Paul Ryan, Romney and GOP: Phase out Social Security and Medicare

Money for GOP, not for thee

The 14 scariest words in American politics: 'We're from the Republican Party, and we're here to save Social Security and Medicare."

"If you think Paul Ryan and his Ayn Rand-worshipping colleagues aren't after your Social Security and Medicare, I am here to disabuse you of your naiveté. They will move heaven and earth to force through tax cuts that will so starve the government of revenue that they will be 'forced' to make 'hard choices' - and that doesn't mean repealing those very same tax cuts, it means cutting the benefits for which you worked."
- Mike Lofgren, who retired on June 17 after 28 years as a Republican Congressional staffer (TruthOut, Saturday September 3, 2012)

Lofgren is brilliant, but seeing what Ryan, Romney and the GOP are up to is like wondering if we were going to war with Iraq in January 2003—the decisions were made, and ideology and propaganda led the way to disaster.

The GOP has always hated the Medicare and Social Security, and now they want the presidency to save it, not to bury the social insurance program though their asserted reason—debt is the achieved objective of the Bush-Cheney administration and unregulated Wall Street speculators.

"Romney insisted on Wisconsin radio [last[ Friday that Ryan's plan does not balance the budget on the backs of the poor and the elderly ... It instead preserves Medicare and preserves Social Security." (The Paul Ryan Watch)

Reviews are not kind to these unpopular GOP positions, as noted by Xoff:

A Christian Science Monitor column by Howard Gleckman calls it Ryan's "mystery meat budget" saying he "airily promises both trillions of dollars in tax cuts and a nearly balanced budget within a decade, but never says how he’d get there."

Kevin Drum at Mother Jones says:

Paul Ryan has released the latest Republican budget, and it's a blizzard of numbers, gimmicks, weird comparisons, and obfuscation. It's no more serious than any of Ryan's other budget proposals, no matter how many PowerPoint slides he includes... 

Dana Milbank, in the Washington Post, says Ryan's idea is to help the poor by hurting them:

Mitt Romney, the likely Republican nominee, is on record as saying, “I’m not concerned about the very poor.” And Ryan has just written a budget that supports Romney’s boast.

In an editorial, the Post calls Ryan's plan "dangerous and intentionally vague."

The Post also says Democrats want to know how much taxpayer money was spent to produce those slick videos with Ryan to try to sell his budget.  So far, no one's saying.