There has, of course, been some pushback against my column pointing out that the Very Serious Paul Ryan is not, in fact, serious at all. Some of this pushback takes the form of assertions that he must be serious, because the Congressional Budget Office scored his plan and found that it led to lower debt.

People who say things like that evidently haven’t read any of the actual CBO analyses; the most informative is the first one (pdf). And in particular, they haven’t grasped how Ryan has gamed the system.

As I pointed out a few days ago, CBO did not score the policy provisions in the Ryan plan; there wasn’t remotely enough detail for a comprehensive assessment, and they didn’t do a partial of what was specified. Instead, they laid out the implications of revenue and spending paths that were just assumed per Ryan’s instructions — without expressing any view about whether these paths were plausible.

Indeed, I think I detect a bit of discreet snark in what the CBO report actually did say. On revenue, it declared:

The path for revenues as a percentage of GDP was specified by Chairman Ryan’s staff. The path rises steadily from about 15 percent of GDP in 2010 to 19 percent in 2028 and remains at that level thereafter. There were no specifications of particular revenue provisions that would generate that path. (my italics)

On spending, they declared:

That combination of other mandatory and discretionary spending was specified to decline from 12 percent of GDP in 2010 to about 6 percent in 2021 and then move in line with the GDP price deflator beginning in 2022, which would generate a further decline relative to GDP. No proposals were specified that would generate that path. (my italics, again)

So Ryan gamed the system: he got CBO to produce a report which looks to those who don’t actually read it like a validation of his numbers, when in fact he prevented any actual scoring of his proposals. If you think otherwise, you’ve been snookered.