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So David Bobo Brooks wrote a column about the debt ceiling deal that is either scolding or praising (or who knows what's in his brain) the GOP for their part in the debt-ceiling fiasco up to this point, but saying they should jump on what's been offered as the deal of the century. You knew the wingers would be up in arms over it.

Well, Ayn Ryan responded as well in the only way he knows:

But Brooks’ plea for sanity was lost on House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), who responded to the column on conservative radio host Laura Ingraham’s show this morning. Ryan said that if Republicans gave up the loopholes now without securing a deal to lower marginal tax rates overall, they would lose an opportunity to demand new tax cuts in the future:

RYAN: What happens if you do what he’s saying, is then you can’t lower tax rates. So it does affect marginal tax rates. In order to lower marginal tax rates, you have to take away those loopholes so you can lower those tax rates. If you want to do what we call being revenue neutral … If you take a deal like that, you’re necessarily requiring tax rates to be higher for everybody. You need lower tax rates by going after tax loopholes. If you take away the tax loopholes without lowering tax rates, then you deny Congress the ability to lower everybody’s tax rates and you keep people’s tax rates high.

To the Galtian Overlords this makes sense. However, in the above clip Laura Ingraham was trying to get him to explain what the heck he meant for the most part and asked him to explain he words "revenue neutral.' At first Ryan thought that she was sandbagging him so she had to calm him down and say, I'm trying to help you, I'm trying to help you. God, is he fragile or what? He's on with Laura Ingraham, for heaven's sake. Anyway, reforming the tax code in these terms is no way to stimulate the economy or get us out of this economic mess. It's ridiculous to make the national debt the #1 priority when we're at 9% unemployment.

OK, I'm going back to reading book three, A Storm of Swords on my Kindle app. The only thing I will say about the series so far is that it can be depressing at times as well.