That would have been a reasonable question for the Post to ask him after he said:

“We should not allow any tax increases, period, because it’s going to slow the economy down …If you want to get this deficit down, you need two things: economic growth and spending cuts.”

While tax increases in a depressed economy so would firing government workers or other forms of spending cuts. Both actions take money out of people’s pockets at a time when the economy desperately needs demand.

Representative Ryan should know this fact, but the quote printed by the Post implies that he doesn’t. Since Mr. Ryan is in line to be head of the House Budget Committee this is the sort of gaffe that should draw huge attention. It is about five orders of magnitude more important than the sort of comments (e.g. then Senator Obama’s reference to “bitter” working class whites in the campaign) that tend to draw attention in the media.