The Kroog Versus Rep. Paul Ryan Yet Again

Pro Tip:  if you're going to publicly pick a fight with a Nobel laureate economist about economics, bring your A game.  GOP Rep. Paul Ryan fails this simple test as he calls Paul Krugman out, only to get smacked down a second time in a few paragraphs.

Notice that Ryan does not address the issue of the zero nominal growth assumption, and how that assumption — not entitlement reforms — is the key to his alleged spending cuts by 2020.

I also see that Ryan is perpetuating the runaround on revenue estimates. If you read either this article or his original response to the Tax Policy Center, you could easily get the impression that nobody would do a revenue estimate, that CBO said it was JCT’s job, and JCT balked. Even Nate Silver has fallen for this. But read the original response carefully:

The Tax Policy Center analysis covers a 10-year period, but the Roadmap is a long-term plan with spending and revenue projections covering 75 years. As such, the analysis is not consistent with the long-term horizon of the plan. Staff originally asked CBO to do a long-term analysis of both the tax and spending provisions in the Roadmap. However, CBO declined to do a revenue analysis of the tax plan, citing that it did not want to infringe on the traditional jurisdiction of the JCT. JCT, however, does not have the capability at this time to provide longer-term revenue estimates (i.e. beyond 10 years) [my emphasis]. Given these functional constraints for an official analysis, staff relied on its original work with the Treasury Department and other tax experts to formulate a reasonable expected path for long-term revenues given the tax policies in the Roadmap combined with the economic growth projections available at the time.

In other words, Ryan could have gotten JCT to do a 10-year estimate; it just wouldn’t go beyond that. And he chose not to get that 10-year estimate. So it was Ryan’s choice not to have any independent estimate of the 10-year revenue effects.

And bear in mind that the Tax Policy Center critique was five months ago. If Ryan disagreed with the center’s estimates, he could have gone back to the JCT to get a different set of estimates. He never did.

By the way, if you look at the artful way his excuses are constructed — giving the false impression that he couldn’t get a revenue score for love nor money — how is that not flimflam?

Finally, why is Ryan denying that he proposes dismantling Medicare as we know it? Replacing the system with vouchers surely fits that description.

Ooooops.  Maybe Krugman's  characterization of Ryan as a "flimflam man" was impolitic, but it was accurate as hell.  Ryan then makes the classic mistake of doubling down on his own erroneous assumptions and expecting the Wingers/Reasonoids/McMegan to back him up on this.  The fact that it only takes Krugman about 300 words to completely win his argument shows you just how weak Ryan's position was.

Like most Republican policy positions, if you dig under the surface you find the same moldering Reaganomics idiocy from 30 years ago where tax cuts "fix" everything and only add to the deficit while transferring wealth up the ladder.  We need to have a serious debate about the economic direction of this country, but if Paul Ryan is considered a leading light when he's so wrong that even Paul Krugman has to come up to the guy and call him out, then one side -- the Republicans -- has nothing to say in that debate other than "no no no no no no" like a petulant child.

We need better.