As I've said before, the Paul Ryan Path to Poverty is a complete fraud. It's not a serious deficit reduction proposal. It's not a serious budget. And when judged as a moral document, it's practically flammable. Despite the fraudulent nature of the proposal though, the beltway villagers have had an erection for much longer than four hours.
Here's Paul Krugman on the very serious media's reaction to the Paul Ryan Path to Poverty.
I’ve been reading various “news analyses” of the Ryan plan, and I’m feeling depressed. In the past, I’ve complained about false equivalence — of “views differ on shape of the planet” type reporting. But what I’m seeing here is worse: supposedly objective, even-handed reporting that actually prejudges the issue according to current conventional wisdom.
The stories I have in mind say things like this: “There are those who criticize the Ryan plan, saying that it’s too radical/goes too far.”
People like me don’t say that the Ryan plan is too radical; we say that it’s a fraud. The spending cuts are largely fake, either because they’re just magic asterisks or because they wouldn’t survive politically; the revenue estimates are fake, because they combine huge tax cuts with vague assurances that extra revenue will be found by closing loopholes. There’s no there there — except for big tax cuts for the rich and pain for the poor. [...]
I don’t think the plan goes too far. I think it’s disingenuous and fraudulent. And the reason I think that is that I have actually done the math.
As Krugman said before, all you have to do is claim that you are serious and then you don't need to do the math.
John Cole also produced a fairly epic takedown of the beltway media reaction to Ryan's plan.
My favorite part:
Everyone of the people cheerleading the Ryan/GOP plan has the very best medical coverage, and really has no stake in this. Considering they are pundits, and will probably have platinum until the day they die, and Medicare is kind of an afterthought. I know that they get all heated up when you point out that they simply have no stake in this game (except more tax cuts!), but we have a village class of Beltway pundits who really are insulated from what the rest of the country is going through.
Absolutely.