When Paul Ryan Loved Spending Tax Money

Jon Chait comes across a gem of a quote from government services slasher, fiscal hawk Paul Ryan (R-WI).

"It's too small," Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the most junior member of the Ways and Means Committee but a leading House supply-sider, told me. "It's [the surplus] not big enough to fit all the policy we want."

The quote comes from 2001 and Ryan is talking about how Clinton's budget surplus is not big enough to do all the policy spending Ryan wants.  In those days, Republicans complained the surplus was too small as a way of attacking Clinton.  They wanted more money to spend on services, or what they refer to today as socialism.

Within a few months of Ryan's quote, the Republicans in charge of government rammed through the Bush tax cuts and turned the "too small" surplus into the largest deficit in American history.  Two years after they turned the surplus into a deficit, Paul Ryan and his GOP expanded government services by passing the largest expansion to government-run health care ever-- a bill that was completely unfunded and adds nearly a trillion dollars to the deficit.  Now today, Paul Ryan is revered as a deficit hawk that wants to shrink government.  In fact, he's proposed a plan that would completely eliminate Medicare. You really can't make this stuff up.