Paul Ryan loves charts. As chairman of the House Budget Committee, the Wisconsin GOPer has cultivated a reputation as the consummate policy wonk, ready to wage ideological battle at the drop of the dime with an arsenal of tables and graphs. But Ryan's numbers don't always add up.And when they do, the results can be stunning. When Democrats tested arguments about his budget in focus groups, they found it difficult becausevoters refused to believe that a politician would actually propose, say, gutting Medicare to cut tax for the rich. The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities says it's "the largest redistribution of income from the bottom to the top in modern U.S. history."Here's a guide to Paul Ryan's balance sheet, by the numbers.1.) Ryan's public image is that of a "deficit hawk," constantly looking for inefficiencies and unnecessary programs. But that's a recent invention. As a congressman, Ryan has played a key part in the ballooning federal deficit over the last decade. He voted for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, Medicare Part D, the implementation and extension of the Bush tax cuts, the 2008 stimulus, the auto bailout, and TARP:
funny how the story changes when they don't use their charts
2.) The New Republic's Jonathan Cohn writes that under the 2011 Ryan budget, "[g]overnment would be so starved of resources that, by 2050, it wouldn’t have enough money for core functions like food inspections and highway maintenance." That sounds like hyperbole, but it's not. The Ryan budget pledges to reduce non-entitlement expenditures from 12 percent of GDP to just 3.5 percent—all while somehow increasing defense spending:
Based on Congressional Budget Office estimatesBased on Congressional Budget Office estimates
