2018 Crookie Legacy Award Goes To Lyin' Paul Ryan
Lyin' Paul Ryan receives the Crookie Legacy Award, the gift that will keep on taking years after he's gone.
At the tail end of last year, Lyin' Paul Ryan was able to reach a part of his lifelong dream - giving away tons of tax payer money to those most deserving and in need. Namely, his wealthy benefactors.
Ryan immediately set out to work on accomplishing Phase 2 of his lifelong dream - pushing grandma off an economic cliff as a sacrifice to his wealthy masters:
Somehow doing it with a straight face, Ryan stated that the only way - the ooooonnnnnnllllllyyyyy way! - to deal with the ballooning defecit is to attack the root cause - the Republican tax cut giveaways to the rich.
Not really.
He tried to blame the trillions of deficit that he and his fellow Republicans caused with their extremely lavish tax cut giveaways on "entitlements."
Yeah, right. The fact that the Kochs alone were going to get $1.5 billion from Ryan's giveaway had absolutely nothing to do with it.
And never mind that the military - already bigger than most other countries combined - is getting even more money.
No, the problem is grandma and grandpa, who put their money into Social Security and Medicaid so that they would have it in their golden years. Those parasites need to be cut off immediately!
He kept up with this line of attack all year long, vowing to make grandma pay with her life for his generosity to the rich:
Lest you think Paul Ryan's impending retirement has caused him to reflect upon aging with dignity, please think again. He may be leaving Congress, but his quest to see elderly people die penniless and hungry has not abated.
Chuck Todd specifically asked him about the tax cuts and how they impact the deficit and then let Ryan slide away from it by pointing his finger at the Baby Boomer generation, which is retiring and which funded their benefits along with the benefits of their parents. Those same retirees are caregivers for their parents after raising their kids, too. But shhhh, don't let Paul Ryan know that.
"The one thing that obviously I care a great deal about is entitlement reform, and in particular health care entitlement reform," Ryan said. Let me translate that: "Health care entitlement reform" is a complete end to Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act. We can all die in the streets, and Paul Damn Ryan won't care until the stench of rotting bodies wafts in his living room window.
Ryan is so proud of this particular piece of corporate welfare that he made it part of his legacy claim, saying how proud he is leaving the nation with a "booming economy." No, really.
If the gentle reader is currently screaming that he's a fuckin' liar, the gentle reader is more than correct. The only things booming are the national debt and budget deficits:
When Paul Ryan became speaker of the House in 2015, the federal budget deficit was $438 billion. He blamed the “failed policies of President Obama” for budget deficits that had exploded to $1.4 trillion in 2009, the year after the Great Recession, though shortfalls began shrinking in the following years and were continuing to fall as Ryan took the gavel.
Today, with Ryan preparing to retire from Congress, the annual federal budget deficit is again approaching $1 trillion. Over his two decades in Congress, the total national debt increased from less than $6 trillion to nearly $22 trillion. Yet the years of his speakership saw no new foreign conflict or recession that forced the government to live beyond its means. The problem was a Republican-led Congress that pushed a small-government agenda only in part. When President Trump took office, he embraced tax cuts but rejected structural spending overhauls. But even he complained about the spending bill Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell brought him last year, which met Democrats’ demands for more domestic spending to keep up with the $716 billion Republicans pledged for defense in 2019 without imposing discipline in other areas to compensate.
Even though he did not reach his goal of killing off grandma as a lawmaker, rest assured he's not done trying. He assuredly will get a job with some right wing stink tank to keep pushing for this and pushing for more Republicans that aren't afraid of becoming zombie-eyed granny starvers to get elected.
In the mean time, he will have to be content with the wailing and cries of the poor and middle classes when they get to feel the full impact of his tax scam in the spring when they have to pay more towards their income taxes.