On his New York Times blog, Paul Krugman attacks a story on Paul Ryan in the news pages of the New York Times:
Paul Krugman, the New York Times Op-Ed columnist, recently derided Mr. Ryan as a “flimflam man,” arguing that the tax cuts in his plan would ultimately make the debt worse.
Krugman is right. That isn’t an adequate summary of what he said. Krugman’s most serious charge was his accusation that Ryan intentionally chose not to have the CBO score his plan in order to fudge the numbers.
Krugman’s claim was, of course, false. Scoring revenue is the job of the Joint Committee on Taxation. When Krugman’s ignorance on this matter was exposed, he said Ryan was still guilty of acting in bad faith by failing, when he had the opportunity, to have the JCT score his plan. This accusation was also false. Ryan told THE WEEKLY STANDARD that he asked JCT to score his plan, but it was too busy to fulfill his request.
Krugman doesn’t specifically defend this attack on Ryan’s integrity, but still manages to accuse Ryan of being a dishonest person:
“The kind of guy with whom you can’t have an honest discussion”? Sounds like a certain New York Times columnist.
