Paul Ryan voted for a $715 billion stimulus package:

Paul Ryan and the Stimulus: A Match Designed to Make My Head Explode, by Michael Grunwald: My main obsession these days is President Obama’s misunderstood stimulus bill…, but I’m also fascinated by … Paul Ryan and his absurd reputation as a brave deficit hawk. So I thought I’d check out Ryan’s positions on the stimulus. Let’s just say they won’t surprise those of us familiar with his work. …

Ryan did oppose the Obama stimulus, as did every other House Republican. But as I describe in my book, there was an interesting behind-the-scenes debate going on within the GOP caucus about what Republicans should support instead, and it’s telling to see where Ryan ended up. …

The … Republican leadership, as former Democratic congressman David Obey put it, decided to fall off both sides of the horse. The official $478 billion Republican stimulus alternative was an ideological bill, consisting entirely of tax cuts and unemployment benefits, with not a penny for infrastructure or other spending. But Republicans also crafted a second $715 billion substitute that was almost as expansive as the $787 billion bill Obama signed into law. It slashed spending on Obama priorities like energy efficiency, the smart grid, summer jobs programs, and aid to help cash-strapped states avoid massive layoffs of teachers and cops, but it actually increased spending on highways and the environmentally destructive water projects of the Army Corps of Engineers.

Republicans never explained how $715 billion worth of tax cuts and spending could be good public policy while $787 billion worth of tax cuts and spending was freedom-crushing socialism. … And Paul Ryan? As usual, he fell off both sides of the horse. He voted for the ideological tax-cut bill that would have increased the deficit, and the political spending bill that would have increased the deficit. And then he railed about Obama and the Democrats increasing the deficit. …

There’s this too.

This post was originally published at Economist’s View and is reproduced here with permission.