Debunking Paul Ryan's Latest Spin

Jonathan Chait
TNR
April 27, 2011 | 3:03 pm

Paul Ryan, in an interview with CBS News, offers up the latest incarnation of his budget spin. Ryan is a very smooth front man, and has skillfully employed carefully crafted language worked out by a team of pollsters, but -- being in the position of defending wildly unpopular priorities -- he is offering up a stream of misleading and outright false claims.

Since Ryan is nothing if not robotic in repeating his talking points, it's worth examining his spiel in some detail, as he will be repeating versions of this for the next year and a half.

1. Asked if he is "trying to balance the budget on the backs of the poor and the elderly," Ryan replies:

We're saying to anybody who's 55 or above, 'No changes to your Medicare whatsoever.'...

We're saying save Medicare by reforming it for people who are 54 and below by working it like a system just like members of Congress and employees have.

The biggest problem here is that Ryan turns the question into one entirely about Medicare. He imposes a massive, disproportionate share of his cuts on programs that aid the poor and elderly, yet -- unless CBS edited out this portion of his answer from its web video -- he evades the issue of the poor completely. Indeed, many elderly people rely upon Medicaid for their health care, and Ryan subjects them to large, short-term cuts.

His claim that he would make Medicare like what members of Congress enjoy is likewise false:

(More here, with video.)