The Ryan Express collides with common sense

The Ryan Express collides with common sense

by digby

Paul Ryan has been holding townhalls across his district. And guess what? His constituents aren't all that impressed with his Randy conservatism:

CONSTITUENT: The middle class is disappearing right now. During this time of prosperity, the top 1 percent was taking about 10 percent of the total annual income, but yet today we are fighting to not let the tax breaks for the wealthy expire? And we’re fighting to not raise the Social Security cap from $87,000? I think we’re wrong.

RYAN: A couple things. I don’t disagree with the premise of what you’re saying. The question is what’s the best way to do this. Is it to redistribute… (Crosstalk)

CONSTITUENT: You have to lower spending. But it’s a matter of there’s nothing wrong with taxing the top because it does not trickle down.

RYAN: We do tax the top. (Audience boos). Let’s remember, most of our jobs come from successful small businesses. Two-thirds of our jobs do. You got to remember, businesses pay taxes individually. So when you raise their tax rates to 44.8 percent, which is what the president is proposing, I would just fundamentally disagree. That is going to hurt job creation.

The GOP could easily capitulate on this and the only actual votes they would lose would be the top 5%. And maybe not even that since the aristocrats would still have to vote for someone regardless. But they won't. The anti-http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giftax movement is a cult and they are zombies in its thrall.

But it sounds as though the public isn't buying it. It turns out that if you demand draconian spending cuts to cut the debt common sense says you should raise taxes on millionaires too. Go figure.

Update: if you'd like to help Ryan understand this, you can throw a couple of bucks this way.