Paul Ryan [View all]
“In April, 2011, shortly after the near-shutdown, Paul Ryan released his budget, the most radical policy blueprint to come out of official Washington in a generation. It simultaneously shredded the social safety net, swept away the country's seed corn of investments in the future, and adopted discredited supply-side economics. Even Gingrich called it 'radical right-wing social engineering.' ….In this first version, Ryan privatized Medicare entirely for those under fifty-five.”
Jonathan Alter; The Center Holds: Obama and his Enemies”; Simon & Schuster; 2013
Was it a sign of mental deterioration, as my son insists? Or can be be attributed to the cable news reports on the shared failure of Ryan and Trump to deliver as promised? Either way, while watching a report on Ryan, I said that there was an important paragraph in Jonathan Alter's book, on page 165. Instead, the above quote is found on page 163.
This was shortly after Ryan had expressed report for what President Obama had referred to as “an Ike budget.” Ryan clearly has no conscience. I find it offensive every time he talks about his ancestors immigrating from Ireland at the end of the Great Starvation. He is nothing if not the unethical heir to the “landlords” who ruled the Old Sod with cruelty.
President Obama responded in a speech at George Washington University, by saying Ryan's proposal wasn't “serious,” and pointing out that it “would lead to a fundamentally different America than the one we've known.” (Alter; pg 165)
The battle over health care certainly isn't over. It's important that citizens at the grass roots level continue to speak up, and inform their elected representatives – Democratic and republican – that the Ryan-Trump plan is unacceptable.
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