"We propose welfare reform, round 2," he added, charging that aid programs were encouraging people to sponge off the government. "We don't want to turn the safety net into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people ... into complacency and dependence."
I've mentioned this one before, but Charles Pierce, writing in Esquire, points out:
...[Ryan] got through high school and college on Social Security survivor's benefits.
Nice.
Pierce also mocks Ryan's intention to "strengthen" Medicare:
"We propose to save and strengthen Medicare by taking the power away from bureaucrats," said Ryan as he rolled out his proposal Tuesday on Capitol Hill. "We believe competition and choice should be the way forward."
So, again with the notion that, in competition and choice, there are no such things as "bureaucrats" in, say, insurance companies, who have the power to decide that, No, your dialysis won't be covered there, Gramps. So, again with the notion that "freedom" consists of the 72-year-old wife of a 75-year-old Alzheimer's patient going out into the insurance market to determine which of the dozens of companies who will be scrambling for her business offers her the best deal. And, since he also proposes to repeal the entire Affordable Care Act, we'll all get a chance to practice being helpless and old and at the mercy of the greediest industry in America over the course of our entire lives. Bonus!
Or take my 92-year-old mother. (Sorry, Ma, there I go telling the world your age again.) What insurance company would want to write her a policy?
Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid have all worked well for generations. Why not return to the tax rates of the pre-George W. Bush years to close the deficit?
Just because Rep. Ryan requires his staffers to read Atlas Shrugged doesn't mean we all have to live in some creepy Ayn Rand novel.
Hat tip: Ed Crotty
Flattered.
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