Paul Ryan’s lively new budget comes out today, to much fanfare and catcalling. Alas, it is already dead. It died last year when Ryan lost in his bid to become Vice President. But maybe we shouldn’t be so hasty: it’s built on such hypocrisy and so many howlers it stands in its own right as a satirical masterpiece:
TPM — In other words, Ryan and Republican leaders started off opposing the ACA’s Medicare cuts, then turned around and twice passed budgets that kept them, then campaigned against those cuts in the 2012 election, and are now embracing them again.
Ryan also revealed Sunday that his plan to replace Medicare with a limited subsidy for seniors to buy their own insurance won’t affect people currently older than 55. His budget will include the tax hikes from the fiscal cliff, which help him balance federal spending and revenues in 10 years without targeting older Americans with his Medicare plan.
That’s the kind of stuff you expect to see in the Onion (Or mistakenly taken as real and pasted thoughtlessly into conservative edit screens across the nut-o-sphere). If this is the conservatives’ serious wonky budget guy, I’d hate to see their comedy relief.
I look forward to Krugman’s comments on it.
The rethuglicans don’t really need any designated comedy relief. They’ve become such a joke that the whole party’s a self-parody. I’m pretty sure they’re trying to put The Onion out of business.
“HahahahahaaaaaHaaaahaaaaa…Snortle…Hahahahhaaa!” would be about right.
You’d think wouldn’t you….. but the Scary part is what the Tea Party/Conservative/NorquistFanClub reaction has been.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-03-12/the-right-wing-case-against-paul-ryans-budget
Some “conservatives” in Congress are so unhappy with this proposal they are considering opposing it to support their own proposal?
The primary reason? It accepts the $624 Billion in tax increases from the fiscal cliff deal as a “new normal.” The conservatives in the house apparently take the position that not only should these tax increases be rolled back, but that the budget should be balanced by cutting “entitlements” (re: Social security and medicare). Their apparent belief is that if they convince republicans to vote for a budget that contains these massive entitlement cuts, and those republicans get elected afterward, they will make these sorts of entitlement cuts more palatable to future republican legislators.
THAT”S something you might read in the onion.
Moderation? Really? Since 9:15 this morning? Fuck it, I’ll just go back to PZ’s and Ed’s blogs. I don’t have to put up with this kind of horseshit there.
Huh. Badly presented econo-feudalism… you’d think they’d spend more money on better PR for this.