Paul Ryan, enfant terrible of the Republican Caucus, is in the news today for not one but two outrageous statements.
Outrage #1 comes to you via TPM:
Whenever you lead and propose a solution to a complex problem, you're putting yourself out there to be distorted, to be demagogued to be lied about," Ryan said. "What's happening is the other party's chosen to try to scare senior citizens to try and get votes. Here's the deal on our Medicare plan: ObamaCare ends Medicare as we know it.
While your mind is still reeling, stuck somewhere between "T" and "F" in "WTF", let me drop this second gem on you, courtesy of ThinkProgress:
What happens if you do what he’s saying, is then you can’t lower tax rates. So it does affect marginal tax rates. In order to lower marginal tax rates, you have to take away those loopholes so you can lower those tax rates. If you want to do what we call being revenue neutral … If you take a deal like that, you’re necessarily requiring tax rates to be higher for everybody. You need lower tax rates by going after tax loopholes. If you take away the tax loopholes without lowering tax rates, then you deny Congress the ability to lower everybody’s tax rates and you keep people’s tax rates high.
Please raise your jaw back to the vicinity of your nose, Kossack, and let's talk about these two statements.
First, every cut to Medicare found in "Obamacare" is also found in Ryan's plan - plus many, many more, including the switch from the government being responsible for the cost of senior health care to the seniors themselves - a rather important distinction to anyone not a pathologically dishonest Republican politician or one of their enablers.
So Ryan's first idea is just absolute dishonesty. There is no plausible way to actually believe that. There is no way that reporting that statement without noting that it is a complete falsehood can be construed as journalism.
The second relies entirely on the assumption that in the United States people have high tax rates. Since current Federal revenues amount to 15% of GDP - the lowest in 50 years or more, and the maximum income tax rate is also the lowest it has been in decades, as is the capital gains tax - well, Rep. Ryan is again simply delusional.
So this is what we are up against. This is supposed to be a smart man. This is supposed to be a man who is responsible and cares about the future of our nation.
What he should be, and what he is, are clearly not the same.
I weep for America.