Paul Ryan, GOP Now Say They Love Medicare

Remember, the Tea Partiers aren't too bright

If Newt Gingrich, Paul Ryan and the GOP get their extremist war plans enacted to destroy Medicare, the popular social insurance program will end, as Gingrich promised would happen in 1995:

Now, we don't get rid of it in round one because we don't think that that's politically smart, and we don't think that's the right way to go through a transition. But we believe it's going to wither on the vine because we think people are voluntarily going to leave it -- voluntarily. (NYT)

Destroying Medicare would be political suicide for the Republican Party.

So, the new GOP line is to lie.

And the new GOP line on Medicare is in effect: Destroy Medicare, while pretending to save Medicare.

Writes Eugene Robinson:

[I]t was Democrats who conceived of Medicare, passed it into law and kept it viable all these years. It was Republicans who denounced the program as 'socialized medicine' — and who now want to replace Medicare’s guarantee with a system of vouchers.
Republicans may tell themselves that the GOP is the party of Medicare. But I doubt seniors will be convinced.

I doubt it too.

The 2012 Democratic Party convention will feature the credible message of protecting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security from the GOP-Tea Party.

And the GOP-Tea Party tries to convince America they just want to save these popular social insurance programs by their new-found love for them. Newt Gingrich says so, Mitt Romney says so and so does Paul Ryan, the whole bunch of GOP-Tea Partiers:

"The first step is to move the two programs away from their current unsustainable defined-benefit entitlement model to a fiscally sound defined-contribution model."

As Paul Krugman notes: "That means that instead of Medicare as we know it, which pays your medical bills, you’d get a lump sum which you can apply to private insurance — they’ll yell when we call it a voucher, but that’s what it is."

Let's hope the GOP keeps talking.

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.

Paul Ryan toasts Medicare cuts with $350 bottles of wine

Paul Ryan lives large - Photos via AP/Susan Feinberg

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), budget-hawk and free-spender, wines and dines with buddies, [A Hedge Fund Manager and a University Of Chicago Economist; Cliff Asness and John Cochrane], downing two $350 bottles of wine, as witnessed by Rutgers Prof. Susan Feinberg. Outrage follows Ryan consuming $100s in wine while Congress tries to cut seniors' safety net. "F—— her," said one of Ryan's companions referring to Feinberg.

Update: Ryan now (late October 2015) positioning himself as the next Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

From Jim Rowan's comment on TPM's piece by Susan Crabtree:

At the swanky Bistro Bis restaurant, where a website gushes:

An award-winning destination restaurant in Downtown Washington, DC, Bistro Bis is the place to savor and be seen - where Capitol Hill powerbrokers and politicians enjoy innovative interpretations of classic French bistro cuisine.

Owned and operated by renowned Chef Jeffrey Buben, this non-smoking, downtown DC restaurant is next to The Hotel George on the slope of the world-famous Capitol Hill. Senators, congressman, celebrities, entertainers and leaders come to experience bold French fare in the refreshing ambiance and chic luxury of one of he most enticing restaurants in downtown Washington, DC

More from the account of the dinner, the confrontation and a subsequent interview, from Talking Points Memo:

Ryan and anti-working class friends live it up

Susan Feinberg, an associate business professor at Rutgers, was at Bistro Bis celebrating her birthday with her husband that night. When she saw the label on the bottle of Jayer-Gilles 2004 Echezeaux Grand Cru Ryan's table had ordered, she quickly looked it up on the wine list and saw that it sold for an eye-popping $350, the most expensive wine in the house along with one other with the same price-tag.

If you're a fiscal hawk, life is good in DC.

If not full of contradiction - - a long way from Janesville, Wisconsin, aina.