On the Wednesday, April 30, Hardball with Chris Matthews, guest and MSNBC political analyst Howard Fineman -- formerly of Newsweek -- mocked Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan's intent to visit impoverished areas as a plan to "introduce himself to the bro," and went on to complain that Ryan's budget "whacks away at" programs to help the poor.
Host Chris Matthews posed:
But there he is basically saying the reason we're cutting welfare or whatever we're cutting, school lunch programs, whatever we want to cut, we could pull back and say, well, but that isn't the problem, their problem isn't being denied those programs, their problem is basic bad behavior at home.
Fineman began:
Well, couple of things. First of all, he doesn't have the breadth of vision culturally to really totally know just how offesnsive what he's saying is. I'll grant him that. He's from Janesville, Wisconsin. He's a guy who loves studying budget numbers. He's now making a tour of America to introduce himself to the bro. I mean, that's what he's doing, right?
After laughter from Matthews and fellow guest Eugene Robinson from the Washington Post, Fineman continued:
The problem is, the big problem is that the numbers don't lie, and if you look at Paul Ryan's budget proposal, he whacks away at every program, at every funding program, at everything designed to try to help the problems he claims he wants to address.
