The shrill and the serious
by David Atkins
Noted innumerate dilettante Paul Krugman tallies up the numbers in Nobel Prize winning economic maestro Paul Ryan's budget:
So if we look at the actual policy proposals, they look like this:
Spending cuts: $1.7 trillion
Tax cuts: $4.3 trillion
This is, then, a plan that would increase the deficit by around $2.6 trillion.
How, then, does Ryan get to call himself a fiscal hawk? By asserting that he will keep his tax cuts revenue-neutral by broadening the base in ways he refuses to specify, and that he will make further large cuts in spending, in ways he refuses to specify.
And this is what passes inside the Beltway for serious thinking and a serious commitment to deficit reduction.
As Digby pointed out, we have a very serious media problem in this country. It goes far beyond failure to investigate the truth. The media is eager to promote as truth things that just aren't so.
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