Is Ryan's Social Security Slashing Budget Like Contract With America?

Ezra Klein sure suckered Ryan recently. First he praised the Ryan Plan for its honesty. Ryan took the bait and agreed to an interview a few days later.

Wiley
Very wiley

So it's a choice:

A: be a party with no ideas

B: be a party with bad ideas

Tough decision.

Get the Ryan budget onto the floor and make the Republicans vote on it. If they vote 'no,' turn them over to the Tea Party crazies for a primary challenge by a nuttier candidate. If they vote 'yes' then get some old people on TV in their district to say they would have to move to a homeless shelter. Hit them hard at the first opportunity and at every opportunity.

once again, that would be the contract on america. if truly their supporters are in favor of privatizing social security, adding taxes to the middle class and vouchers for medicare; then there is no hope for any of us.

Nussle is best remembered for wearing a brown paper bag over his head. I don't know if he had speaking points written inside because not every Republican is as handy at speaking as Palin.

Newt has to cheat on and change wives again first before it's "new".

So we have all the money in the world for Bush/Cheney military expeditions to enrich Haliburton and American Oil Companies The miracle of the loaves and fishes will occur if we enact more tax cuts for the wealthy, and to curry political favor from sixty five and over croud, we can enact an irresponsible drubs benifit, again unpaid for. All this to cement GOP, corporate and wealthy interests in this country. But when the Democrats are in power, we can't afford any social priorities mainly because of the irresponsible and incompetent management during the Bush/Cheney/Republican regime of the years 2000-2008.

Conventionally, Social Security and Medicare are the "third rails" of politics because older voters need them and turn out for elections.

But, in addition to the already retired, we now have millions of people who are about to retire and (1) have lost 30% or more of their retirement savings in the financial crisis, (2) have lost much of the home equity, and/or (3) have lost their jobs, with little prospect at the age of 50+ of finding a good replacement.

I'm sure these people will be thrilled to hear about threats to the only safety nets they have left.

Maybe I'm missing something, but as a political strategy this is even more insane than Tea Baggers, Palin, and the rest of the crazy stuff I'm hearing about these days.

PLEASE do try that again. That will make our job defeating your side SO much easier.

All we need done is first ask the American people if they want thier Social Security benefits put on Wall Street and ask if the people on Medicare want a voucher to get thier insurance from? After that then have the Minority Party in Congress debate and vote on this budget presented by Rep. Ryan. Then the Democratic Party can bring up thier budget presented by President Obama and see which budget is liked better by the American people. You know the ones that will be totally affected by the budget.
That is the one thing that no one in Washington gets is that what ever they do or don't do directly affects those people on Main Street they keep talking about. However talking isn't helping me get medical insurance for a disorder that is still new and of course very expensive to treat.

Let's take a vote on the Ryan bill to privatize social security and eliminate medicare!!!

But will the Democrats have the heart to nail them on it? I saw Obama and Ryan go - sort of - head to head on this at that Republican retreat and Obama did not nail Ryan to the mat. Ryan actually thinks that by making his plan "only for those now under 55" means its not hurting anyone???? They won't treat over 65 multi-millionaires like that today but everyone who is now under 55 faces the prospect of being handed a voucher for health insurance instead of the guarantee of Medicare.

If Democrats had heart, it could be such a winner. It could get them tremendous support from everyone under 55 who would feel screwed over that they still have to pay into Medicare and Social Security for people now collecting and everyone over 55, but then they get handed a voucher. Its a bad deal.

it does show the direction that we want to go in,"

I'm glad he said that just so people will realize what it actually means.