In the last few days, I’ve been so intent on the draconian features of Paul Ryan’s budget and how it hurts the poor and middle classes to give the super-rich yet a 29% tax cut, that I hadn’t really looked at its promises and predictions. I have to admit that it could make America greener, because it contains enough pure unadulterated bullshit to fertilize all of America’s farms for years.
2.8% unemployment? $150 billon a year in new economic growth? Tax revenues that rise with tax cuts?
All this can be yours — and more! — even while cutting trillions of dollars from the federal government and lowering taxes on the wealthy and corporations, according to a giddy estimate of the Republican budget by the conservative Heritage Foundation. Even as Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) proudly touted his "fact-based budget" and decried Democrats’ "budget gimmicks" yesterday, he prominently cited the think tank’s absurdly rosy numbers, drawing widespread mockery from economists, budget experts, and health care wonks. Even the developer of the model that Heritage used to crunch the numbers can’t figure out how Heritage reached its conclusions.
"The Heritage numbers are insane," MIT economist Jonathan Gruber said in an interview with TPM.
As Paul Krugman put it, Heritage’s take "depends an awful lot on unicorn sightings — a belief in the impossible."
The numbers stand in stark contrast to analysis from the independent Congressional Budget Office, the gold standard used by both parties to determine the costs of legislation, which shows an increase in the deficit’s share of the economy in the plan’s first decade thanks to its massive tax cuts and then much tougher financial burdens for seniors in future decades as their health care benefits dwindle.
"CBO is what they use on the budget side — as a matter of procedure, any numbers from the Heritage Foundation or anybody else are essentially worthless," Bruce Bartlett, a former Treasury official under President George H.W. Bush, said in an interview. "You can assert whatever you want to assert, but you can always find some half-baked tax think tank that will make up any number you feel like."
"The idea he’d go to Heritage for that kind of support indicates he didn’t like what the CBO was going to tell him," Stan Collender, a former budget aide for both the House and Senate, told TPM. "This is the same guy who said his budget has no gimmicks in it turning to the rosiest scenario he could get."
Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, pointed to the projections in the Ryan plan that unemployment would decline by 2% in 2012 as fishy even on their own terms.
"I think they just misprogrammed it," he told TPM. "Note that the unemployment rate falls by 2.1 percentage points relative to the baseline in 2012 even though they only created an extra 900,000 jobs. That doesn’t make any sense."
By 2021, unemployment would hit 2.8% under their projection, well below the 5% – 6% range that the Federal Reserve considers the maximum desirable rate achievable without dangerous inflation… [emphasis added]
Inserted from <TPM>
In reality, this budget will increase the deficit and cost jobs, if implemented. Chris Hayes and economist, Heather Boushay debunk Ryan’s lies.
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But Rachel Maddow and Gail Collins really tear into it.
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
This isn’t bold or courageous, as the networks misrepresent. It is total InsaniTEA!
18 Responses to “Ryan Cooked the Books”
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and this is a surprise to who? 6trillion in ten years…that number alone as soon as it was said this became a fantasy from Gen X boy.
Not to me Mark, but a significant portion of the American electorate do not even know who Boehner and Reid are.
How could you not know who they are. Boehner is the cry baby and Ried is the one telling the truth.
Welcome Mary. 🙂
I agree, but millions of Americans are apathetic to the point of ignorance.
Just more Republican lies for the phony kewpie doll with the Ronald Reagan hairstyle.
But I covered up some of the hair with the text. That ought to piss him off! 😈
Paul Ryan can’t add – I think we should send him back to Elementary School to re-learn how to add. Might as well throw in subtraction as well. And the Heritage Foundation is smoking crack – they all need rehab.
Lisa, adding and subtracting is not the issue. He needs a trip to the vet so he can’t multiply. 😉
Big reepup lying A- HOLE
Welcome Robert. 🙂
It lacks a certain eloquence, but is nonetheless accurate.
“Tax revenues that rise with tax cuts? ” Illogical, and irrational.
Welcome Amber! 🙂
RepubliSpeak Dictionary – illogical irrational fantasy: stuff the base will love.
Of course the heritage foundation concocted those numbers, look who actually funds them. The two little brats, the Kock brothers are the ones behind all the bullsh_t that is wrong in our country. They funded and used the tea bag party puppets and they fund and use as puppets many different foundations and organizations that lie to the american people on a daily basis including their favorite puppet’s the republican party. They are the ones who have been the facist master minds of flushing our people and country down the drain, so they and the republicans could get total control. Rupert Murdock and his faux news plays a big roll in the scheme of things also, with all their lies nobody can tell which way is up anymore. But, the people are finding out all about their plans now and they had better reverse course or We The People just might shove them down the other drain, called the garbage disposal. If the disposal jams we’ll un-jam the dam thing and wash their sorry butts so far out the sewer, they won’t recognize themselves.
Welcome Scott! 🙂
I think that they are overreaching so badly that it will cost them long term.
Thanks TomCat. I’m sure I’ll be around from time to time. I hope we can get it thru the thick heads of republican voters, that the republican party don’t give a rats_ass about them either and they’ll just flush their lives down the drain the same as everyone else. Right now though, we all have to be able to survive for the time being, until the next election, to flush the republican and tea party out of our government system and hopefully each election there after we can clean out the rest of garbage. Good talkin with you. Scott.
Thank YOU. Scott. You are most welcome here. I see it as a two step process.
First get rid of the Republican alligators.
Then drain the Democratic swamp, by getting rid of the DINOs.
Ryan is an idiot, just like all those losers in Wis. Am I crazy, or is all this bs only because we had the audicty to elect a Black man as president?!
Welcome, Beth! 🙂
That he is. A real Koch sucker.
I don’t thing race is the cause of the BS. Rather it is a convenient reality for them use the racism of their base to advantage.