Ryan's Paymasters Will Never Let Him Give Up Trying To Enslave Ordinary Americans-- Really

Wednesday the House Budget Committee approved Paul Ryan's latest Ayn Rand Budget, which cuts trillions in healthcare spending and repeals the Affordable Care Act. "His budget," reports Hospital CFO, "would make significant changes to Medicare, reducing program spending by $129 billion over the next 10 years. Starting in 2012, it would convert Medicare to a premium support program, under which beneficiaries would receive funds from the government with which they could purchase either traditional Medicare coverage or private health plans." A report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), a nonpartisan policy organization, reports that "Some 69% of the cuts in House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s new budget would come from programs that serve people of limited means." While Ryan claims to want to strengthen Medicare, the CBPP report said $2.7 trillion of the cuts will come from Medicaid and at least 40 million Americans would become uninsured by 2024. None of the popular parts of the Affordable Care Act would survive the Republicans' meat cleaver. He's says they're too expensive and have got to go.

The committee vote to approve Ryan's drastic budget was 22-16. All the Republicans voted for it and all the Democrats voted against it. Several Republicans not on the committee said they will vote against it next week when the full House takes it up. Walter Jones (R-NC) said he will oppose any budget with foreign aid in it and is one of the few Republicans who agrees with the Democrats that Ryan's scheme to convert Medicare into a partially privatized insurance system would be a catastrophe for American seniors. Other likely Republican "no" votes next week include Jack Kingston (R-GA), Justin Amash (R-MI), Tim Huelskamp (R-KS), Raúl Labrador (R-ID), Tom Massie (R-KY), and Rick Crawford (R-AR). These are the Republicans on the Budget Committee"

• Paul Ryan (WI-01), Chairman
• Tom Price (GA-06), Vice-Chairman
• Scott Garrett (NJ-05)
• John Campbell (CA-45)
• Ken Calvert (CA-42)
• Tom Cole (OK-04)
• Tom McClintock (CA-04)
• James Lankford (OK-05)
• Diane Black (TN-06)
• Reid Ribble (WI-08)
• Bill Flores (TX-17)
• Todd Rokita (IN-04)
• Rob Woodall (GA-07)
• Marsha Blackburn (TN-07)
• Alan Nunnelee (MS-01)
• Scott Rigell (VA-02)
• Vicky Hartzler (MO-04)
• Jackie Walorski (IN-02)
• Luke Messer (IN-06)
• Tom Rice (SC-07)
• Roger Williams (TX-25)
• Sean Duffy (WI-07)

Meanwhile, House Democrats have been furious about Ryan's slash-and-burn Austerity approach to programs that provide services and benefits to the middle class and those least able to afford the cuts. Barbara Lee (D-CA) pointed out yesterday was the 46th anniversary of the death of Martin Luther King, and that Ryan's Godless budget cuts are “exactly the opposite of what Dr. King stood for.” Ryan's adolescent ideas, straight from his favorite school girl Ayn Rand novel, have already failed in Europe; he wants to implement them here anyway. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), who would become Budget Chairman if Nancy Pelosi removed Steve Israel as head of the DCCC and allowed the Democrats to win back the House in November, said that the Ryan cuts approved by the Republicans on the committee "tells the American public exactly what Republicans in Congress would do to the country if they have the power to impose their will."

"It's the budget that ransacks the future of America's children," House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said during a press briefing in the Capitol. "Education is the best investment that a person, a parent, a country can make in its future... This is key to employment, to growth, to innovation and for the success of our economy.

"I view the Ryan budget as an ideological manifesto," she added.

Other Democrats piled on.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), senior Democrat on the House Budget Committee, said the Ryan plan would cut $18 billion in early education programs, $89 billion in K-12 programs and $205 billion in higher education initiatives over the next decade, versus the levels established by December's budget deal between Ryan and Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA).

Rep. George Miller (D-CA), ranking member of the Education and Labor Committee, said the GOP budget would eliminate more than 170,000 spots for early education benefits-- "and it gets worse every year after that," he added.

"These are the exact children that we know, if they have an opportunity in early childhood education, they will do much better in school, they're more likely to graduate, they're more likely to get a job, they're less likely to go to jail and they're more likely to earn a higher income than children who don't get that opportunity," Miller said.

"Clearly they [Republicans] don't care about these children."

President Obama doesn't think so either. In his weekly address to the nation this morning, he contrasted his own budget with the Ryan document. "[T]he budget I sent Congress earlier this year," he said, "is built on the idea of opportunity for all. It will grow the middle class and shrink the deficits we’ve already cut in half since I took office. It’s an opportunity agenda with four goals. Number one is creating more good jobs that pay good wages. Number two is training more Americans with the skills to fill those jobs. Number three is guaranteeing every child access to a great education. And number four is making work pay-- with wages you can live on, savings you can retire on, and health care that’s there for you when you need it." He has a very different view of what Ryan presented on April Fool's Day.

This week, the Republicans in Congress put forward a very different budget. And it does just the opposite: it shrinks opportunity and makes it harder for Americans who work hard to get ahead.

The Republican budget begins by handing out massive tax cuts to households making more than $1 million a year. Then, to keep from blowing a hole in the deficit, they’d have to raise taxes on middle-class families with kids. Next, their budget forces deep cuts to investments that help our economy create jobs, like education and scientific research.

Now, they won’t tell you where these cuts will fall. But compared to my budget, if they cut everything evenly, then within a few years, about 170,000 kids will be cut from early education programs. About 200,000 new mothers and kids will be cut off from programs to help them get healthy food. Schools across the country will lose funding that supports 21,000 special education teachers. And if they want to make smaller cuts to one of these areas, that means larger cuts in others.

Unsurprisingly, the Republican budget also tries to repeal the Affordable Care Act-- even though that would take away health coverage from the more than seven million Americans who’ve done the responsible thing and signed up to buy health insurance. And for good measure, their budget guts the rules we put in place to protect the middle class from another financial crisis like the one we’ve had to fight so hard to recover from.

Policies that benefit a fortunate few while making it harder for working Americans to succeed are not what we need right now. Our economy doesn’t grow best from the top-down; it grows best from the middle-out.  That’s what my opportunity agenda does-- and it’s what I’ll keep fighting for.

Did you know Blue America has a special page set up for the sole purpose of defeating Paul Ryan. This isn't to "send him a message" by electing some Blue Dog with values not so different from his in some backward red district. This page is dedicated to defeating him and replacing him with a progressive Democrat, Rob Zerban. Rob on Ryan's budget: "Ryan and his Republican colleagues fail to honestly account for their own policies. Free trade deals that have hollowed out our manufacturing industry, giveaways to Wall Street that have let billionaires accumulate all the benefits of our economy-- these are the things that cause poverty, not food stamps or early education programs. I agree with the New York Times that Ryan's report distorts the facts and that his ideas are ‘small and tired.' As the Times says, ‘most successful programs, including the (earned income) tax credit, Medicaid and food stamps, have been those that are carefully designed, properly managed and well-financed.’ I am a shining example of how smart programs can work. My single mother raised us in poverty, and we needed federal nutrition programs to have enough to eat. I needed Pell Grants and Stafford Loans to go to college, but I used all that help to get an education, and then build two successful businesses and employ dozens of people. The truth is that many of these programs are extremely successful, but years of budget cuts, free trade deals, refusal to increase the minimum wage, and giveaways to Wall Street resulted in the Great Recession and driven more and more people into poverty.”

Down The Rabbit Hole With Paul Ryan And Ayn Rand

Remember when Canter and McCarthy screwed up on the Farm Bill and Boehner had to pull it? It just happened again-- this time with the Transportation and Housing and Urban Development funding bills. The House of Representatives is now officially an out-of-control madhouse. Boehner is just another Member with an agenda, who some Republicans follow and others ignore. House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers (R-KY), as far from a "moderate" as you'll find in their crazy caucus, issued the following statement concluding that the conservative sequestration scheme is wrecking the economy and ruining the country and must come to an end.

“The Transportation, and Housing and Urban Development funding bill that was pulled from floor consideration today was the first major attempt by the House to consider and pass an Appropriations bill that funds domestic programs under the austere level delineated under the Budget Control Act and the House budget resolution.

“The bill today reflected the best possible effort, under an open process, to fund programs important to the American people-- including our highway, air and rail systems, housing for our poorest families, and improvements to local communities-- while also making the deep cuts necessary under the current budget cap. In order to abide by sequestration budget levels, this bill cut $4.4 billion below the current, post-sequestration total to a level below what was approved for these programs in 2006-- over seven years ago.

“I am extremely disappointed with the decision to pull the bill from the House calendar today. The prospects for passing this bill in September are bleak at best, given the vote count on passage that was apparent this afternoon. With this action, the House has declined to proceed on the implementation of the very [Ryan] budget it adopted just three months ago. Thus, I believe that the House has made its choice: sequestration-- and its unrealistic and ill-conceived discretionary cuts-- must be brought to an end. And, it is also clear that the higher funding levels advocated by the Senate are also simply not achievable in this Congress.

“This Congress must now deal in a productive way to address the nation’s crippling deficits and debt to put our budget back on a sustainable and responsible path. This means that all government programs-- not just those on the discretionary side of the ledger-- must be reduced. Spending reductions in mandatory and entitlement programs, which are the drivers of our deficits and debt, are the most effective way to enact meaningful change in the trajectory of federal spending. The House, Senate and White House must come together as soon as possible on a comprehensive compromise that repeals sequestration, takes the nation off this lurching path from fiscal crisis to fiscal crisis, reduces our deficits and debt, and provides a realistic topline discretionary spending level to fund the government in a responsible-- and attainable-- way.”

This was a worse mess than the Farm Bill fiasco. The Republicans, as a party, are incapable and/or unwilling to fund anything other than the Military Industrial Establishment that the last plausible Republican President warned them about. They've followed Paul Ryan down a rabbit hole where there is no Social Security, no Medicare and no Medicaid and where everyone worships Ayn Rand. These people are not in the real world-- and they control, more or less, the House of Representatives... and half the state governments, not just in the crazy, secessionist South, but in states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Ohio and Michigan. On the federal level, when the House Republicans try using Ryan's fantasy budget to draft actual budgets for actual functions of the government, they fall flat on their faces and... well impossible situations like what happened on Wednesday happen. It's pure nihilism in the real world and if it isn't stopped by the American people at the ballot box next November, or children and grandchildren will curse us to eternity-- and with good reason.

The House Republicans don't have the political will-- even without taking the House or Senate Democrats into account-- to pass any of this Ryan-ordained Randian garbage. There's no way to fund the rest of the government outside the military while keeping faith with Ryan's crackpot budgetary constraints. Even Hal Rogers understands that now. "Unrealistic and ill-conceived discretionary cuts must be brought to an end." He's talking about the whole insane edifice Ryan and his Wall Street pals have imposed on America through blackmail and threats. From the Associated Press report on the mess:

As the House measure faltered, a companion bill in the Senate seemed likely to be killed by a GOP filibuster on Thursday for the opposite reason. It breaks the budget limits of sequestration, the automatic cuts required by Washington's failure to strike a bipartisan budget deal.

The twin developments reflect the broader dysfunction in Washington over the budget. All sides want to reverse the crippling sequestration cuts but a partisan impasse over tax increases sought by President Barack Obama and his Democratic allies and cuts to so-called mandatory programs like Medicare and food stamps demanded by Republicans shows no signs of breaking.

Congress leaves Washington this week for a five-week vacation; the battle will be rejoined in the fall.

Cuts in the House transportation measure were made deeper by a Republican move to cut an additional $40 billion-plus from domestic programs and transfer the money to the Pentagon. That left the transportation measure $10 billion, or about 18 percent, below the Senate's bill.

...A spokesman for GOP Whip Kevin McCarthy of California said the Republican majority's top vote counter was confident he would have been able to round up enough votes to pass the bill if there were more time for debate.

The move comes as companion legislation in the Senate may be filibustered to death on Thursday by Republicans because it exceeds budget levels called for under the automatic budget cuts.

"Voting for appropriations legislation that blatantly violates budget reforms already agreed to by both parties moves our country in exactly, exactly the wrong direction," Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said.

"The collapse of the partisan transportation and housing bill in the House proves that their sequestration-on-steroids bills are unworkable, and that we are going to need a bipartisan deal to replace sequestration," said Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., chief author of the Senate bill. "And while we work toward that, we should pass the bipartisan Senate transportation and housing bill and show our constituents that we are putting them and their communities above partisanship and political games."

Ryan And Boehner Want A Second Shot At Destroying Medicare And Medicaid

Not a day goes by on Twitter when the GOP noise machine doesn't puke out something like this (these are all from yesterday morning):




The biggest problem with passing the budget, of course, is that the GOP is using it to push forward their dangerous and radical right-wing social agenda (as even Newt Gingrich readily admitted, calling Ryan's budget "right-wing social engineering"; see video above). The Republicans seem convinced this is a winning issue for them-- ending Medicare and Medicaid. In fact, Boehner and Ryan are threatening to insert it into this year's budget again. Boehner was on Fox News Sunday citing how Ryan and Democrat Ron Wyden have a "bipartisan" idea of how to push forward the Republican Party's dangerous right-wing social agenda.

At a GOP strategy session on Friday, Ryan told the Republican House Members, many of whom are scared to death that trying to destroy Medicare may not prove to be a good idea in an election year, “We’re not backing off on the kinds of reforms that we’ve advocated, but we have to write it... We’ve done more to normalize the idea of premium support than anything at all. We’re confident that these are the right policies. There’s an emerging bipartisan consensus that’s occurring on doing premium support reform to Medicare is the best way to save Medicare." By bipartisan he means Wyden and a motley crew of reactionary and despised Blue Dogs.

Rob Zerban, Ryan's Democratic opponent, is far more in touch with what the American people are looking for than Ron Wyden and the mangy Blue Dogs. "Paul Ryan just announced he is taking a second swing at Medicare," writes Zerban. "His 'new' plan is devastating to Medicare as we know it, but the big difference is that he found one Democrat to help him!"

Here is what has been happening-- Paul Ryan has introduced a new plan to start the privatization of Medicare. He convinced a "Democrat," Ron Wyden, to join in this effort. Ron Wyden, like Paul Ryan, has raked in an alarming amount of lobbyist money from the health insurance industry.

Make no mistake-- this is no bipartisan effort! Almost all Democrats, including President Obama, are strongly opposed to this plan.

Here is what the White House Communications Director had to say: [this scheme could] "cause the traditional Medicare program to "wither on the vine" because it would raise premiums, forcing many seniors to leave traditional Medicare and join private plans. It would shift costs from the government to seniors. At the end of the day, this plan would end Medicare as we know if for millions of seniors."

It is clear what this plan is designed to do. Both Paul Ryan and Wyden admit that it will likely not save anyone any money! The only upside is a big giveaway to private insurance companies at the expense of our seniors. This is sham bipartisanship and the voters of Wisconsin are not fooled!

Ryan has to be stopped. Wall Street has every intention of making him president someday. The DCCC has studiously ignored him-- if not protected him-- for a decade. Rob Zerban is taking him on with zero help from "ex"-Blue Dog Steve Israel, the chair of the DCCC. Zerban just forced Ryan to switch his position and back away from supporting SOPA. He deserves our help, and you can give him some right here at the ActBlue Stop Paul Ryan page. (I should add that Ryan has probably taken more sleazy, corporate cash than any other Member of the House and currently has $4.6 million sitting in his campaign warchest, virtually all of it from corporate special interests.)