Deficits Don’t Matter (Update; 2)

“What kind of irresponsible lunatic would vote for everyone of these misguide fiscal time bombs?”

Hailed as a bold and visionary deficit hawk willing to tackle the country’s $16 trillion debt, Rep. Paul Ryan is a born again hypocrite.

Ryan voted for the two Bush tax cuts, Medicare Part D, TARP, and the war in Iraq, adding over $3.5 trillion to the national debt. Not to mention hundreds of billions more in yearly Defense Department giveaways. All with borrowed money that will add tens of billions more in compounded interest.

Deficit hawk, my ass. More like a fiscal chicken hawk, borrowing trillions to further enrich himself and his Establishment buddies.  Then again, Ryan was probably just following former Veep Darth Cheney‘s lead at the time, who famously said in response to concern over the second huge Bush tax cut:

“…Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter. We won the mid-term elections, this is our due.”

Now that TPTB got theirs, they’re pulling up the ladder behind them, sticking the middle class and the poor with the bill. Polishing his halo as Captain Courageous Budget Cutter, Ryan broke the news Monday to the carny suckers at the Iowa State Fair :

“We’ve got to stop spending money we don’t have.”

Ahem.

(Ryan is worth up to $8 million, not bad for someone who’s been a government employee all his professional life, salaried at some $173k per year. How did he get all that green, you ask? A big chunk comes from his stake in the lucrative family business, whose wealth was derived over the decades from—wait for it—government infrastructure contracts.)

As for being “bold” —another hypocritical FAIL. Asked  why he was holding up the desperately needed farm bill for drought devasted Midwest farmers and ranchers, he took the coward’s way out.

Politicol News reports:

As Paul Ryan toured the Iowa Fair today, he was asked about the legislation Farm Bill that House Republicans stalled for months.

He said he would “Get into policy things later.” Policy things?  You mean like relief funds?

“Right now… I just want to enjoy the fair.”

Life’s tough when all you have to do is enjoy a fair, while thousands of American farmers are watching their crops burning up that could be helped by irrigation, helped by some assistance from the federal government. But Paul Ryan was just too busy enjoying the fair.

Unfortunately for Paul Ryan, there were a lot of Iowa’s farmers waiting for his response, waiting for his leadership and waiting for answers, but he couldn’t be bothered to give them any answers. Is this what a Paul Ryan Vice-Presidency would be like?

I’m too busy enjoying myself to be bothered with your petty problems?

Yup. That’s how the Romney-Ryan campaign rolls.

All hat, no cattle.

Chart:  h/t  Up With Chris Hayes

UPDATE:  8/17/12

From The New York Times:

Mr. Ryan earlier denied asking for money from the $787 billion stimulus on behalf of companies in his Wisconsin district, contradicting a report by The Boston Globe on Tuesday that he wrote to the federal Energy Department requesting funds for two companies to develop so-called green jobs.

Ryan said in the television interview that he did not recall writing the letters. Later, his office issued a statement that he had since checked into the letters. “They were treated as constituent service requests in the same way matters involving Social Security or Veterans Affairs are handled,” he said in the statement. “This is why I didn’t recall the letters earlier. But they should have been handled differently, and I take responsibility for that.”

Do I need to say it?

h/t TPM

UPDATE 2:   8/17/12

ThinkProgress has a new total on Ryan’s contribution to the debt, $6.8 trillion. This includes Defense appropriations cited above but not scored. This is a trillion more or so than what he attributes to Obama.

Put that in yur P90x workout routine pipe and sweat it, Pauli.