Rhetorical question but I have to ask. Are fans of the Ryan plan asking themselves this?

Why push it off to 2022? To only people "under 55." This means he's covering the "baby boomers" everyone has been so scared of, but not the younger people paying the taxes to support the retired boomers?

Hello, 54 year olds? You're screwed.


If it's going to save the planet and it's fair, let's do it now.

Why not?

Because it's smoke and mirrors and if we do it now we'll find that out now.

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"Stop thinking about art works as objects, and start thinking about them as triggers for experiences." ~ Brian Eno

And nobody would vote for it, or him.

Not even his core support group, the Tea Partiers.

"The Tea Party has a lot of reasons to love Paul Ryan, the Ayn Rand acolyte Mitt Romney selected for his running mate. But it also has one very big and little-discussed reason to dislike him. Here's how Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson explain it in their 2012 book, "The Tea Party and The Re-Making of Republican Conservatism":

At its debut, the Ryan plan to eliminate traditional Medicare was described in the media as a "Tea Party proposal" But it would be more accurate to call it a "Koch proposal," an ideological scheme to realize long-standing ultra-right hopes to privatize and radically shrink a major national social program. There is no evidence that ordinary American citizens who sympathize with the Tea Party were clamoring for the elimination of Medicare in early 2011. We heard no such thing from our interviewees, and a respected national survey completed right after the Ryan plan appeared revealed that 70 percent of the Tea Party supporters, along with even higher percentages of other Americans, oppose cuts in Medicare spending.

The explanation for this inconsistency is that most Tea Party members are AARP-eligible. Surveys have shown 70 (PDF) to 75 percent of Tea Party supporters to be 45 or older (compared to about half the overall population). Tea Partiers aren't against government benefits. They're against government benefits for other people. They just dress it up in antigovernment rhetoric and convince themselves that Medicare and Social Security benefits are different because they've already paid for them through payroll taxes (when in fact beneficiaries take out far more than they put in; that's why both programs need periodic adjustments). Hence the nonsensical slogan, "Keep government out of Medicare." The fact that Medicare and Social Security account for most of the welfare-state spending that Tea Partiers profess to despise (and about one-third of all federal spending) is something that Tea Partiers either don't grasp or choose to ignore."
[www.cbsnews.com]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/17/2012 09:32AM by Lemon Drop.

"And nobody would vote for it, or him.

Not even his core support group, the Tea Partiers."

So great to have your intelligent take on what Tea Party members think AND to invent new words or spelling.

When are the lobbies going to get it through their thick heads that Medicare and Sociall Security are NOT welfare programs? Are you so stupid that you don't even understand what is taken out of your own pay checks and what it is for?

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If you don't stand for something, you'll probably fall for anything.

When are the libbies going to get it through their thick heads that Medicare and Sociall Security are NOT welfare programs? Are you so stupid that you don't even understand what is taken out of your own pay checks and what it is for?

Personally I like the changes that are being proposed. I wish someone had given me a private option at an early age for both Medicare and SS, but I didn't have a choice. As drastic as the suggested changes are they cannot be expected to be implemented immediately. Those who would be affected will need rime to plan and save.

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If you don't stand for something, you'll probably fall for anything.

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swampy
When are the lobbies going to get it through their thick heads that Medicare and Sociall Security are NOT welfare programs? Are you so stupid that you don't even understand what is taken out of your own pay checks and what it is for?

How much was taken out to pay for Medicare D ?

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I don't know. There is no breakdown on my Medicare deduction statements for what foes to part A,B or D.

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If you don't stand for something, you'll probably fall for anything.

Social Security is so bare-bones that anybody who's paying attention should be investing in 401Ks, IRAs and everything else they are eligible for. That first SS check is going to be a shocker.

SS is so low that even a minor decrease can hit hard. It should be protected as a guaranteed failsafe, even at the expense of a higher return. Can you imagine where many of our seniors would be today if even ten or twenty percent of their SS was invested in the market in 2008?

As for Medicare, it exists in the first place because the insurance market did not want to insure old people even when private insurance was the only option. It's even worse now because companies have abandoned the pension-with-healthcare benefit as unsustainable. How can vouchers suddenly change that?

Of course, it gives them time to take it away from them after he gets voted on

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swampy
I don't know. There is no breakdown on my Medicare deduction statements for what foes to part A,B or D.

"The human capacity for self-delusion never ceases to amaze me, so it shouldn't surprise me that so many Republicans seem to genuinely believe that they are the party of fiscal responsibility. Perhaps at one time they were, but those days are long gone.

This fact became blindingly obvious to me six years ago this month when a Republican president and a Republican Congress enacted the Medicare drug benefit, which former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker has called "the most fiscally irresponsible piece of legislation since the 1960s."

- Bruce Barlett Forbes Magazine 11/09

Republican Deficit Hypocrisy

[www.forbes.com]

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swampy
When are the lobbies going to get it through their thick heads that Medicare and Sociall Security are NOT welfare programs? Are you so stupid that you don't even understand what is taken out of your own pay checks and what it is for?

Since you may not have studied Romney's proposal on reforming Medicare, you may not be aware that they are proposing to make Medicare a "welfare" program. So the subsidy to buy commercial insurance would vary based on income under their proposal.

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michaelb

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swampy
When are the lobbies going to get it through their thick heads that Medicare and Sociall Security are NOT welfare programs? Are you so stupid that you don't even understand what is taken out of your own pay checks and what it is for?

Since you may not have studied Romney's proposal on reforming Medicare, you may not be aware that they are proposing to make Medicare a "welfare" program. So the subsidy to buy commercial insurance would vary based on income under their proposal.

Thank you michaelb!!

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samintx
"And nobody would vote for it, or him.

Not even his core support group, the Tea Partiers."

So great to have your intelligent take on what Tea Party members think AND to invent new words or spelling.

Sure, any time. What spelling or word above is new to you?

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Lemon Drop

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samintx
"And nobody would vote for it, or him.

Not even his core support group, the Tea Partiers."

So great to have your intelligent take on what Tea Party members think AND to invent new words or spelling.

Sure, any time. What spelling or word above is new to you?

So she lets swampy's bad spelling slide and accuses you of misspelling when you didn't? I don't get it.

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swampy
I don't know. There is no breakdown on my Medicare deduction statements for what foes to part A,B or D.

I know. I get a statement every month delineating expenditures on my behalf. In your dotage, have you forgotten how to open an envelope or read the contents?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/18/2012 05:44AM by RgrF.

Paul Ryan himself answered it best :"senior citizens have already retired. "

Most people 55-64 have not retired. They're also allowed to have Medicare as we know it under his plan.