Bob Dold’s Gaffe

Michael Kinsley defined a gaffe in politics as being “A gaffe is when a politician tells the truth.”

Bob Dold just made a gaffe on Facebook:

This is especially interesting since Dold is running as a ‘moderate’ while he keeps getting endorsed by nutters on the right like the Eagle Forum.

From a Seals press release a brief summary of Ryan’s plan:

Ryan’s proposal would:

·               Raise taxes on the middle class in order to slash taxes for multi-millionaires

·               Privatize Medicare and Medicaid and gradually eliminate both programs

·               Eliminate Children’s Health Insurance Program and replace it with vouchers that decline in value

·               Privatize Social Security

·               Institutionalize the federal government bailout of private investment account if the stock market crashes

·               Even with all these drastic cuts to essential programs, the plan actually fails to control the debt.

Under the Republican budget plan, “about three-quarters of Americans — those with incomes between $20,000 and $200,000 — would face tax increases” according to the fiscally-conservative Center for Budget and Policy Priorities.  CBPP concluded “The Ryan Proposal would abolish Medicare in its current form” and “would cut in half the taxes of the richest 1 percent of Americans.” They also state “as a result of its costly new tax cuts for the wealthy, the Ryan plan would allow the federal debt to continue rising in relation to the size of the economy for at least four decades.”

Boehner himself ran away from it because it is toxic to the average voter—and it appears that Dold realized that by telling the truth, he made a big mistake given how quickly it disappeared.

UPDATE:  Mixed up Bruce/Bob in the original–haven’t made fun of Bruce in a while.