Paul Ryan Eyes Social Security and Medicare for Destruction

Scott Walker, a ridiculous figure, teared up awed at the 2012
Republican Convention, listening to Paul Ryan speak.
Walker and Ryan share a cocoon, sheltered from reality.

One problem among many with Paul Ryan and Scott Walker is these life-long politicians living on public monies have never had a real job.

This adds to Ryan and Walker's lack of empathy for working families, as Ryan targets social earned insurance benefits, Medicare and Social Security.

Ryan and Walker have no connection to real people carving out a living, so they live in bubbles.

So we add a trillion to the debt with a tax cut for the wealthy, then we cut Medicare to pay for it. Wouldn’t it be simpler for seniors to just write a check to the Koch Brothers? https://t.co/nviAEJSntm

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) December 8, 2017

See also:

Paul Ryan, are you listening?

"Today’s tax cuts have no bipartisan support. They have no intellectual grounding, no body of supporting evidence.

The rot afflicting the G.O.P. is comprehensive — moral, intellectual, political and reputational.”https://t.co/EJjNsgSsJz

— Stop the Speaker PAC (@StopTheSpeaker) December 8, 2017

Ryan and Walker Are Both Battered by Provincialism and Narcissism

Update: Ayn Rand would have been proud: Freedom Caucus Majority Backs Paul Ryan for House Speaker (New York Times). Look out Social Security and Medicare, there's a new speaker in town.

Scott Walker and Paul Ryan are not Wisconsin's finest.

Not towering intellects. Not dedicated public servants. Not civil rights activists. Not teachers, or writers or artists, handymen. One could on.

No, Walker and Ryan are victims, suffering from personality disorders, extreme even for lifelong politicians.

Witness the megalomaniacal Walker's 2016 run for the presidency marked by delusions of grandeur of a historical figure on a march to save the United States, as ordered by god (Mal Contends). The journey lasted 70 days, (Johnson, Washington Post).

Walker's political BFF, Paul Ryan, looks to abort his qualified run for the Speaker of the House after 24 hours (Marshall, Talking Points Memo (TPM)).

Turns out House rightists, the Freedom Caucus, are offended by Walker's demands. Notes TPM's Marshall:

Caucus co-founder Matt Salmon compared Ryan's demands for family time to 'interviewing a maid for a job and she says, ‘I don’t clean windows, I don’t do floors, I don’t do beds, these are the hours I’ll work.'

Ryan's pronouncement that he "cannot and will not give up my family time," is not resonating with every American family lacking Ryan's entitlements and privileges. Moreover, Ryan's penchant to lie, exposed repeatedly by Paul Krugman, is becoming conventional wisdom.

Ryan's vainglorious ideal of a Speaker Ryan with his demands of loyalty and more power may have lasted less than a hurried hump day.

Walker and Ryan are not students of history.

No, they're just a couple of corrupt politicians from Wisconsin who made the transformation from being astonished their schemes have gone on as long as they have, to being a baleful type of political figure who actually believes aides' press releases and the fawning accolades and obsequious praise that come with taking money, following orders and forgetting the people of Wisconsin whom they were elected to represent.

Ryan will become a laughing stock fast.

Paul Ryan as House Speaker Would Destroy Social Security, Medicare

Republicans want to kill Social Security. The Democratic
Party nominee for the presidency all but guarantees victory
by standing up for Social Security against GOP attack, which
would be led by prospective House Speaker Paul Ryan.
- Image from August 15 Email from the
Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee

Updated - Paul Ryan—Six Reasons Why He's Everything That’s Wrong With the GOP

"I cannot and will not give up my family time," demands Speaker-in-waiting Paul Ryan.

Too bad Ryan is not a supporter of expanding the Family and Medical Leave Act, and works avidly against working parents.

Other Americans want to spend time with their families as well.

"Ryan seeks to preserve his own balance between his work and his family, he’s pushed policies that would make doing so more difficult for others, particularly poor parents," notes Bryce Covert in ThinkProgress.

Ryan gets to take off from the office, courtesy of the tax payers, whenever he wants, so his demands ring a bit shrill. As does Ryan's war against Social Security and Medicare.

"Having gutted private-sector pensions and health benefits as a result of their embrace of outsourcing, union busting and 'shareholder value' the GOP now thinks it is only fair that public-sector workers give up their pensions and benefits, too. Hence the intensification of the GOP's decades-long campaign of scorn against government workers. Under the circumstances, it is simply safer to be a current retiree rather than a prospective one. 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," wrote Mike Lofgren, who retired on June 17, 2011 after 28 years as a Republican Congressional staffer. (TruthOut)

Paul Ryan as Speaker of the House would launch an epic battle against Social Security and Medicare, citing the the long list of Republican lies.

Ryan's Congressional pension is already set, so why not, and Ryan rakes in a lot of campaign cash this way.

"Paul Ryan (R-Wis) rank[ed] first in the House with an estimated [campaign] net worth of $5,531,036 in 2013," notes Open Secrets.

No facts needed on policy from Paul Ryan and the Republicans (Krugman, New York Times) (Krugman, New York Times).

GOP arguments about urgency for action are still fallacious, kill Medicare and Social Security to save them, and stop allowing Americans who pay into Medicare and Social Security to become "dependent" (to quote Ryan) on their earned benefits from Medicare and Social Security.

As Paul Krugman notes last August, "[N]o, Social Security does not face a financial crisis; its long-term funding shortfall could easily be closed with modest increases in revenue," (New York Times).

Ryan like his friend, Scott Walker, does not like it when constituents publicly challenge him, no matter Ryan's obsession with phasing out Medicare and Social Security (Mal Contends).

Paul Ryan is lifelong politician, immediately becoming a GOP aide after college in 1992, and then serving in Congress beginning in 1999 (Ballotpedia), all health and pension benefits and salary paid by the American tax payers, and Paul Ryan is living large.

Paul Ryan Is Apt Pick as GOP's Targets Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security

Romney and Ryan 2012

GOP extremism on display

"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," said Mike Lofgren, a Republican legislative grunt who retired in June 2011 in dismay and anger at the Tea Party-GOP's radical plans to dismantle the most successful and popular social insurance programs in American history.

Now, Rep. Ryan has been enlisted by Mitt Romney to carry the torch as GOP nominee for the vice presidency.

It's a perfect fit.

Recommend James Vega, John Nichols and the Paul Ryan Watch for important insights on who Paul Ryan is and what he plans for our country.

Paul Ryan and GOP Closer to Goal of Phasing out Social Security

Paul Ryan and the GOP care solely and exclusively about its rich contributors

When a disgusted congressional insider. Mike Lofgren, a long-time Republican Congressional staffer, retired in June last year, he decided to blow the whistle and warn America what Paul Ryan and the Republicans were up to—destroy Social Security and Medicare little by little—and reap the accolades that they are fiscally wise and courageous.

Wrote Lofgren:

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. The crackpot outliers of two decades ago have become the vital center today: Steve King, Michele Bachman (now a leading presidential candidate as well), Paul Broun, Patrick McHenry, Virginia Foxx, Louie Gohmert, Allen West. The Congressional directory now reads like a casebook of lunacy.

Wage a few wars in the name of grave threats to our national security, then cut taxes to pay for the war effort, and use the resulting debt as an excuse to phase out Medicare and Social Security.

Paul Ryan's proposed budget will cost the Republicans, but there is nothing courageous about targeting our seniors, our seniors, by decimating Medicare and Social Security.

As the Republican National Committee spokeswoman noted, Republican Economic Platform Will Be the Bush Program, ‘Just Updated.’

Paul Krugman writes contemptuously of the Bush-Cheney record, "Because the worst incomes and jobs record since Herbert Hoover was just an accident."

After Bush went after Social Security in 2005, his administration never recovered politically.

We hope the same fate awaits Paul Ryan and his Ayn Rand-worshipping colleagues.

Writes Paul Krugman on national and state (like Wisconsin) Republican parties plundering:

Overall employment in the Obama years has been held back by mass layoffs of schoolteachers and other state and local government employees. But private-sector employment has recovered almost all the ground lost in the administration’s early months. That compares favorably with the Bush era: as of March 2004, private employment was still 2.4 million below its level when Mr. Bush took office.

Oh, and where have those mass layoffs of schoolteachers been taking place? Largely in states controlled by the G.O.P.: 70 percent of public job losses have been either in Texas or in states where Republicans recently took control.