Paul Krugman vs Paul Ryan

An Unserious Man - NYTimes.Com

Mitt Romney’s choice of Paul Ryan as his running mate led to a wave of pundit accolades. Now, declared writer after writer, we’re going to have a real debate about the nation’s fiscal future. This was predictable: never mind the Tea Party, Mr. Ryan’s true constituency is the commentariat, which years ago decided that he was the Honest, Serious Conservative, whose proposals deserve respect even if you don’t like him.

But he isn’t and they don’t. Ryanomics is and always has been a con game, although to be fair, it has become even more of a con since Mr. Ryan joined the ticket.

Let’s talk about what’s actually in the Ryan plan, and let’s distinguish in particular between actual, specific policy proposals and unsupported assertions. To focus things a bit more, let’s talk — as most budget discussions do — about what’s supposed to happen over the next 10 years.

On the tax side, Mr. Ryan proposes big cuts in tax rates on top income brackets and corporations. He has tried to dodge the normal process in which tax proposals are “scored” by independent auditors, but the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center has done the math, and the revenue loss from these cuts comes to $4.3 trillion over the next decade.

On the spending side, Mr. Ryan proposes huge cuts in Medicaid, turning it over to the states while sharply reducing funding relative to projections under current policy. That saves around $800 billion. He proposes similar harsh cuts in food stamps, saving a further $130 billion or so, plus a grab-bag of other cuts, such as reduced aid to college students. Let’s be generous and say that all these cuts would save $1 trillion.

On top of this, Mr. Ryan includes the $716 billion in Medicare savings that are part of Obamacare, even though he wants to scrap everything else in that act. Despite this, Mr. Ryan has now joined Mr. Romney in denouncing President Obama for “cutting Medicare”; more on that in a minute.

So if we add up Mr. Ryan’s specific proposals, we have $4.3 trillion in tax cuts, partially offset by around $1.7 trillion in spending cuts — with the tax cuts, surprise, disproportionately benefiting the top 1 percent, while the spending cuts would primarily come at the expense of low-income families. Over all, the effect would be to increase the deficit by around two and a half trillion dollars.

Yet Mr. Ryan claims to be a deficit hawk. What’s the basis for that claim?

Well, he says that he would offset his tax cuts by “base broadening,” eliminating enough tax deductions to make up the lost revenue. Which deductions would he eliminate? He refuses to say — and realistically, revenue gain on the scale he claims would be virtually impossible.

At the same time, he asserts that he would make huge further cuts in spending. What would he cut? He refuses to say.

What Mr. Ryan actually offers, then, are specific proposals that would sharply increase the deficit, plus an assertion that he has secret tax and spending plans that he refuses to share with us, but which will turn his overall plan into deficit reduction.

If this sounds like a joke, that’s because it is. Yet Mr. Ryan’s “plan” has been treated with great respect in Washington. He even received an award for fiscal responsibility from three of the leading deficit-scold pressure groups. What’s going on?

The answer, basically, is a triumph of style over substance. Over the longer term, the Ryan plan would end Medicare as we know it — and in Washington, “fiscal responsibility” is often equated with willingness to slash Medicare and Social Security, even if the purported savings would be used to cut taxes on the rich rather than to reduce deficits. Also, self-proclaimed centrists are always looking for conservatives they can praise to showcase their centrism, and Mr. Ryan has skillfully played into that weakness, talking a good game even if his numbers don’t add up.

The question now is whether Mr. Ryan’s undeserved reputation for honesty and fiscal responsibility can survive his participation in a deeply dishonest and irresponsible presidential campaign.

The first sign of trouble has already surfaced over the issue of Medicare. Mr. Romney, in an attempt to repeat the G.O.P.’s successful “death panels” strategy of the 2010 midterms, has been busily attacking the president for the same Medicare savings that are part of the Ryan plan. And Mr. Ryan’s response when this was pointed out was incredibly lame: he only included those cuts, he says, because the president put them “in the baseline,” whatever that means. Of course, whatever Mr. Ryan’s excuse, the fact is that without those savings his budget becomes even more of a plan to increase, not reduce, the deficit.

So will the choice of Mr. Ryan mean a serious campaign? No, because Mr. Ryan isn’t a serious man — he just plays one on TV.

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Let’s see if we can clear up a few things.

First of all, Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney are not the same person. They aren’t even related! Stop spreading rumors! Although they do sort of look alike and enjoy spending time together. Perhaps Mitt regards Paul as the sixth son he never had.

Ryan is the one who lives on the same block where he grew up. Romney is the one who lives above the car elevator.

Ryan is the one who spent his youth cooking hamburgers at McDonald’s. Romney is the one who used to enjoy dressing up as a police officer and playing fun pranks on his prep school friends. Neither one of them worked as a Wienermobile driver. Really, I don’t know where you get this stuff.

Ryan is the one who likes to catch catfish by sticking his fist into their burrows and dragging them out by the throat. Romney is the one who drove to Canada with his dog strapped to the car roof.

When it comes to the issues, both men are on the same page. Although the page does keep turning and you have to wonder how average voters can cope with all of the confusion.

Fortunately, polls suggest average voters have already decided who they’re going to support and, therefore, have no need whatsoever to try to figure out which page the Romney-Ryan campaign is on.

Practically the only person in America who claims to have no idea who he’s going to vote for is Senator Joseph Lieberman, who recently declared himself absolutely and totally undecided. People, do you think it’s possible that the entire presidential campaign is now being waged just for the benefit of Joseph Lieberman? On the one hand, that’s a real waste of about $1 billion. On the other, it’s exactly what Joseph Lieberman has been waiting for all his life.

Anyhow, about the issues:

Ryan is the one who requested stimulus money for his district, but he is sorry. The stimulus was a terrible thing, and Ryan had no intention of trying to glom onto a chunk of it. He thought he was just forwarding a constituent request for some ... constituent thing. Or four.

Romney is the one who hired undocumented workers to mow his lawn. Totally by mistake.

Ryan is the one who voted for a massive prescription drug Medicare entitlement, the Bush tax cuts and two wars without paying for any of them. He is even sorrier about this than he is about the stimulus.

Romney is the one who passed Obamacare before Obama. But it wasn’t the same thing at all because it happened in a state.

Both men want to make more big tax cuts that will be paid for with the closing of tax loopholes. They are in total, complete concurrence that the identity of these loopholes is not an appropriate topic for a presidential campaign.

Ryan is supposed to be the Tea Party hero and Romney is the one they hated so much they were actually willing to contemplate a Newt Gingrich presidency to avoid him.

But I’m not entirely sure we can trust the hard right to know what it wants anymore. This week in Florida, a Republican primary uprising knocked out Cliff Stearns, a superconservative veteran congressman who had campaigned on his efforts to kill off federal funds for Planned Parenthood and embarrass the Obama administration with an investigation into the Solyndra loans. That sort of bragging enraged the faithful by reminding them that Stearns was a Washington insider, and he lost to a newcomer named Ted Yoho.

Maybe Tea Party voters now only want to send people to Washington who will lack the capacity to get anything done. Personally, I’m kind of O.K. with that. Also, I like the idea of having a congressman named Ted Yoho, as well as the fact that Yoho describes himself as a “large animal veterinarian.” We don’t have many veterinarians in Congress, and you never can tell when a visiting heifer will come down with a medical problem.

All right, a little more about the issues.

Romney has a plan to make Medicare solvent forever. We know this because he wrote “Solvent” on the board at a press conference the other day.

Ryan used to have a plan to make Medicare solvent forever by taking it away from everybody under age 55 and giving them health insurance vouchers instead. But that was so 2011.

Now, Ryan and Romney are on the same page when it comes to Medicare, which is that it must be saved from the $716 billion in cuts President Obama wants to make over the next 10 years. Although that same $716 billion was in the budget plan that Ryan got the House to pass this year. But it’s not like he expected it to happen. “We would never have done it,” he told campaign reporters, desperate wretches condemned to roam the earth with calculators, endlessly searching for the Ryan-Romney page.