Paul Ryan: Catfood for seniors, $350 wine for him

This is what frugality looks like to Paul Ryan: two $350 bottles of wine with dinner.

Ryan is another one of those deplorable Wisconsin Republicans who wants to destroy the middle class. His preferred method is to kill Medicare and cut Social Security benefits.

Ryan's savage attacks on American working families don't prevent him from enjoying la dolce vita. He was spotted recently at a swanky Capitol Hill bistro with two lobbyists economists drinking two $350 bottles of wine.

Talking Points Memo has the story:

Susan Feinberg, an associate business professor at Rutgers, was at Bistro Bis celebrating her birthday with her husband that night. When she saw the label on the bottle of Jayer-Gilles 2004 Echezeaux Grand Cru Ryan's table had ordered, she quickly looked it up on the wine list and saw that it sold for an eye-popping $350, the most expensive wine in the house along with one other with the same pricetag.

Feinberg, an economist by training, was even more appalled when the table ordered a second bottle. She quickly did the math and figured out that the $700 in wine the trio consumed over the course of 90 minutes amounted to more than the entire weekly income of a couple making minimum wage.

We just love this little detail:

Feinberg said all three men were "droning on loudly during the evening that liberals think that if you're a millionaire, you have done something wrong."

Ryan said the discussion focused on monetary policy and QE2, the Federal Reserve's second round of quantitative easing (Sure it did....).

Ryan said he paid for his meal and one bottle of wine. The tab: $472.

Ryan, who relied on Social Security benefits to go to college after his father died, is in the process of making a large pile of money. As a member of Congress he earns $174,000 a year, but that's nothing compared with what he'll pull down as a lobbyist when he gets thrown out of office by voters who actually want to keep Medicare.