Ezra Klein calls Paul Ryan a bullshit artist: "Ryan’s wrong on that…. [T]he evidence doesn’t support Ryan’s contention…. Ryan… didn’t actually provide a study or historical experience…. [If] Ryan’s argument… [were true] it’s hard to understand why Republicans are willing to risk so much to secure [spending cuts]…"
“[The Democrats] already got their revenues,” Ryan said. “So what, we’ll roll over and they get more revenues? That’s not how it works. In the spirit of bipartisan compromise, they’ve gotten revenue increases already. We’ve yet to get anything as a result of it. It used to be 3-1. Isn’t that what Erskine says? $3 of spending cuts to every dollar of tax increase. The president in his own budget last year claimed 2.5 to 1. We’d argue with whether they actually achieved that, but where’s the 3? Where’s the two-and-a-half? Where’s the $1.8 trillion in cuts?”…
Republicans got more than $1.8 trillion in spending cuts during the last session of Congress. “You got — what is it? — $2.2 trillion, $2.4 trillion between the [Budget Control Act] and the sequester?”
“That was last session,” Ryan said. “We’re going forward now.”
Ryan’s wrong on that. Both the $630 billion in revenue that Democrats got as part of the fiscal cliff deal and the $2.2 trillion (or so) that Republicans got as part of the Budget Control Act both passed as part of the 112th Congress. The House approved the fiscal cliff deal Jan. 1, and President Obama signed the bill into law Jan. 2. The 113th Congress didn’t begin until Jan. 3. So neither side has gotten anything in this session of Congress….
[T]he evidence doesn’t support Ryan’s contention that spending cuts don’t stick….
Ryan… didn’t actually provide a study or historical experience….
Ryan’s argument would seem to imply that spending cuts made as part of deals with Democrats are simply fake, and as such, it’s hard to understand why Republicans are willing to risk so much to secure them….
Ryan was asked whether Republicans could really stick to this strategy given their low poll numbers and tattered brand. “So,” he laughed, “we don’t have much to lose, do we?”
