Conservatives Try To Paint Radical Ryan Budget As A Moderate Proposal

[cal04]

http://thinkprogress.org/election/2012/08/12/679121/conservatives-try-to-paint-radical-ryan-budget-as-a-moderate-proposal/

Rich Lowry, the editor of conservative magazine National Review, appeared on a Meet The Press roundtable this morning to defend vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) widely panned budget plan as a moderate solution built upon the foundations of the Bowles-Simpson tax proposal, which both Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have opposed.

Responding to charges that Romney’s plan cuts taxes for the wealthiest Americans, Lowry tried to deflect criticism by saying that the Romney/Ryan plan is really a version of Bowles-Simpson:

LOWRY: Democrats always refer to it as a tax cut. but it’s not a tax cut. It’s designed to be revenue neutral. It’s based on the template of the Bowles-Simpson plan, which has been subject to bipartisan acclaim, and the 1986 tax reform which was one of the great bipartisan accomplishments in this town over the last 30 years. And if you study the effects of that ’86 tax reform, which lowered rates and closed loopholes, it actually increased the share that the rich were paying. So this is not some fantasy.

But as fellow panelist Rachel Maddow was quick to point out, if the architect of the Romney/Ryan budget is such an admirer of Bowles-Simpson, he has a funny way of showing it: Paul Ryan voted against Bowles-Simpson, and helped blow up the so-called “Gang of Six” that was responsible for proposing a deficit-reduction budget.

Watch the exchange:

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[The Velveteen Ocelot]

1. "A Moderate Proposal" sounds kind of like "A Modest Proposal" -

Jonathan Swift's satirical essay in which he suggested that the poor Irish should eat their own children. They need to be careful about that terminology, lest people think of Swift and assume Romney/Ryan are suggesting that poor Americans eat their children. Actually, that might come next, after the part where after Granny has eaten all her cat food she is sent out to die on an ice floe.

I think we should start calling the Ryan/Romney plan "A Modest Proposal," and resurrect Swift's satire, which is becoming timely again...

[Egalitarian Thug]

2. It would be quite apropos since it is the "conservatives" that have cannibalized the U.S.

and turned the most advanced nation on earth into a hollowed out, second rate shell with the world's largest military in a mere 50 years.

[TheKentuckian]

3. The actual truth is Ryan is a frame job to make Bowles-Simpson seem moderate.

It is working too, now Democrats and TeaPubliKlans are using it as a baseline.

Predictable as the rising and setting of the sun. We can be corralled anywhere as long as the TeaPubliKlans are willing to reach for new extremes.

[Ruby the Liberal]

4. Anyone else dizzy yet?

Up is down, black is white, and Ryan's budget is more moderate than the Catfood Commission that he voted against because it attempted to raise revenue as opposed to cutting spending 100%.

[ProSense]

5. What people

don't seem to understand is that Simpson-Bowles was proposal soup, which is why everyone hated. Ryan and the RW didn't want it, and neither did anyone on the left. The plan sucked. It attacked Social Security, but that wasn't enough to gain RW support because of the carrots thrown in to try to attract support from the left.

<...>

The South Carolina senator may have forgotten, but there's a reason it's called the "Simpson-Bowles plan" instead of the "Simpson-Bowles commission plan" -- Republicans on the panel hated the recommendations and refused to sign on to the proposal. Why? Because among other things, it raised taxes -- even more than President Obama's debt-reduction plan -- and slashed defense spending. It also allowed all of the Bush-era tax breaks to expire on time at the end of 2012.

http://maddowblog.msnbc.com/_news/2012/08/06/13143479-do-simpson-bowles-fans-know-whats-in-it

There was no way the RW would agree to those things.