(h/t Heather of VideoCafe)

I had to listen to this clip of Sen. Jon Kyl, R-Arizona, who joined Eric Cantor earlier last week and bailed on the debt-ceiling negotiation, several times to convince myself that I was actually hearing what I thought I heard and just how completely bizarre Kyl's understanding of economics truly is. Does he think that this is in any way persuasive towards the Ryan budget plan? In what universe?

KYL: Right, but just take the Ryan budget. It’s supposed to be the most radical thing. Okay, over ten years, the Ryan budget adds $5 trillion dollars to our national debt. We would have ten straight years of roughly $500 billion in increased debt. So the radical cuts that some people are talking about and that the chairman warns against, are simply not a part of the Republican plan. Once you begin to turn down the long term spending, which is what the Ryan budget does, then you get back to a point where we’re only spending 20% of our economy, of the GDP. Today, we’re spending 25%. The Obama budget never gets below 23, but that’s what the Ryan budget does. Obama would add $12 billion over that same period of time to our debt

Well, first of all, the Ryan budget plan is radical because it ends the social contract that has allowed America to prosper for eighty years by ending Medicare as we know it. But does Kyl actually think it softens the blow because it adds FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS to the national debt? Where is that vaunted GOP fiscal responsibility? And that's in comparison to Obama's budget, which allows seniors to keep Medicare AND only adds to the debt by a relatively measly $12 billion. (Even though the fact is that's not true).

Sorry, but what Kyl blabbered on about (and Wallace let him) *is* precisely a seriously radical idea of how to fix this economy, in that it won't fix anything.

Or maybe since Bernanke's warning that spending cuts in the near term were dangerous for the weak recovery was too obtuse for him to understand, Kyl needs a more remedial explanation of the economy.



THE GOP/RYAN BUDGET PLAN IS WILL HURT THIS COUNTRY, ECONOMICALLY, FISCALLY, EMOTIONALLY, PHYSICALLY AND SPIRITUALLY BECAUSE IT IS A FUNDAMENTALLY UN-AMERICAN PLAN.

Any questions, Kyl?