With the scramble on to secure a 2012 presidential nomination, dozens of politicians are beginning to suffer from a severe case of foot-in-mouth disease. That's why listening to Paul Ryan explain his radical budget plan and personal philosophy is so refreshing. But can he convince his critics?
The GOP has already bought in to Ryan's budget bill since it basically strips entitlements to the core. But critics are saying the plan lacks humanity, and are even going so far as to say that passing this bill would in effect "kill people."
That's the consensus from Columbia University economics professor Jeffrey Sachs, who says "the cuts in Medicare he's proposing, the replacement of Medicare by a voucher system would in the end mean that tens of millions of Americans would not be able to afford essential health care. So that counts as cruelty to me."
But Paul Ryan knows how to keep things in perspective. "Fifty-one percent of Medicare right now is funded with borrowed money, and so if we're going to keep the promise, you have to change it for our generation. You have to change it for those of us in the X Generation that won't have a program when we retire."
As CNN puts it, he's becoming popular by pushing the unpopular. That's not the kind of talk expected from a presidential candidate. Which, unfortunately, Ryan is not... yet.
His 10-year marriage and raising three kids is what the 41-year-old Ryan is focused on these days. But there's hope. Kids grow up and married couples shift their attention to longer-term issues as the years pass.
Maybe it's time for a new phrase to be coined?
Foresight is 2020!
Image courtesy of Wikipedia
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Comments: 7
“If this is going to be a Christian nation that doesn't help the poor, either we have to pretend that Jesus was just as selfish as we are, or we've got to acknowledge that He commanded us to love the poor and serve the needy without condition and then admit that we just don't want to do it.”
Ryan's plan are all about the rich man keeping his money.
History shows that our capitalist republic has given the least of us a far better standard of living than any other system. Yet you promote a strong centralized government, I call it socialism. Europe is finding that it can’t afford such programs and have had to ration care, we conservatives call them death panels. The Democrats deny and hide their heads once again and I argue that this would kill as many or more than the fixes to the budget that Ryan is proposing. History backs me up on this, that socialism never works and will fail.
then why has the poverty rate in this nation gone up, yet the rich continue to gett richer???????