The Republican budget is SO loony it's even scaring the right-wing nuts! How often does THAT happen?
The Republicans are voting on their budget plan this week. The plan eliminates Medicare and guts Medicaid, guts the rest of the government (except the things their oil company and military-contractor sponsors make money from), while dramatically cutting taxes on the wealthy and corporations. Reporters are asking Republicans to comment publicly on the plan and the responses are not what you'd expect. When reporters use "tread cautiously" to describe ANYthing Republicans do, you know something's up.
LA Times: "Boehner treads cautiously on Ryan plan":
House Speaker John Boehner offered qualified support for Rep. Paul Ryan's sweeping budget blueprint, which would convert Medicare into largely a private insurance system and transform Medicaid into a state-run block grant program... Boehner said he believed the Ryan plan will reduce the debt and will preserve Medicare -- but stopped short of singing its praises. (emphasis mine)
Washington Post: "Republican presidential candidates tread carefully GOP budget plan":
Mindful of the political risks, most Republican presidential hopefuls treaded gingerly after House Republicans unveiled a budget plan that would slash federal spending by about $5 trillion over 10 years while revamping health programs for the elderly and poor. (emphasis mine)
"Revamping" is reporter-speak for eliminating, privatizing, abolishing, doing away with.
Several, including former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, praised the budget's sponsor, Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, but stopped short of fully endorsing the blueprint and didn't indicate whether they backed the massive changes in Medicare and Medicaid. (emphasis mine)
"Massive changes" is more reporter-speak for wiping out, killing, destroying, sending to Heaven.
LA Times: "House GOP faces risky vote on Medicare, Medicaid":
Rep. Mary Bono Mack (R-Palm Springs) commended Ryan "for his willingness to begin a long-overdue and critically important debate." But she "continues to review this legislation," including its effect on Medicare,...
Even members of the freshman class, who ran on cutting deficits and upending political convention in Washington, are treading carefully. Rep. Lou Barletta, a Republican whose Pennsylvania district was held by a Democrat for nearly 30 years before his victory in November, declined to comment on how he would vote.
Rep. Sean Duffy, a Republican freshman from a working-class, erstwhile Democratic district in northwestern Wisconsin, also has praised Ryan but has not yet signed on publicly to the plan. (emphasis mine)
Politico: "Some in GOP squirm over Paul Ryan budget":
Rep. Tim Murphy ... is still undecided. Susan Mosychuk, Murphy's chief of staff, said it's a "high-profile vote" that they are "still taking a look at."
Rep. Gus Bilirakis... is "still looking it over and trying to decide." ...
Rep. Sean Duffy (R-Wis.) ... said he's undecided.
Rep. Steve Southerland ... is in the same place as Bilirakis.
So is Ohio freshman Rep. Jim Renacci. "He's still reviewing it"...
Even The Base
In "Plurality of Republicans want Medicare left alone," Ezra Klein cites a Gallup poll showing that even Republican voters don't like the Republican budget.
The most popular position in the GOP's coalition isn't that Medicare needs a complete overhaul, as Ryan thinks. It isn't that it needs major changes, or even that it needs minor changes. It's that we shouldn't try and control costs at all. That's not true for the Democrats' coalition, where both "minor changes" and "major changes" beat "no cost control," and it's not true for the independent coalition, where "minor changes" at least tie cost control.
And in more bad news for the GOP, elsewhere in the poll, raising taxes on the rich turns out to be very popular, while a plurality further cuts in programs.
Even Bachmann!
Saving the best for last, from the above-cited "House GOP faces risky vote on Medicare, Medicaid":
Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.), who is considering a presidential bid, said the plan "merits our full attention," but didn't go further. (emphasis mine)
Whoa, even Rep. Michelle Bachmann thinks it's nuts! When Michelle Bachman thinks something is nuts, you are waaaayyyy past nuts and into full-on, screaming, idiotic, crazy, frothing, hallucinating, straight-jacket-wrapped, padded-cell, chasing-with-a-net budget lunacy.
This post originally appeared at Campaign for America's Future (CAF) at their Blog for OurFuture. I am a Fellow with CAF.
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Michael Zimmerman, Ph.D.: Michele Bachmann's Stance on Evolution Demolished by High School Student
So democrats do have a plan.When i was in school, producing idiotic solutions for problems, got you an F, I never was called brave when I produced something dumb, I was called "dumb".
Thats why I try to avoid doing things like that, i've got standards.
Paul Ryan produces a dumb plan, that guts medicare, and that lets insurance industry executives, the same people, of pre-existing conditions, decide on whether they will insure you.
Not! They wont.
These GOPers are the same people of the "death panels", etc.
They want to create, and have created in the case of Arizona, real "death panels", that really have killed people.
Man, the GOP really needs to develop a work ethic, professionalism and a sense of shame.
Instead of being stupid, all the time, they should trying saying and doing things that make sense.
Next thing you know, some prominent republican will be saying, evolution isn't real, and that humans and dinosaurs co-existed, or that Paul Revere rode to warn the British Army about armed American colonists,...oh wait.
Paul Ryan is an Ayn Rand apostle (in the religious meaning). The "extreme fitness" practice and blank, doe eyes are signs of the absence of critical thinking going on in that small head. The religion holds that spending is bad and tax rates and tax deductions ("tax spending" mentioned by Obama) have nothing to do with balancing the budget. When a family buys a home, the loan is for more that a years pay. When a family is short of food money, someone gets a second or third job. But the republican meme does not allow for this.
For the Ryan types, a deduction for a second home is allowed with no limit, and that cannot be discussed. Because it is an attack on republican religious certainty, it is banned from consciousness.
Ryan does not have a clue that Obama just eviscerated him. Unfairness does not compute for Ryan, the tea party, or republicans. The wealthy deserve the low taxes by Devine Right (the job creators?) while Medicare and Medicaid are for those non productive trash of non-wealthy. The old get ten years to prepare for death from preventable causes.
“…As you treat the least of these…”
People need true information. The media's rush to be fair and not labeled as lefties means only that they are repeating GOP talking points (Obamacare) or are kind of, sort of, dancing around the truth.
People shouldn't need a freakin' interpreter for their news. Not everyone is that smart. We elected Bush twice and Trump is running a strong second in GOP polls. Please just explain the truth. I'm not saying you need to write "GOP hates hard working, poor, minorities and loves to have gay sex with corporate overlords" but, you know, actually...
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A Fan
It is certainly true! And President Obama CLEARLY said that in his speech and on the interveiw for ABC!
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kind of blather. That party has for so long just dealt with sound bites and sloganeering that the mere
mention of something concrete has them completely flabbergasted.