Stop Worshiping at the Altar of Paul Ryan

Paul Ryan has been getting glowing press coverage of late, the kind that portrays the Republican congressman as one of his party's deep thinkers on fiscal matters. And then there's Paul Krugman's column today: "The Ryan plan is a fraud that makes no useful contribution to the debate over America’s fiscal future." It's the "audacity of dopes." It's "leftovers from the 1990s, drenched in flimflam sauce."

Part of the problem is that nobody's doing the real math related to Ryan's "Roadmap for America’s Future," which calls for steep cuts in spending and taxes, writes Krugman in the New York Times. Ryan's claims to the contrary, it wouldn't cut the deficit. "All it would do is cut benefits for the middle class while slashing taxes on the rich." Another part of the problem is that the GOP is a "resurgent political force," and people are afraid to "point out that its intellectual heroes have no clothes. But they don't." Click here to read the whole column, in which Krugman does the math.
(More Paul Ryan stories.)