if you take a look at the chart, the red tidal wave of debt. sean, this is the most predictable economic crisis. ryan s solution, of course, was to dramatically cut medicare, medicaid, social security. he never succeeded. once there was a republican back in the white house, so weird he became a lot less worried about the deficit and debt. as speaker he passed spending bills he didn t pay for, pushed through tax cut and the cbo added 1.9 trillion dollars to the debt. when ryan became speaker in 2015, the deficit was $438 billion. this year with unified republican government it s up to 779 billion. next year thanks in large part to paul ryan and his party it s expected to hit 1 trillion. joining me to discuss ryan s legacy, charlie pierce and direct from ryan s home state, ruth coniff, editor of the progressive magazine. let me start with you, ruth. paul ryan crafted this image in
tax cuts which ryan argued weren t enough. he was the deciding vote for bush s costly expansion of prescription drug benefits but then something changed, i don t know, barack obama became president and suddenly paul ryan became an evangelist who cast the debt as an existential threat. if you take a look at the chart, the red tidal wave of debt. sean, this is the most predictable economic crisis. ryan s solution, of course, was to dramatically cut medicare, medicaid, social security. he never succeeded. once there was a republican back in the white house, so weird he became a lot less worried about the deficit and debt. he passed spending bills he didn t pay for, pushed through tax cut and the cbo added 1.9 trillion dollars to the debt. when ryan became speaker in 2015, the deficit was $438 billion. this year with unified republican government it s up to
increasing military expenses, a soaring deficit has them at odds. robert costa joins me from cost cost, congressman costello and brown are back with me. i want to look at the deficit. when he came into office it was $438 billion. i think we have a graphic of shows how it went up according to the federal reserve, they re saying it could be a trillion next year. what s the legacy of paul ryan? the cloud over speaker ryan s legacy, before he even bay speaker, he mounted an ideological project to try to contain the deficit, back in 2008. he promised reps if they took power, he would do his best to get the reforms through. he was on the gop ticket in 2012, but he was never able to convince a lot of his party to
lots of cardio, karate, jump training, yoga. we think we ought to contain and control and cut spending. we think we ought to get our deficits down, not up. we believe that we owe the american people a responsible balanced budget. balanced budget. deficits down, not up. that was ryan s pitch. we all heard it. and then he got the gavel and he wielded it during two different presidencies. and, again, i m just going to use the paul ryan standard, he failed. ryan became speaker in 2015 when there was a roughly $438 billion deficit he and oversaw the growth of that deficit to $793 billion. it s now on track to surpass $1 trillion. wow. so whether you think the deficit s, like, super important or not as important, let s be clear, as paul ryan prepares to leave his big job, he ran on cutting it. we think the wrong answer is
right now you can deduct up to $50,000 in employers and employees put into a retirement fund. let s cut that deduction a $20,000. a 60% reduction and voila you are going to bring in more money. here is the other proposal. let s end all tax deductions entirely for all money that you put into your 401-k. the deduction for your employer or for yourself. let s then give you an 18% tax credit inside your retirement account so when you have to pay taxes, 20-30 years later you ll have that as a credit to reduce your taxes. the problem is it let s government collect up front from you money ahead of time. then years later will 40 thousands from now, you 40 years from now. so the government will collect some $438 billion extra. i m guess can over a ten-year