Paul Ryan Thinks an Extra $1.50 a Week Is Something to Brag About

House Speaker Paul Ryan is such a smug little weasel that he might have been trolling when he tweeted out praise for the $1.5 trillion GOP corporate tax scam by citing a Pennsylvania high school secretary who received a whopping $1.50 a week raise.

Then again, he’s probably just that clueless.

“A secretary at a public high school in Lancaster, PA, said she was pleasantly surprised her pay went up to $1.50 a week … she said [that] will more than cover her Costco membership for the year,” Ryan tweeted, quoting a story by the Associated Press about workers receiving more take–home pay as new IRS withholding guidelines take effect.

The same story, citing the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, notes that the average middle–income household will receive an average tax cut of $930 this year. But those individual tax cuts will disappear by the end of 2025, while corporate tax cuts will remain in place.

Also, in 2025, the top 1% of households—who will receive an average annual tax cut of about $51,000 until then—“would still receive a larger share of tax benefits than the bottom 60 percent of Americans combined,” Mother Jones reported. Two years after that, taxes will actually increase for low–income households.

But it’s all good, because that Pennsylvania high school employee is going to be able to buy a Costco membership this year!

Ryan’s tweet prompted such a backlash on social media that he soon deleted it.

But he probably didn’t delete it because it makes him look callous and out of touch to his constituents. As The Hill noted, Republicans, including lawmakers, President Donald Trump, and Vice President Mike Pence, are trying to win back voters in the upcoming midterm elections by attacking House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi for having the nerve to call $1,000 bonuses “crumbs” when compared to what corporations and the country’s wealthiest taxpayers are receiving.

On Jan. 11, Pelosi said, “In terms of the bonus that corporate America received versus the crumbs that they are giving to workers to kind of put the schmooze on is so pathetic.”

For the stable genius president and his sycophant vice president, Pelosi’s comment is a “deplorable” type of opportunity to rile up Trump’s supporters.

“We got hit with these corporations giving tremendous bonuses to everybody that Nancy Pelosi called crumbs,” Trump said this week at a GOP retreat in West Virginia, according to The Hill. “That could be like deplorable, does that make sense? Deplorable and crumbs? Those two words, they seem to have a resemblance. I hope it has the same meaning.”

Ryan may have deleted his tweet because it didn’t jibe with the latest GOP smear campaign, but many tweeted responses remain, for everyone to see.