Paul Ryan Says Taxes Should Be Raised to Pre-Bush-Tax-Cut Levels. But the Republicans Will Opt Instead For the “Sequester.” Unless, Of Course, the Koch Brothers Intervene.

There were three big political stories that came out of David Gregory’s fabulously interesting interview of Paul Ryan aired last Sunday on Meet the Press.  One was that Ryan said:

Another was that he said that if Bill Clinton were president, we would have solved the budget-deficit problem, a statement that he presumably bases on the fact that when Bill Clinton was president, he solved the budget-deficit problem.

The third headline-grabber from that interview was that the Republicans will allow the “sequester” to take effect, presumably because they think it’s pretty clear that Keynesian economics doesn’t work, and because Bill Clinton is not longer president.  If Bill Clinton were president, the Republicans would allow him to raise tax rates to the level he did in 2001, this time without having to have the vice president cast the 51st vote in the Senate for the tax increase, and with enough Republican votes in the House to allow a vote on the tax increase.  

In other words, if Bill Clinton were president, Ryan and his compadres would not keep refusing to allow the Bush tax cuts on annual incomes of less than $450,000, and tax cuts on corporations, capital gains, and dividends, to expire.  But because Obama, rather than Clinton, is president, they won’t. They should be allowed to expire, Ryan says.  But they won’t be allowed to expire, because Obama is president.

Instead, the Republicans will opt to test out the the efficacy of Keynesian economics, or not–depending, probably, on whether the Koch Brothers pick up the phone and disabuse Ryan of his belief that Keynesian economics doesn’t work.  Before Wall Street does.  

Here’s what I obviously don’t believe: That if Ryan actually obviously doesn’t believe–thinks the debt is pretty clear it doesn’t work–he has even basic knowledge of past and current economic fact.

I’ll take his word for it that he was being truthful about his belief. But I sort of expect that the Koch brothers and others will educate him and other congressional Republicans who hold that belief, very soon.