The Ryan Budget

I had thought that I might write something on the Paul Ryan budget proposal, the "Path to Prosperity," but I needn't bother. The blogosphere is already deluged by much better analysis than I could ever muster. The best left-of-center critiques I have read come from Ezra Klein, Paul Krugman, and Jon Chait. What's interesting is that these criticisms are not primarily ideological. They primarily focus on  technical aspects of Ryan's proposal that make it implausible and unworkable even from the narrow standpoint of lowering the deficit.

Chait offers a follow-up column in Newsweek that is more ideological and describes Ryan as an Ayn Rand "nut" who is motivated more by a desire to pursue Randian class warfare than by any sincere desire to reduce the deficit. As he points out, Ryan voted for all of the legislation that drove the deficit up during the Bush years: the Bush tax cuts, the unfunded Medicare prescription drug benefit, and the unfunded wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.