"Instead of letting him get away with calling himself fiscal conservative, he ought to be blasted for first presenting a plan that would add $60 trillion to the national debt, then tweaking it into a plan that would add $14 trillion, neither of which would ever bring the national budget into balance." --Matt Miller
But wait! There's more!
When Paul Ryan was chairman of the House budget Committee, he proposed the U.S. government's deficit be cut by $4.4 trillion over 10 years. His plan, "The Path to Prosperity," is different from President Obama's budget in that it cuts many government programs that serve the poor, and it lowers taxes on the wealthy. In addition, Ryan's plan would repeal Obama care and make fundamental changes to Medicaid and Medicare by creating voucher systems. This plan was enthusiastically supported by Romney, earning it the title "The Romney-Ryan Plan." However, now that Romney's chosen Ryan as his veep, Romney performed an etch-a-sketch and distanced himself from the Ryan budget he so recently praised.
Ryan is opposed to abortion, except when a girl's or woman's life is in danger.
Ryan has voted to define marriage as only between one man and one woman and supports a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage. Also, he voted to ban gays from adopting, to repeal DADT, and voted against the Hate Crimes Prevention Act. The Human Rights Campaign gave Ryan a ZERO PERCENT rating on their scorecard because of his anti-gay record.
What is Ryan's record on the environment? He voted to eliminate EPA limits on greenhouse gases, voted FOR the controversial Keystone oil pipeline, and worries about conservation programs that the federal government supports.
On a more recent topic, GUNS:
Ryan has an A rating from the NRA, has voted to DECREASE the waiting periods for buying guns and is against suing gun manufacturers for misuse of their products.
More on Ryan's budget:
"...Robert Reischauer, who directed the Congressional Budget Office from 1989 to 1995 and now leads the Urban Institute. 'If this is a competition between Ryan and the Affordable Care Act on realistic approaches to curbing the growth of spending,' Reischauer says, 'the Affordable Care Act gets five points and Ryan gets zero.' But Ryan would repeal the Affordable Care Act and replace it with his own wishful plan. In doing so, he makes it harder, not easier, for us to balance the budget.
To understand why Reischauer gives Ryan a zero, you need to understand the technical trick that gives Ryan his savings. His proposal says the federal government’s contributions to Medicare and Medicaid can’t grow at more than the rate of inflation. Then he told CBO to score his plan based on that assumption. That’s where his money comes from. But it’s nonsense.
Health-care costs don’t grow at the rate of inflation. Ever. Previously, Ryan acknowledged that. His Roadmap capped federal contributions between inflation and the actual cost of medical care. He then developed a more bipartisan version of the idea with Alice Rivlin, who founded the Congressional Budget Office and directed the Office of Management and Budget under Bill Clinton. That one was capped at the growth of GDP plus 1 percentage point. Both targets were far more plausible than the fantasy target Ryan is now using.
So why the switch? He has not said. I suspect he couldn’t make the numbers add up without tax increases. The problem now, however, is that his numbers don’t add up at all. Rivlin — a budget hawk’s budget hawk — has abandoned the proposal that Ryan says she helped write. 'The growth rate is much, much too low,' she says."
The rest is HERE.
More fantasy than reality.
Ryan's budget: The Most Fraudulent in American history.
38 comments:
And Obama (the $5 Trillion (debt) man) is better how?
Ryan is opposed to abortion, except when a girl's or woman's life is in danger.
I wish that were true. His record shows he does not support such an exception. He sponsored a "fetal personhood" bill which by implication would ban abortion across the board. "Ryan also supported a highly controversial bill that Democrats nicknamed the "Let Women Die Act," which would have allowed hospitals to refuse to provide a woman emergency abortion care, even if her life is on the line." (source)
And Obama (the $5 Trillion (debt) man) is better how?
The troll, as usual, can't address the specific subject of the post and tries to change the subject. Obama's better because he doesn't do any of the crap being described in the post.
OK, Infidel here is the specific subject: Paul Ryan had a change of heart on budgets and spending after studying the subjects. It's well-documented in the press and you can go google it.
Politicians do that sometimes. Remember how BHO was against gay marriage before he was for it?
I don't blame him. It's politics. If you want to marginalize every politician that changed his or her mind, you'd only have Dennis Kucinic and Ron Paul left standing.
Obama is gutting medicare and has already racked up an unprecedented amount of debt, and he has no plan get government spending under control.
What is the Democrat plan? Senate budget? We haven't seen one since Obama was elected.
They can't run on a positive record because other than a few fell good things Obie's record is negative.
Ryan proposed a bold budget to get the country on track to recovery. He did receive a lot of votes of approval.
BHO proposed a budget that expanded government and debt, he got -0- votes even from his own party. The illustrious senate has not passed a budget in three years yet you make Ryan the one with the wrong plan.
I do believe the incompetent incumbent will win because the Romney/Ryan ticket represents to much of chance to loose all that free stuff.
Trickle up poverty will continue and the only hope is the republicans will gain the majority in the senate and keep the house.
Infidel, thanks for the correction on Ryan's abortion issue.
Gutting Medicare, SF? Really.
[Romney] Says Barack Obama "is the only president to ever cut $500 billion from Medicare."
We said then, and repeated several times since, the health care law reduces the amount of future spending growth in Medicare. But it doesn't cut Medicare.
The rest of Romney’s statement implies that Obama is doing something no other president has done -- making cuts (which he isn’t).
He made the same point in a December 2011 debate. We rated that particular claim False.
John Rother, president and CEO of the National Coalition on Health Care, a coalition of trade associations, labor unions and advocacy groups that supports health care reform, offered some historical perspective for us for that fact-check.
In 1981, President Ronald Reagan in his first year in office signed an omnibus budget reconciliation act that raised Medicare deductibles for beneficiaries. Rother said he considers that a cut in benefits.
Two years later, Reagan and Congress enacted legislation that changed the way Medicare reimbursed hospitals. The program’s costs had been growing exponentially as hospitals treated patients and then sent the federal government the bills. It was known as "retrospective cost-based reimbursement." The new law established a "prospective payment system," which categorized inpatient admission cases into what were called diagnosis-related groups (DRGs). In this system, Medicare pays hospitals a flat rate for each inpatient case.
"The system was intended to motivate hospitals to change the way they deliver services. With DRGs, it did not matter what hospitals charged anymore -- Medicare capped their payments," according to a 2001 report by the Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General.
(Cont.)
The resulting savings to Medicare was $21 billion in the first three years, exceeding even Congressional Budget Office projections. It cut the program, Rother said, but did not affect benefits.
In 1987, Reagan signed a law that expanded Medicare benefits, including drug and catastrophic illness coverage. But when George H.W. Bush took office, he repealed it. So Rother puts Bush in the column of presidents who cut Medicare for seniors.
The Medicare program saw another major overhaul in 1997. President Bill Clinton signed the Balanced Budget Act, which tightened payments to doctors, nursing homes, home health agencies and health insurance plans and expanded the types of private plans that could participate in Medicare (the part of the program now known as Medicare Advantage).
Its goal was to trim $393.8 billion in spending over 10 years. But it’s a trickier question to answer whether that law cut benefits.
"With Clinton, it’s an indirect effect," Rother said. "It did cut reimbursements to several providers who claimed they would not be able to serve the beneficiary population."
The tally, then:
Reagan cut Medicare by reducing payments to hospitals, and he cut benefits by raising deductibles.
George H.W. Bush cut benefits by repealing a law that would have expanded coverage for drugs and catastrophic illness.
Clinton cut Medicare by changing payments to doctors and other providers, which could be considered to have an indirect effect on beneficiaries.
Obama cut future Medicare spending but expanded benefits.
Our ruling
Romney said Obama "is the only president to ever cut $500 billion from Medicare." It wasn’t a cut, rather a reduction in future growth (the size of the Medicare program will increase dollar-wise). And other presidents have cut Medicare in the past, though you can debate whether specific changes to the program constitute a "cut" in some of those cases as well.
That’s a historical footnote, however, that doesn’t affect our ruling. We rate Romney’s statement False.
Actually Shaw Obamacare takes 750 Billion from Medicare but whats taking a couple hundred billion. Obama's means of tax cut was to weaken SS driving it into insolvency that much sooner.
Who really cares anyway because we won't have to suffer the effects of the liberal agenda. We just pass it to our kids and their kids so why should we care. Look how well all the free stuff works for Greece right.
I'll let Ezra Klein, who actually knows what he's talking about, rebut skudrunner:
"1) Mitt Romney says that “unlike the current president who has cut Medicare funding by $700 billion. We will preserve and protect Medicare.” What happens to those cuts in the Ryan budget?
2) What is the growth rate of Medicare under the Ryan budget?
3) What is the growth rate of Medicare under the Obama budget?
The answers to these questions are, in order, “it keeps them,” “GDP+0.5%,” and “GDP+0.5%.”
Let’s be very clear on what that means: Ryan’s budget — which Romney has endorsed — keeps Obama’s cuts to Medicare, and both Ryan and Obama envision the same long-term spending path for Medicare. The difference between the two campaigns is not in how much they cut Medicare, but in how they cut Medicare.
Romney would give Medicare beneficiaries a voucher permitting them to choose between traditional Medicare and private plans. Romney’s people tell me his plan will use competitive bidding, in which the value of the voucher is tied to the lowest-cost (or, in some versions, second-lowest cost) plan. If beneficiaries want a more expensive plan, they’ll have to pay the difference out of pocket. On his Web site, however, it just says that Romney “is exploring different options for ensuring that future seniors receive the premium support they need while also ensuring that competitive pressures encourage providers to improve quality and control cost.”
[T]he basic disagreement between Democrats and Republicans on Medicare. Democrats believe the best way to reform Medicare is to leave the program intact but vastly strengthen its ability to pay for quality. Republicans believe the best way to reform Medicare is to fracture the system between private plans and traditional Medicare and let competition do its work.
It’s worth saying there’s no particularly good evidence for either option. Competition hasn’t worked very well in the health-care system. Indeed, Medicare currently includes private options through the Medicare Advantage program. The idea was these private, managed-care alternatives would be cheaper than traditional Medicare. As it turned out, they ended up costing about 20 percent more."
cont.
Both Ryan and Obama — but not Romney — have proposed to back up their promises with an enforceable cap on the program’s future growth. Whether future Congresses would actually enforce such caps is, of course, an open question.
So there’s a conflict of policy visions. But it’s simply a conservative myth that the White House hasn’t put forward a Medicare reform plan. What that line really means is that White House hasn’t put forward some variant of Ryan’s plan, which in many Republican circles, has come to be seen as the only policy change that counts as “entitlement reform.”
I appreciate your posting liberal pundits, Shaw, it's entertaining and all, but let's see what the Chief Actuary of Medicare has to say
It is clear that the fiction of Obamacare "saving" money is done by gutting medicare.
A pundit didn't say that. The Medicare Actuary has put in in a report and also said it in sworn testimony.
"Competition hasn’t worked very well in the health-care health-care system."
Primarily because there has never been competition in the healthcare system. Insurance is the primary driving force to rising healthcare costs.
I know it is against the liberal agenda but, personal responsibility to choose your healthcare provider is a good thing for many. The government has done a lousy job of managing healthcare. Because of the complexity of our government run anything, less service for more money, kind of like our public education system.
What is Obama's plan to create jobs, beside tax the rich.
No surprise private insurance options cost 20% more.
There is no competition to drive costs down when customers are guaranteed.
The ACA will force 30 million new customers into the hands of private insurers.
Traditional supply and demand effects of driving costs down has to rely on the consumer having other options, thus suppliers cutting prices to get those customers before they go to another supplier.
When all those customers are forced to buy, there is no incentive for suppliers to cut prices.
In fact it's a sellers market and they will charge what they can get away with.
All this talk about the different budget proposals - NONE - include revenue increases.
It's a false start to say there is absolutely no possibility to increase revenues. There is, but politicians are not honest enough with the American people. to tell them they have to pay for the services they demand.
It was never any secret that when boomers started receiving benefits, the expense of these programs would increase. Instead of collecting enough revenues to cover that increasing expense, America cut revenue collections by half. An accident waiting to happen.
Republiscums dishonest leadership did not LEAD Americans to the fact that more revenues were needed to sustain these programs. Instead they pandered to the voter by promising tax cuts and simply allowed America to rack up debt.
The only answer Republiscums have to attack a huge debt, is to cut operations.
That doesn't pass Economics 101, but it does help their goal of killing off these programs.
The costs don't disappear, Republiscums just shift those costs off the government budget leaving Americans without coverage, filling up emergency rooms and increasing the suffering of people.
Of course Republiscums don't care about people suffering. Their Randian, selfish approach discounts human suffering in favor of worshiping the dollar and killing off government.
What Americans knew 80 years ago, is that society was being destabilized by all the poor conditions of humans, causing a real security threat.
The kind of security threat caused by the failed policies of austerity in Europe. Strikes, riots, and talk of revolutions.
Cost caps by an American Congress to private health care insurers? Good luck with that.
The next time you stop for gas and the station is asking two cents more for a gallon of gas than the station across the street, try telling the owner you will go across the street and see if that motivates him to cut his price by two cents. Let me know what he said.
Silver, I'll give you that politicians can evolve and even change their minds. But I've got to say that after the Bush campaign against Sen Kerry and their mocking of him not on policy, but rather on his changing his mind, it seems disingenuous to hear a conservative complain now that the shoe is on the other foot.
It was not ago that President Bush was held up as strong leader because he stood his ground and that was seen as proof that he was a man of principles by the GOP.
Now that you have a presidential and vice presidential candidate who have been pretty flexible on their stances, that view is no longer seen as viable, or even true by the conservative crowd.
Why is that? Why is it that a GOP candidate can change his mind, life, and views and still be seen a a strong leader, but if Obama does it, he is seen as a man of no principles and just changing to get votes?
Steve,
Quite a disorganized ramble even for you. I couldn't follow if you are for or against a choice for private insurance or stay with what is not working, medicare for all.
The last thing we want to do is change anything because what the Obama administration is doing is working so well.
Unemployment - highest for more months in the past 60 years
Poverty - rising
Food stamp participants - rising
National Debt - rising
Job creation plan - None
Leadership - tax the rich
Yep, the Obama plan is doing well
Dave,
If a republican changes his stance he changes his mind
If a democrat changes his stance, he is evolving.
Same meaning in that both are playing to the latest sentiment. Obama is not for gay marriage until he is for it, he is not in support of illegal immigration until he is for it, the illustrious swift boat captain was for invasion before he was against it.
Just depends on who is defining the change in attitudes.
Harris poll (8/12/12) shows Ryan most unpopular VP pick in 25 years.
Palin was a more popular choice.
Cheney was a more popular choice.
Quayle was a more popular choice.
Dave: I appreciate what you're saying, but I'm not complaining, but giving a rebuttal. It's not like he made those votes last year. Look at the dates.
More importantly, he is the only politician smart enough and brave enough to craft a plan and put his name on it. So it's not like he's just shifting in the wind to win an election. He made a deliberate change in his outlook and staked his name on it
More information on Ryan from the great Charlie Pierce at Esquire:
"[The] fact that, after his father passed, and while working the fry station [McDonald's] and toting canoes at a YMCA summer camp, Ryan was also the beneficiary of Social Security survivor's benefits.
These did precisely what they were designed to do, which was to help young Paul Ryan get the education that would help him become the adult Paul Ryan who's been on one government payroll or another since he left college, and who goes around telling half-dim audiences that people on government assistance are mired in a "culture of dependency."
When people say government can't do anything right, point to Paul Ryan, he is a Republican who hates government but at the same time, a perfect example of how government helped him to become who he is today.
He's worked in government his entire adult life, and it was the government that helped him realize his dreams.
When Ryan or Romney says government is not the solution, think of how it solved Ryan's problems after his father died, and because he's been on the government payroll his entire life, it brought him to the heights of American politics.
The GOP wants you to forget this, but every time you look at Paul Ryan, remember he is the living, breathing embodiment of how government can work to improve people's lives and put them on a path to success.
Don't let the GOP tell you differently.
"Ryan was also the beneficiary of Social Security survivor's benefits."
*Gasp!* Oh, no!
If you guys would stop hyperventilating long enough to listen and have a conversation, you'd learn that he does not want to destroy social security, medicare or other safety net programs. He wants to reform them.
Social Security is not viable. It hands out more than it takes in. For those of you who are math challenged, that's a bad thing, and it can't continue for ever.
So party your asses off as Obama stands at the bridge of the Titanic and pretend it's all good. The adults will get on with the conversation of how to avert a disaster that will surely befall us if we don't reform our wasteful, bloated government.
Shaw,
You contradicted yourself when you said Ryan, "while working". He collected survivors benefits which he is not against. It was that while working that probably tripped you up.
You and the leftist movement would rather increase debt, rely on the government to make all their decisions and mortgage your children and grandchildren future for your own benefit. That use to called selfish now it is called democrats. I would rather sacrifice some in order to help future generations.
the point, skudrunner, is that without government assistance via social security benefits, he would not have been able to attend college on McDonald's salary. It pays minimum wage.
The point is not about Ryan's position on social security, SF.
My point is that Ryan is the beneficiary of a lifetime of government assistance.
His family also did very well financially. His father was in the constuction business and received a number of valuable government contracts.
Ryan's whole life, it appears, is about the government making his American dream come true.
"Ryan has been in Congress since he was 28. Before that, he worked for Wisconsin Sen. Bob Kasten and Kansas Sen. Sam Brownback. The sum total of his work experience outside of Congress is a couple part-time or summer jobs as a waiter, fitness trainer, and Oscar Mayer salesman, stints as a speechwriter."
That is my point.
And when skudrunner, or anyone, aruges that the government can't do anything right, you have your very own hero, Paul Ryan, to refute that nonsens.
Paul Ryan is a perfect example of a governmnet-made man.
Remember that when the GOPers denigrate everything the government does.
"So Paul Ryan looks at his education made possible by Social Security and student loans and his work experience made possible by Congress, family connections, and Congress, and the lesson he draws is that the government isn't responsible for anything good? For any part of anyone's success in life? It's much more clear that the government built Paul Ryan than that Paul Ryan has ever built anything beyond a budget that would end Medicare as we know it, leave 22 million kids hungry, attack Social Security, and cut Pell Grants for a million students. And hell, the government paid him to come up with that."
well...that kinda takes the wind outta romney's "obama never did anything but work in government" argument...he chose a guy who's never done anything but work in government...and the wingers believe ryan is their future president and savior...a guy who's where he is thanks to government...but who wants to take government assistance away from everyone else...typical rightwing hypocrisy...
I don't remember anyone saying eliminate government or social security. It is his wonderfulness that stole from Medicare to help fund Obamacare. It is Barry the magnificent who cut contributions to SS thereby shortening it's demise. It is Obama who has no, zero, nada, plan to create jobs. It is not that the incompetent incumbent hasn't done anything. He has successfully prolonged the worst recession in 60 years.
When was the last time you heard him present a plan to help create jobs. His only plan is to blame his total failure on the GOP and of course Tax the "rich".
skkudrunner, stop embarrassing yourself:
GOP Amnesia and the American Jobs Act
As Republicans bash Obama over June's employment report, they fail to mention that he has a plan.
This is the well-rehearsed GOP playbook: Ignore all progress, paint a grim picture, call every Obama success a failure and claim that his every strength is a weakness.
Romney, who has yet to articulate an immediate plan to create jobs, spins a web of lies. And like much of the GOP's rhetoric, what Romney says makes no sense. What is most troubling is that much of the unemployment malaise could have been avoided had congressional Republicans acted on President Obama's plan announced last September, the aptly named American Jobs Act.
President Obama proposed the AJA at a time when the country was creating an average of more than 200,000 jobs per month. The $450 billion package of fiscal measures amounted to nearly 3 percent of GDP (gross domestic product) and was designed to take effect in 2012. Tax cuts -- the Republican holy grail -- made up about 56 percent of the AJA's total cost and were completely paid for by the president's long-term deficit-reduction plan. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office concluded that the AJA "could have a noticeable impact on economic growth and employment in the next few years."
July's new jobs of 163K beats forecasts
Ryan's a real 21st century Horatio Alger story: inherit well, marry better and get a cushy government job. He'll lend real balance to that Romney ticket, not to mention the kind of job-creating, budget-balancing wisdom that a few months of private sector employment can provide.
Romney shakes his etch-a-sketch again.....
"Career politicians got us into this mess and they simply don't know how to get us out." ~ Mitt Romney 2011
... and as has been pointed out.... RYAN IS A CAREER POLITICIAN.
RN must be in seventh heaven
He finally got a fellow cult member on the national ticket
To bad he's actually a "government made man"
They'll have to drum him out of the Rand cult
"...a guy who's where he is thanks to government...
How so?
If government did that for Paul Ryan, why doesn't it do it for everyone?
Silverfiddle, are you deliberately being obtuse?
okjimm quoted Romney where he mocked "career politicians" who got us into "this mess," then he puts a career politician on the ticket with him.
Did the Teapublicans think the rest of the country wouldn't notice the buffoonery of that move?
SF: "If government did that for Paul Ryan, why doesn't it do it for everyone?"
Government does do "that" for lots of Americans, and the current GOP and its libertarian repeat the asinine blather that government is the problem, not the solution.
We liberals believe government has a roll in helping people like Ryan when life delivers devastating blows. We don't see it as sucking on the government teat, as I've heard the right idiotically repeat over the last 4 years.
Paul Ryan is the epitome of a guy who is where he is because of everything the government can do to help people.
His family, grandfather and father, made their fortunes through government contracts, Ryan got help through social security benefits, student loans, and then went immediately on the government payroll and has been there ever since.
The last four years I've heard nothing but condemnation from the right about Mr. Obama having never worked in the private sector [a lie] and now the GOP proudly embraces Ryan?
Do you and the GOP expect us to not notice the hypocrisy?
Ryan is a walking, breathing advertisement for how government can be a positive influence in people's lives, and he's the darling of libertarians.
The irony is spectacular!!!
Lets hope Obama has a healthy four years because his successor is the only politician who lost a debate to Palin. If you plan on running against the vice presidential candidate consider a Obiden presidency, what a joke that is.
The democrats and their media are on the attack. The, everything I say is a lie, president will now run against the nominee for vice president. As Hillary said "Shame on you Barack Obama".
He can't tell the truth because he doesn't know what the truth is.
Give up. you won. Now tell you kids and grandkids you gave their future away for your own self interest and refused to give up the free stuff.
Now we need to make sure the republicans take the senate and keep the house so his all mighty can run the country with executive order,. He has said to hell with the congress anyway because, after all, he is the anointed one and has the lemmings to follow him.
skudrunner, would you like some brie with that whine?
Gallup today:
Reaction to Ryan as VP Pick Among Least Positive Historically
A right wing Christian killed today.
He had a FB page showing himself with his guns.
His idols were past killers.
His mother said he was having mental problems.
The shootings happened when deputies tried to serve an eviction notice.
If he did not have a gun (he should not have) I suppose the right will say he would have killed with a butter knife.
For context and additional perspective on social security death benefits: my father died when I was twenty years old; so, I got the inside scoop on death benefits from social security.
In 1977, when I was twenty, the average death benefit was $170 a month. No doubt it was helpful to me but I still had to work to make ends meet. For whatever it's worth, it's probably not accurate to assume Ryan couldn't have gone to college except for the death benefits. Additionally, it's a bad way to come into $170 a month. I don't recommend it.
Okay, carry on with the keelhauling :-)
Shaw,
"skudrunner, would you like some brie with that whine?"
That comment was somewhat expected and in character. I would prefer American cheese but I don't expect limousine liberals to understand that.
I keep looking for the plan that his highness has proposed to create jobs but the only plan I see of his is to blame small business for being lucky and tax the "rich"
skudrunner, you probably have no idea that there's such a thing as American-made "brie," But that comment was somewhat expected and in character.
If your last sentence is what you really think, then you are one befuddled conservative who hasn't been paying attention and is easily led by the nose into magical thinking.
Post a Comment