What Does Paul Ryan Believe In?

forbes.com | Aug 11th 2012

Jonathan Cohn of The New Republic dug deep and fast into the brains of Paul Ryan, as only a quick typing beat reporter can.

In his post titled Five Things To Know About Romney And Ryan, Cohn sticks to what will clearly be the main narrative of the 2012 election: entitlement reform. Or better yet, entitlement destruction. In that fight between the two ideologies of the common good and the common — not sense — but you get the picture if you're not a Republican — it has Obama the man who will save Social Security versus Romney the man who will surely destroy it for all that is good and holy with America, Amen, God Bless You, Jesus and Joseph Smith.

Of course, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

For starters, speaking on CNN today, Newt Gingrich said that guess who is going to destroy Medicare and Medicaid? Not the Republicans. Not Paul Ryan and his "Ryan Budget". If you're a Republican, you already know the answer to this: Obamacare! That's right, Obamacare will take $700 billion out of Medicare. Take that you old folk retirees. Shouldn't have lived this long, afterall! Bwah ha ha ha ha! Obama and your dying grandma, once again.

But outside of the he said/she said drama of news and comment, the fact is that Mitt Romney, as a political leader, never destroyed a single entitlement program in Massachusetts. In fact, he signed the Massachusetts Healthcare Reform Act. He made entitlement programs bigger, and better. And thanks to it, me and my pre-tween daughters have affordable health insurance. Take that Aetna Global and your $1,400 a month premiums!

Cohen did his homework. Politics is his beat. He based his five things people should know about Romney and Ryan on quotes from other news sources, data from the Congressional Budget Office, the Kaiser Family Foundation (health care gurus), and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

Here are the five things, but you will have to go to The New Republic to read about them in any detail.

Verbatim…

1. Ryan really believes in ending Medicare as we know it. (Which leads us to…)

2. Ryan really believes in ending Medicaid as we know it.

3. Ryan really pushed for privatization of Social Security.

4. Ryan really would decimate government funding, to the point it could no longer carry on many routine operations. (And lastly…the guy hates us riff-raff, especially you poor rednecks who happen to earn less than us latte drinking, Prius driving, Vanity Fair reading Yankees and Californians.)5. Ryan really does want the biggest transfer of wealth, from poor and middle class to rich, in modern U.S. history.

The thing is, politicians can believe anything they want to. The good news, dear people of the world, the U.S. is not a dictatorship. Even if the President of the United States believed the world was flat, we would still have corporate owned trade ships traversing the world and — low and behold — not falling off into outerspace. Even if the president believed we should all pay for our education and save money for retirement without relying on taxation, it is up to the people and Congress. In many cases, it is up to the states. Luckily, to a mild extent, the people still do run the country. And for the most part, those people want their entitlements to continue. Maybe not exactly as they are now, but surely not be gutted to nothing. Congress will have to answer to them.

See: Five Things To Know About Romney And Ryan – The New Republic

Original Page: http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2012/08/11/what-does-paul-ryan-believe-in/

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