While being interviewed by Fox's Chris Wallace, Speaker Paul Ryan blamed the Senate parliamentarian for not allowing him to use the confidence fairy when they score his tax reform plan. Using his actual numbers his plan raises the federal debt by 1.5 trillion dollars.
Modern Conservatism before and now under Trump must use sideshows, magic tricks, the confidence fairy, the flying spaghetti monster, and their hopes and dreams when they need to score any actual economic legislation presented in Congress.
Ryan promised their tax reform bill would not add to the federal deficit, but his plan now ups the deficit by 1.5 trillion dollars. That's trillion with a T.
Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace wondered aloud why Ryan's obsession with the deficit under Obama has disappeared.
"Question: what happened to Paul Ryan the deficit hawk?" Wallace asked.
Ryan replied, "Paul Ryan deficit hawk is also a growth advocate. Paul Ryan deficit hawk also knows that you have to have a faster-growing economy, more jobs, bigger take-home pay -- that means higher tax revenues."
Huh? Oh, the pro-growth Energizer Bunny. I get it.
Wallace said, "But your mark is $1.5 trillion added to the deficit."
The Speaker replied, "The reason we did it that way is because we believed that the Senate parliamentarian won't let us use what we call 'dynamic scoring' which is -- "
WALLACE: "Figuring growth."
Dynamic Scoring is making up growth numbers that will let you cut taxes for billionaires. When the bill comes due and the deficit spikes as a result, it's time to...cut spending on things that help the middle class, of course.
Here's Howard Dean on "Dynamic Scoring", 2015:
And here's Barack Obama on "Dynamic Scoring", 2012:
It's remarkable that ANYONE is buying this old fake math that has always led to huge deficits under REPUBLICAN leadership. But the networks have plenty of millionaires on staff who want their tax cuts, so here we go again.
The reason the Senate Parlimentarian won't accept that fake math is because it's wishes and horses, not math. "Wishful thinking" doesn't come into play when trying to figure out the tax code.
That doesn't stop Paul Ryan, who's JOB is to cut taxes for the Koch Brothers, period.
RYAN: "That figures out growth. So, we basically did not want to lead to chance that some bureaucrat 'unelected' would deny our ability to bring a tax bill through that is pro-growth and that reflects those pro-growth estimates. That's why it's done that way. But we are absolutely convinced -- and we all have economic models that will show this -- that this will help grow the economy."
How dare the parliamentarian force Speaker Ryan to use his actual facts instead of his very own personal economic models that he says proves their plan will stimulate growth and make up the 1.5 trillion dollar deficit his bill has now created.
He continued, "I wish the ObamaCare bill would have passed, which would have been good fiscal responsibility, entitlement reform legislation, it didn't pass the Senate, it passed the House. We're just going to keep going at entitlement reform all the way down the road. But we're going to make sure that we actually get this economy growing and this tax reform bill does that."
Ryan also has a sad that the House Trumpcare bill died a slow death. It didn't help him that the House and Senate healthcare bills couldn't even crack the 20% approval mark from the American people. But you know, bygones.
This was such a ghastly piece of legislation that even Trump finally woke up and called it "mean." And if Ryan is telling America that that bill, which at the very least would have closed rural hospitals across the country, would have grown the economy? That's proof he has no credibility at all.
Frances Langum contributed to this post
