Erskine Bowles has a long pedigree as a Democratic budget thinker — and presidential adviser. When Barack Obama needed to pick the co-chair for his deficit committee, which he roundly ignored in the end, he chose Bowles to represent his side on the panel. Bowles served as Bill Clinton’s chief of staff, and earlier ran the Small Business Administration for Clinton. Ezra Klein predicted on Friday that Bowles would be the front-runner for Tim Geithner’s job at Treasury if Obama wins a second term.
Ex-Reagan Budget Director: Paul Ryan's Budget 'Is Devoid Of Credible Math Or Hard Policy Choices'
Even conservatives are bashing Paul Ryan’s budget.
David Stockman, a former budget director under President Ronald Reagan, derided the budget plan of Mitt Romney’s vice presidential pick in an op-ed in The New York Times Tuesday.
“Mr. Ryan’s sonorous campaign rhetoric about shrinking Big Government and giving tax cuts to 'job creators' (read: the top 2 percent) will do nothing to reverse the nation’s economic decline and arrest its fiscal collapse,” Stockman wrote in the op-ed, later adding: “Mr. Ryan’s plan is devoid of credible math or hard policy choices.”
Stockman, who resigned in 1985 in protest over deficit spending, has added his voice to a chorus of economists criticizing Ryan’s "Path to Prosperity," which would give tax cuts to the wealthy while slashing funding for programs like Medicaid, Medicare and food stamps, all in the name of reducing the national debt.
Given Ryan’s interest in cutting the social safety net, it’s no surprise that Nobel-Prize winning and left-leaning economist Paul Krugman called Ryan’s budget proposal “just a fantasy” in a blog post Monday. But the fact that Stockman -- a budget director under conservative messiah Reagan and former managing director at now-defunct Wall Street firm Solomon Brothers -- is slamming Ryan’s budget lends weight to the overall criticism.
Stockman didn't stop at deriding Ryan's budget, though; he also criticized other financial policies of the Romney-Ryan ticket.
