I was never much of a fan of Simpson-Bowles anyway-deficits are not the right priority in the middle of a recession. At best you should look at structural deficits but these should only be fixed after. Of course, the structural deficit was due to the Bush tax cuts, the two off balance sheet wars and the prescription drug benefit-Medicare Part D-that Ryan supported back in 2003.
The latest comments by Alan Simpson reduce my estimation of Simpson-Bowles:
"Former Sen. Alan Simpson, co-chairman of the Simpson-Bowles commission on debt and deficit reduction, on Friday called Paul Ryan “a spokesman of hard truth against fakery.”
“He encourages me. Erskine [Bowles] and I felt he was one of the sharpest guys we dealt with,” Simpson said on Fox News. “He doesn’t have to have a staff member there feeding him stuff and little memos. He can go a half an hour without a note. He knows the issues.”
“He also said to us — I think a year and a half ago — you know, ‘If we can’t get something done in America, there’s no need for me to smash my head into the wall around here, I have things to do back in Wisconsin,’” Simpson recalled. “And now, this thing [the GOP vice presidential nomination] comes to him, I don’t think he was seeking it, but let me tell you, he becomes a spokesman of hard truth against fakery.
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/79844.html#ixzz23uYvg8Qg
Mr. Simpson would do us a solid by giving us his working definition of the word :"fakery" much less "hard truth."
Ryan is not a spokesman against fakery but rather the leading spokesman for fakery. His own budget had nothing to do with deficit reduction or "hard choices." It was just about deep non-military spending cuts and tax cuts for the rich.
Now he's become even less "serious" in the last week since joining the Romney campaign. Now he's running against Obama's "cuts" to Medicare that he himself supported and prmising to restore them. The effect of restoring them ironically would end up really cutting recipients' benefits as they would just go to the insurance companies. So recipients would be getting the same benefits with higher premiums for the insurers.
The only thing ever "serious" about Ryan is that he has perpetuated a serious fraud on the Alan Simpsons of the world.
In the latest chornicles of The Serious One is that Romney is accused of muzzling him, of not letting him talk about these "hard choices." The Bold One has been muzzled.
http://news.yahoo.com/romney-wants-risky-pick-play-safe-075300266.html
What a farce. As if Ryan had to be stopped from saying anything serious. The truth is he never had anything serious to say in the first place.
The Romney campaign "forcing him" not to talk substance is the laugh riot of the year. I don't get how Harry Reid gets 4 pinocchios but the stunts that Romney-Ryan have been on this week with the lies about Obama's Medicare cuts doesn't. It shows you that Politifact's inveighing on the political process is not good for anything but lining your hamster cage with.
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