Ryan’s Flawed Blue Print

17 April 2011 |permalink | email article

The House Budget Committee chairman likes to boast ”this budget plan keeps America exceptional.” In fact, it is far from exceptional when one considers, for example, cutting federal spending on Medicaid, which provides healthcare for seniors, children and the poor, and would distribute money to states by block grant.

I mean, in good conscience, how can Ryan, a conservative Roman Catholic with an Ayn Rand taint, attempt to dismantle the country’s social safety net, even as the rich receive greater tax cuts and the middle class pays the price?

Nancy Pelosi, (D-San Francisco), emerging from a period of virtual silence as the Democratic House Minority Leader, had very pointed comments in saying House GOP Republican leaders were sending their rank-and-file members to slaughter.

“I want to say to my Republican colleagues: Do you realize that your leadership is asking you to cast a vote today to abolish Medicare as we know it?” she asked. Unfazed, Republicans argue that Americans are willing to accept diminished social programs in return for a firmer fiscal standing.

The ambitious effort by the new majority is to dramatically shrink government. ”Yesterday we cut billions, boasted Rep. Kevin McCarty of California, the No. 3 House Republican, who called Friday’s vote historic. Today we cut trillions.”

“It is not courageous to provide addition tax breaks for millionaires while ending the Medicare guarantee for seniors and sticking seniors with the cost of rising health care,” said Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, the senior Democrat on the Budget Committee.

Republicans have argued that the Ryan budget would not affect current Medicare recipients or people over 55 older. They argued they had no choice but to restructure Medicare and Medicaid, whose skyrocketing costs are major drivers of the growing debt.

The New York Times reported Saturday what’s underway now is a fundamental reassessment of the size and role of government – of the balance between personal responsibility and private markets on the one hand and public responsibility and social welfare on the other – at least since Ronald Reagan and perhaps since FDR.

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