Maddow asks Beltway media to ‘stop making out with Paul Ryan’

By Sahil Kapur

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow poked holes in Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget proposal Wednesday might and tore into mainstream media outlets for uncritically regurgitating some of the more unrealistic notions surrounding it.

“If the Beltway media could stop making out with Paul Ryan for long enough to look at what’s actually in his budget proposal, they might notice that some of the important numbers in it appear to be made up,” she said.

“It’s the official Republican Party budget for 2012,” Maddow said. “And the numbers in it are so wrong they are occasionally funny.

Among the problematic assumptions in the proposal were a Heritage Foundation-backed theory (which they’ve since retracted) that it would drop unemployment to 2.8 percent, and Ryan’s inaccurate assertion that former Bill Clinton staffer Alice Rivlin supported his Medicare privatization.

“I doubt that actual fact-based information will penetrate these smoochy smoochy love bubbles surrounding Paul Ryan right now,” Maddow said. “He has done a remark job of romancing the Beltway media.”

Watch the segment on “The Rachel Maddow Show,” via MSNBC.