoc plans call for lowering the deficit by 2020 in a somewhat balanced manner, while the Republicans’ ad hoc plans involve talking up their fictional comprehensive ‘budget’ (with its sleight of hand, granny starving, longer timeframe for producing a surplus, transfer of wealth upwards) while at the same time they act like a bunch of geniuses with the whole nearly-tanking-the-world-economy-over-the-debt-ceiling-crisis thing.
In short, ‘Ryan Plan’ is accurate; ‘Ryan Budget’ is not.
liberal
@Hill Dweller:
Actually, the best things about 41:
(a) Continues to have been the least “pro-” Israel president since maybe Carter
(b) Signed Budget Enforcement Act, as a compromise with Congressonal Democrats
JWL
To put it in another perspective, it spells the death of America’s experiment with Republican government.
liberal
@Villago Delenda Est:
Was it the Renaissance? I know that right-wing-nutjob antipathy to the Enlightenment is commmon.
Hard to keep track of all these regressions. With the bankster clouded title issue, no more Statute of Frauds. I guess that’s only 1677. I know the ideas in the Magna Carta are under attack; that’s 1215…
spongeworthy
You guys may be right. Perhaps Romney chose the one guy who could actually lose him the election instead of Romney losing it by himself.
But voters just might be ready for a real discussion of the tough choices ahead. Certainly Ryan owes some answers about the gaps in his plan(s). One thing’s for certain–Obama is not a guy to make tougt choices (raising taxes on 3% solves nothing and costs him nothing.)
So if Obama isn’t going to fix it and you do beat Romney/Ryan, what will you have won? The right to preside over a train wreck?
Tokyokie
@RossInDetroit, Rational Subjectivist: And speaking of Declan, with all the half-assed British musical acts that were trotted out last night in the Olympics closing ceremony, why wasn’t he included?
Yutsano
@Villago Delenda Est: This is also why Germany has the oldest running universal health care system in the world. Bismarck wanted to counter every single Communist point he could, and what he set up ended up being so sacred that even Hitler didn’t fuck with it.
spongeworthy
@Nickws: Fascinating. Perhaps we should compare ad hoc plans, look over the numbers. Where can I get a copy of the ad hoc plan Senate Democrats agreed upon, submitted and voted for this year?
I would even accept one from last year or the year before if that’s the best we can get.
Anya
@DougJ: Which one wanted the candidates to look at each other like a therapy session?
NotMax
@spongeworthy
Appropriations bills must originate in the House, not the Senate. But if you want to see some info on one plan crafted by a Senate Democrat (chairman of the Budget Committee), see here. Note that virtually this same plan came to a vote in the House and was defeated.
NotMax
@Not Max
No edit function.
Gave entirely the wrong link. The correct link for the Conrad plan is here.
Judas Escargot, Acerbic Prophet of the Mighty Potato God
@japa21:
Young Paul Ryan did manage to install coin-ops on all the nearby toilets, however. So the lemonade did serve its ultimate purpose.
Gotta supplement those SS survivor benefits somehow…
spongeworthy
@NotMax: Thanks for the link–that’s pretty cool that the plan restores “millions” to social service and health programs.
But I don’t think it’s useful to compare the NJ state budget with that of the entire U.S..
Look, the point is, I think you guys might be able to win picking at Ryan’s Budget-that-isn’t-a-budget-unless-we-can-demagogue-Ryan-over-it-then-it’s-a-budget without offering an alternative fix. But what will you have won?
xian
@Nickws: why reply to obvious troll?
Lurking Canadian
@Jay C: No, they’ll just blow some smoke about how the unprecedented tax cuts for the job creators are going to lead to massive economic growth that has been omitted from the model.
Then the pundits will sagely nod their heads and give Obama seventeen Pinnochios for being a doody-head.
Tom the First
@DougJ
This should work for any Romney/Ryan post through November:
Why Do You Talk Such Stupid Nonsense When My Mind Could Rest Much Easier.
NotMax
@spongeworthy
Correct link (may fault entirely for providing the wrong one) is in message #57.
NotMax
@spongeworthyDamn, I’m on a roll of mistyping today. Correct link is in message #58.
spongeworthy
@NotMax: If you’ll note, Conrad offered the Bowles-Simpson plan as his budget and then didn’t submit it to committee or to a vote. Profiles in cowardice, and not necessarily Conrad’s.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/46078123/ns/business-stocks_and_economy/t/senate-democrat-conrad-offers-budget-no-vote/
It would be a fine thing to offer voters a divergence of views between the Ryan budget and Bowles-Simpson, and the Democrats even have cover on B-S as the President himself endorsed the formation of that committee. The country would be far better off embracing either of those plans instead of driving ourselves into insolvency.
NotMax
@spongeworthy
All you asked was to see evidence of existence a Senate Domocratic plan. One such is what I pointed you towards.
Disputing the way it was handled does not negate its existence.
spongeworthy
@NotMax: Actually what I asked was this: Where can I get a copy of the ad hoc plan Senate Democrats agreed upon, submitted and voted for this year?
That was in response to your claim: It’s just the Democratic ad hoc plans call for lowering the deficit by 2020 in a somewhat balanced manner…
Face it, the Democrats didn’t offer a plan at all. Never put one up for a vote, didn’t clear one out of committee. And this is with a majority in the Senate. They don’t want to take the political hit for either raising taxes or deepening the hole we’re in, so they pretend there’s no problem.
I don’t know if pretending is what will defeat Romney/Ryan.
NotMax
@spongeworthy
Again, appropriations bills must originate in the House.
That particular plan was voted down in the House. Little reason to pass it out of committee or hold a floor vote in the Senate after that.
spongeworthy
@NotMax: Budget proposals can come from anywhere, even the White House.
Conrad threw in the towel on a budget, fell back on Simpson-Bowles even though he knew B-S had gotten only 38 votes in the House. That’s not a serious proposal and it never went to a vote. Senate Democrats punted on a budget. How you defeat something “radical” like Ryan with nothing remains to be seen.
NotMax
@spongeworthy
Budget bills (those things which are voted on) must originate in the House. U.S. Constitution, Article I, Section 7.
Turgidson
When “something” is a cocktail of equal parts arsenic, cyanide and unfiltered grain alcohol, with ground glass as a garnish, nothing is indeed preferable to “something.”
spongeworthy
@Turgidson: I understand you guys are going to paint the Ryan plan as all those things. And I think you have a better than 50-50 shot of succeeding. But if you don’t plan to fix the deficits or reform entitlements, then what will you have won? Is presiding over a disaster what you guys are fighting for?
Wally
Regarding Bush pere, one more accomplishment was passage of the Clear Air Act Amendments in 1990. These were not minor fixes. This is THE most important environmental law passed after CERCLA in 1980. Clinton and Obama have not passed ANY important environmental legislation, except Obama did raise fuel efficiency standards administratively.
All Bush got for that lasw was a kick in the ass by enviros and then disgusted, he turned over domestic politics to Sununu pere. That of course, stopped any progress.
El Cid
If you’re a conservative and you want to cut ‘entitlements’ then if you write down numbers, no matter what those numbers are or if you made them up or even if they’re not really numbers, such as threeve, or fourven, it counts as “number crunching”.