This seems to harken back to Ryan’s infamous claim that the safety net is a “hammock” that lulls people into “dependency and complacency.” In this tale, the boy’s mother seems to be the person swaying back and forth in the hammock. The larger idea here has already been addressed by Jonathan Chait and Paul Krugman. Both point out that if anything, the anecdote underscores the need for free lunches; after all, if the boy’s mother isn’t giving him a brown-paper-bag lunch, whatever the reason for that, a school lunch is the next best immediate option.
Now Kessler finds that the anecdote is fiction — the creation of a misstatement by the official who originally offered it.
Two additional points here. While the original purveyor did botch the tale, the failure to vet it before presenting it to a national audience seems like more of the “lazy mendacity” Jonathan Bernstein talks about. Lawmakers get so used to saying whatever they want unchallenged inside the Conservative Media Entertainment Complex that claims go increasingly un-vetted.
The takedown of Paul Ryan by Greg Sargent comes on the heel’s of Ryan’s blatant plagiarism of a 2011 book.
Just a Heads up on Ryans Listening Session Schedule, http://paulryan.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=372033
Ryan’s name is becoming synonymous with “phoney” beyond Wisconsin, but the people of our state, especially Janesville, have known that for some time.