Legal Commentary

The Audacity Of Dopes

By Big Tent Democrat

In answer to Ezra Klein's (and the media in general's) strange fawning over GOP representative Paul Ryan, Paul Krugman takes him apart:

[Ryan]’s often described with phrases like “intellectually audacious.” But it’s the audacity of dopes. Mr. Ryan isn’t offering fresh food for thought; he’s serving up leftovers from the 1990s, drenched in flimflam sauce.

[. . .] The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center['s analysis] indicate that the Ryan plan would reduce revenue by almost $4 trillion over the next decade. If you add these revenue losses to the numbers The Post cites, you get a much larger deficit in 2020, roughly $1.3 trillion. [. . . T] Roadmap wouldn’t reduce the deficit. All it would do is cut benefits for the middle class while slashing taxes on the rich.

[. . .] The Tax Policy Center finds that the Ryan plan would cut taxes on the richest 1 percent of the population in half, giving them 117 percent of the plan’s total tax cuts. That’s not a misprint. Even as it slashed taxes at the top, the plan would raise taxes for 95 percent of the population.

[. . .] After 2020, the main alleged saving would come from sharp cuts in Medicare, achieved by dismantling Medicare as we know it, and instead giving seniors vouchers and telling them to buy their own insurance. Does this sound familiar? It should. It’s the same plan Newt Gingrich tried to sell in 1995.

(Emphasis supplied.) The new Newt Gingrich is the new "thinker" for the GOP.

Speaking for me only

Full post as published by TalkLeft on August 06, 2010 (boomark / email).