Washington D.C.—
Paul Ryan, back in his political prime of 2012 (while running for vice president on the Mitt Romney presidential ticket on the strength of his supposed budget wonkishness), had a moment in which he fainted for a moment while giving a speech at a campaign stop in Cleveland, Ohio.
Mr. Ryan was in the middle of a monologue about the need for fiscal responsibility in America’s annual budgets and his eyes closed, he slumped to the ground, and it took a moment for a campaign aide to shake him back awake.
It is now believed that Paul Ryan’s current 2017 proposal for giant tax cuts for the wealthy induced that fainting spell. The Congressional Budget Office analyzed the House bill and concluded it would add no less than a trillion dollars to the budget deficit.
The hypocrisy of Ryan’s obsession with balanced budgets appears to have transcended dimensional barriers of time and space and knocked his 2012 self to the ground.
Ryan, meanwhile, is attempting to ram the tax cut bill through the House with virtually no debate in order for Republican representatives to be forced in one single, all-or-nothing vote on tax cuts. This is worrisome to a handful of moderate Republicans in the House, who are perceptive of the Democratic sweep in the state elections this week, and the rushed schedule is also giving pause to Senate Republicans, who haven’t yet committed themselves to the House’s bill.
Democrats, though, are holding strong as a unified legislative block against the tax cuts for the wealthy, and it remains to be seen if Republicans are all on the same page together behind this bill. The bill would likely, actually raise taxes for one in four Americans. Because the bill was crafted with virtually no open-floor debate, some Republicans in swing states might not want to commit to a likely toxic bill that could end their Congressional careers.
(Photo courtesy of Gage Skidmore.)
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