If you care about federal deficits,* then, of course, the Republican Party is the last one you want to trust with the budget

How, then, does Ryan get to call himself a fiscal hawk? By asserting that he will keep his tax cuts revenue-neutral by broadening the base in ways he refuses to specify, and that he will make further large cuts in spending, in ways he refuses to specify. And this is what passes inside the Beltway for serious thinking and a serious commitment to deficit reduction. The Republican Party is not simply a bunch of kleptomaniac sociopaths; they really will gut the Untied States of America. They are the party of decline and fall.