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.

Super-rich make up the so-called Social Security crisis

Now and then, George W. Bush told the unvarnished truth—most often in jest. Consider the GOP presidential nominee’s Oct. 20, 2000, speech at a high-society $800-a-plate fundraiser at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria. Resplendent in a black tailcoat, waistcoat and white bow tie, Bush greeted the swells with evident satisfaction.

“This is an impressive crowd,” he said. “The haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elites; I call you my base.”

By Gene Lyons

Any questions?

Eight months later, President Bush delivered sweeping tax cuts to that patrician base. Given current hysteria over what a recent Washington Post article called “the runaway national debt,” it requires an act of historical memory to recall that the Bush administration rationalized reducing taxes on inherited wealth because paying down the debt too soon might roil financial markets.

Eleven years later, the Post warns in a ballyhooed article, reading like something out of Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22,” that Social Security—the 75-year-old bedrock of millions of Americans’ retirement hopes—has “passed a treacherous milestone,” gone “cash negative,” and “is sucking money out of the Treasury.”

Anybody who discerns a relationship between these events, that is, between a decade of keeping the “have-mores’” yachts and Lear jets running smoothly and a manufactured crisis supposedly threatening grandma’s monthly Social Security check must be some kind of radical leftist.

That, or somebody skeptical of the decades-long propaganda war against America’s most efficient, successful and popular social insurance program. It’s an effort that’s falsely persuaded millions of younger Americans that Social Security is in its last days and made crying wolf a test of “seriousness” among Beltway courtier-pundits like the Post’s Lori Montgomery, who concocted an imaginary front page emergency out of a relatively meaningless actuarial event.

All in service, alas, of a single unstated premise: The “have-mores” have made off with grandma’s money fair and square. They have no intention of paying it back. That’s the only possible interpretation of the Post’s admonition that “the $2.6 trillion Social Security trust fund will provide little relief. The government has borrowed every cent and now must raise taxes, cut spending or borrow more heavily from outside investors to keep benefit checks flowing.”

Little relief? In fact, the law’s working precisely as intended. After 28 years of generating huge payroll tax surpluses to cover the baby boomers’ retirement benefits, the system must now begin to draw upon those funds to help pay current benefits—the vast majority still covered by current payroll tax receipts.

“Rather than posing any sort of crisis,” explains Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, “this is exactly what had been planned when Congress last made major changes to the program in 1983 based on the recommendations of the Greenspan commission.”

Again, this is the beneficiaries’ money, invested by the Social Security trustees in U.S. Treasury bonds drawn upon “the full faith and credit of the United States.” Far from being “meaningless IOUs” as right-wing cant has it, they represent the same legally binding promise between the U.S. government and its people that it makes with Wall Street banks and the Chinese government, which also hold Treasury Bonds.

A promise not very different, the Daily Howler’s Bob Somerby points out, from the one implicit in your bank statement or 401K (if you’re lucky enough to have one). Did you think the money was buried in earthen jars filled with gold bullion and precious stones?

Raise taxes, cut spending or borrow? What other options does the U.S. government, or any government, have?

On his New York Times blog, Paul Krugman dissects the Catch-22 logic behind the Post’s bogus crisis. You can’t simultaneously argue “that the trust fund is meaningless, because SS is just part of the budget, then claim that some crisis arises when receipts fall short of payments, because SS is a standalone program.” For practical purposes, it’s got to be one or the other.

So is Social Security a “Ponzi scheme”? No, it’s group insurance, not an investment. You die young, somebody else benefits. Its finances have been open public record since 1936. Do fewer workers support each beneficiary? Sure, but who cares? It’s denominated in dollars, not a head count. The boomers were nearing 40 when the Reagan administration fixed the actuarial tables. No surprises there.

Are longer life expectancies screwing up the numbers? Not really. Most of the rise is explained by lower infant and child mortality, not by old-timers overstaying their welcome. Kevin Drum points out that gradually raising the payroll tax 1 percent and doubling the earnings cap over 20 years would make Social Security solvent forever.

But that’s not good enough for the more hidebound members of the $800-a-plate set. See, over 75 years Social Security has provided a measure of dignity, security and freedom to working Americans that just annoys the hell out of their betters.

Paul Ryan Has Senior Arrested and Jokes about Blood Pressure Meds; Video - Updated

Paul Ryan mocks seniors,
seeks to take away Social Security and Medicare

If it's me and senior speaks at a public forum, I shut up and listen. It's about respect and maybe learning something.

Updated II: Paul Ryan flees constituents as his palace guard smiles. I have had numerous talks with 100s of politicians, aides, operatives, strategists, flacks of all parties; but never have I witnessed the contempt that Paul Ryan, Scott Walker and today's brand of Republicans have for the people they are supposed to serve.

Interview with 71-year-old who had the temerity ask Congressman Paul Ryan (R-Janesville) a question by Noise of Rain at Kos:

UPDATE: Phone Interview with Tom Nielsen:
9:35 pm CST, September 9

I just conducted a phone interview with Tom Nielsen, the [arrested] man mentioned [below].

Describe what happened to you?

I had a ticket for the event, so it is not trespassing. I no more than voiced my opinion. I'm 6'4, 235 pounds but recently had a car accident and a broken clavicle. I told the policemen that. They were not too impressed. One policeman had my head down on the ground, and was six inches from my face, growling and snarling at me. I was worried about my shoulder, and said please don't hurt me. I said it five times. It fell to deaf ears. I was not a danger to anybody. Why throw me on the ground and cuff me with plastic handcuffs and cut my circulation? I have big hands, you don't have to put them on that tight. Shanon, one of the other people arrested, had bruises on her arms and wrists. They were obviously hired for crowd control. I don't think Rotary did that, I think that there was anticipation on Paul Ryan's part. There were two paddy wagons on deck … this shows that they anticipated something. We were not trying to do this, and they manipulated it to become about arrests.

How do you respond to people who were frustrated with the noisy protestors?

I'd say, "You are mad at me because you came to listen to him present all these falsehoods and sit there like you accept them and believe in them? Are you American, or what are you? You can't believe that these so called "entitlements" are ruining the economy!" I paid into Social Security for 52 tears and am now collecting some of what I paid. My wife passed away recently. She'll never collect what she paid into. Can you imagine your retirement money if it is all up to the stock market? I think Paul Ryan has been mislead by the Koch Bros. He ain't got enough guts to stand up to them. He used to be an Oscar Meyer Wiener salesman. Now he is a big shot in charge of all this whole government finances. How can he get such authority in only ten years? He spews this and tells us he gets all this encouragement from supporters so that he knows he is moving this country in the right direction. Of course he has to say something, but it is a fiasco.

Are you thinking of legal action?

You don't have to plea until the last minute. We are here for jobs. He is ignoring us totally. Listen to us! What he is saying and what we need done are two things traveling in different directions!

Why did you go to the event in the first place?

I wanted to hear what my Representative had to say. When I got there, I didn't want to get into any discussion with the Tea Baggers protesting outside. I didn't want to resist any police. I went inside to listen to what he had to say. He came in and was talking and making big jokes. I'm just a citizen, and heard the stuff about social security and health insurance, and when he called it "entitlement" I wanted to correct him. That was it for me. We were willing to leave when we were asked to. I was probably talking so loud that I didn't hear anyone ask me to leave. The next thing I knew, I was on the floor!

What was your response to Ryan's joke about you?

I am in perfect health.. everything. Back, heart, prostate, lungs: everything! Maybe he should check his own blood pressure rather than worrying about mine. I take care of my own self. If anyone has a stressful job, he certainly has, trying to do what the big machine wants him to do. His health must be suffering. How can it not suffer when he is causing so much suffering to so many people?

Will any Republican challenge this despicable show of disrespect for this man? Will any Republican stand up for democracy. Seems unlikley as Republicans are locking down Town public events to stifle critics, the people.

By Marie Diamond
House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI), the author of the House GOP plan to phase out Medicare, does not like it when constituents publicly challenge him. In fact, people who disagree with Ryan have a habit of getting arrested for it. A few weeks ago, several of Ryan’s unemployed constituents staged a peaceful sit-in at his Kenosha, Wisconsin office to protest his unpopular decision not to hold any free public town halls during the August recess.

These constituents didn’t think they should have to pay to ask their elected representative a question. Instead of meeting with them, Ryan’s staff called the police.

So it should come as no surprise that this week, three people who paid to see Ryan speak were arrested and charged with trespassing for protesting the event. One constituent, a 71-year-old retired plumber from Kenosha, Wisconsin, was handcuffed and pushed to the ground by security:

Video footage taken by an attendee at the event shows that one of them, Tom Nielsen, received particularly harsh treatment — he was pushed to the ground and handcuffed. Nielsen received an additional charge of resisting arrest.

Ryan was speaking Tuesday afternoon at the Whitnall Park Rotary Club. Protesters gathered both outside his event and inside, standing up and disrupting the congressman’s remarks.

According to Oak Creek Patch, as many as a dozen protesters were escorted out of the event. Another dozen or so left willingly.

Ryan seemed supremely undisturbed that a senior citizen worried about receiving the Medicare he’s paid into his whole life was treated so brutally. Indeed, Ryan made light of the arrest and quipped to the audience, “I hope he’s taking his blood pressure medication.”

Watch it, courtesy of Wisconsin Jobs Now:



Another woman was shown the door when she challenged Ryan’s claim that the jobs crisis is directly related to the debt crisis. “Our debt is out of control because of the tax cuts you’re giving,” she said. “Our unemployment in 2003 was 6.2% before the tax cuts went through. Now our unemployment rate is 9.1%. What are you doing to create jobs, Congressman?”

Another woman was escorted out when she stood up while Ryan was speaking and said, “You won’t talk to us. How can we give our opinions when you refuse to talk to us?” Ryan has consistently faced angry constituents at his events since his Medicare-killing budget became a top GOP priority. Tired of being publicly embarrassed by constituents who voice their disagreement and say his policies are hurting them, Ryan has resorted to increasingly harsh responses to deal with people who have the audacity to speak up at his events.