It is dishearening to read headlines in the New York Times from good reporters like Carl Huse like this: Paul Ryan Puts It All on the Line in Tax Fight:
The new Republican tax proposal is arguably the pinnacle of Paul D. Ryan’s legislative career, the culmination of years spent in the wonky trenches of conservative think tanks and esoteric congressional budget and tax debates.
I’m sorry, but no. Perpetuating this myth of wonkishness is unforgiveably wrong.
Economist and Times columnist Paul Krugman identifed the GOP’s alleged boy genius and Ayn Rand fan boy, Paul Ryan, “the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin” as an inellectual fraud and the GOP’s flimflam man more than 7 years ago.
Krugman recently wrote, Donald Trump, Paul Ryan and the Con Man Caucus:
It really is amazing to watch this chaotic horror show play out at the highest levels of a great nation’s government. But I guess this is what you have to expect when you hand over the reins of power to a con man, whose whole career has been based on convincing naïve marks that he’s a brilliant deal maker, but turns out to have no idea how to actually govern.
Oh, wait — did you think I was talking about Donald Trump? I’m talking about Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House, an obvious phony who nonetheless convinced the rubes — that is, much of the news media and the political establishment — that he was a brilliant fiscal expert. What we’re witnessing now is the end of the charade, the political equivalent of what happened when graduates of Trump University tried to get some value in return for their money.
On Thursday, House Republicans unveiled a tax “reform” bill with the same good order and careful deliberation with which they unveiled their various attempts to repeal Obamacare. That is, after having had years to prepare, the G.O.P. waited until the last minute to throw something together, without any hearings or serious analysis.
Budget wonks are frantically going through the legislative language, trying to figure out what it means and what it would do — but they can take some comfort in the fact that the bill’s authors are almost equally in the dark.
