Paul Ryan – Imposing Austerity in order to Avoid It?

Paul Ryan’s interview with Jonathan Weisman included a passage that shows how utterly clueless he is noting that the Republican fiscal policy objective is to:

preempt austerity – we want to prevent that bitter kind of European austerity mode which is what we will have if we have a debt crisis.

In other words, cut government spending now to avoid fiscal restraint later? Does he not know that we currently suffer from a lack of aggregate demand? We should be avoiding fiscal restraint now but considering long-term measures to reduce government deficits. Then again – the prime minister of the UK seems to be just as clueless as Congressman Ryan. How well is that working out?