And yet, this will do nothing to harm Paul Ryan's credibility with the Beltway deficit hawks:
Incoming Budget Committee chairman -- and fiscal commission member -- Paul Ryan (R-WI) will not be voting for the White House Fiscal Commission's report, he told reporters at a breakfast roundtable hosted by the Christian Science Monitor today. [...]
Ryan was at pains to praise the commission's chairmen, Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, for their efforts, but ultimately criticized the plan dramatically -- in particular, he says, because it reinforces President Obama's health care law.
"It not only didn't address the elephant in the room -- health care -- it made it fatter," Ryan said. "This just makes the fiscal situation worse in my opinion, by not just keeping Obamacare but actually entrenching it more, and expanding it and accelerating it."
Of course, that's nonsense. Health-care costs are the main driver of our long-term deficits, and the Affordable Care Act reduces those costs. Ryan can believe whatever he wants, "Obamacare" is the most significant attempt to tackle long-term deficits in more than a decade. But because it doesn't involve a government effort to shovel money into the pockets of our Galtian overlords, I guess it doesn't count.
-- Jamelle Bouie
