"Breathtakingly Hairbrained"

Yglesias:

There are very few members of congress with whom I’ve ever had the opportunity to discuss a substantive matter of public policy. But as it happens, one of them — the one with whom I’ve had the second-longest exchange — is Mike Pence (R-IN) who I’ve seen on television today repeatedly discussing the Republican Study Group’s “plan” for the financial crisis. And I can tell you this about Mike Pence: he has no idea what he’s talking about. The man is a fool, who deserves to be laughed at. He’s almost stupid enough to work in cable television.

Ah, but not only is not working for cable, he's proposing "crisis" legislation. Let's see what Wonk Room has to say:

The phrase “breathtakingly hairbrained” comes to mind when considering the apparent tax cut proposal. We know that for the group authoring this proposal, tax cuts for the rich and corporations are the answer to every problem. But even the administration, which has relentlessly imposed that agenda for eight years, has recognized that the well was dry on that front for this crisis. But it gets worse. Not only is this another tax cut for the rich, it appears to be one that is dead-aimed at doing much more harm than good — abolishing the tax on capital gains.
[snip]
The idea of insuring mortgage backed securities almost seems like a cynical ploy to pretend to be doing something when actually doing nothing. The idea is that the government would sell holders of mortgage backed securities insurance against losses—and that it would charge such premiums that the government wouldn’t lose money on the deal. That’s akin to selling homeowners insurance in New Orleans after the dikes broke.
[snip]
What they propose on deregulation isn’t clear, but the fact that they’re even still talking about “deregulation” when it was slipshod regulatory oversight that got us into this mess shows a profound misunderstanding of what’s going on. One rumored target is the Sarbanes-Oxley regulations which, in fact, impose accountability on Wall Street — not something we want to do away with right now.

The whole thing is well worth a read.

I can't decide what the stupid to evil ratio is here. I suppose it depends on the member. Boehner, for instance, is 99% evil, with a touch of stupid to get him through the door.