But you could be worse...

Obama's people may make no sense, but I'm pretty sure they're not hypocrites.  Jonathan Chait at The New Republic has a nice little tidbit about the tax cut debate in 2001.

Paul Ryan strikes out

The relevant part:

Mr. GREENSTEIN. If I could just comment on it. As I have said before, I think the economic benefits are being overstated. The economy has slowed right now. I don't see how, particularly given the pace of the Senate, the checks are going to go out much before next summer. The CBO forecast you are operating on shows that by 2002 we have a full scale recovery from the recession.

I think we do have a problem right now, and our best mechanism right now is interest rates. I hope the Federal Reserve lowers them further. I think that is going to have a much bigger effect than anything you do on taxes because I don't think -- it is not that tax policy can't have a stimulative effect. It is very unlikely even this year to occur in time to make much difference.

Dr. HASSETT. I would just like to add, Mr. Ryan, that the economists who studied this were quite surprised to find that fiscal policy in recessions was reasonably effective. It is just that folks tried  a first punch that was too light and that generally we didn't get big measures until well into the recession. So the reason that in the past fiscal policy hasn't pushed us out of recession is that we delayed.

So I think that Mr. Greenstein agrees, and he is saying it is not likely that we would pass it soon but I would argue this is why we should.

Mr. RYAN. That is precisely my point. That is why I like my porridge hot. I think we ought to have this income tax cut fast, deeper, retroactive to January 1st, to make sure we get a good punch into the economy, juice the economy to make sure that we can avoid a hard landing.

The concern I have around here is that everybody is talking about let's wait and see, let's see if they materialize. Well, $1.5 trillion have already materialized in the surplus since then-Governor Bush proposed this tax cut in the first place. The economy has soured. The growth of the projections of the surpluses are higher. So we have waited and we do see, and it is my concern that if we keep waiting and seeing we won't give the economy the boost it needs right now.

Greenstein is from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (left-leaning) and Hassett is from the American Enterprise Institute (neo-conservative affiliated).  Hassett is repeating the Milton Friedman position that counter-cyclical fiscal policy is too slow-acting to counter typical cyclical downturns.  Paul Ryan says: fiscal stimulus ASAP.  Ten years later, Paul Ryan says: fiscal stimulus doesn't work.  Did Paul Ryan do a 180? Or is Paul Ryan a hypocrite?