Memo to congressional Republicans: You might want to stray from GOP talking points and stick to the facts when facing off against a Nobel Prize-winning economist unless you want to be called out for falsehoods.
Tea party-backed Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson learned that the hard way Sunday during a heated panel discussion on ABC’s “This Week with George Stephanopoulos” in which he was accused by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman of getting the facts wrong on Social Security.
The debate began when Johnson said Social Security was in danger of “going broke” unless action was taken. “When I hear people saying Social Security is solvent to the year 2035, it’s not,” Johnson said.
Krugman replied, “You said ‘let’s start with the facts,’ but we’ve just run aground right there. Your facts are false. The Social Security thing—Social Security, it has a dedicated revenue base, it has a trust fund based on that dedicated revenue base. You can’t change the rules midstream and say, ‘Oh well, suddenly the trust fund doesn’t count.’ ”
Johnson countered that “the trust fund is a fiction. It doesn’t … it has no value in the federal government.”
Maybe someday Ron Johnson will realize it’s his job to govern, not to sound like a talk radio bullshit artist on TV talking head programs. He seems to believe being a Senator is a shortcut to being a pundit, not an actual job with actual responsibilities. Whether he’s just stupid or lying or some combination of the two (this is where my money is), it’s clear that Ron Johnson is an embarrassment to his state.
