Says the man who wants to pile more debt on students…
They should just never go to college in the first place!
ILU Stephen
Less than 24 hours after Mitt Romney chose Paul Ryan as his running mate on Saturday, his campaign was already trying to distance itself from Mr. Ryan’s politically toxic budget plan. His budget is not ours, the campaign said; Mr. Romney “will be putting together his own plan for cutting the deficit and putting the budget on a path to balance.”
It’s no wonder that Mr. Romney does not want to take full responsibility for his running mate’s ideas. Mr. Romney hasn’t issued a real budget plan and appears to have no interest in doing so before the election, perhaps for fear that voters might realize how little they would like it. Mr. Ryan, on the other hand, has assembled two spending plans, both of which were passed by the House. While the country is fortunate they were never enacted, they reveal Republican priorities in a way that Mr. Romney up to now has avoided.
Most voters know little about Mr. Ryan. Those who have heard of him are probably most familiar with his Medicare plan, which would turn the program into a voucher system that would pay beneficiaries a fixed amount for their medical care, leaving them on their own if the voucher did not cover their costs.
This notion so alarmed the public last year that Mr. Ryan was forced to backtrack and leave the existing Medicare system as an option. Even so, the plan would leave older Americans on average with $6,400 in extra costs by 2022, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
Even less familiar to voters are Mr. Ryan’s plans for the rest of the federal budget, which if anything are worse than his Medicare proposal. By cutting $6 trillion from federal spending over the next 10 years, he would eliminate or slash so many programs that the federal government would be unrecognizable. That has long been a goal of the Tea Party ideologues who support Mr. Ryan fervently, but it is not one shared by anywhere near a majority of Americans.
As House Budget Committee chairman, Mr. Ryan drew a blueprint for a government that would be absent when people needed it the most. Medicaid, food stamps, and other vital programs would be offloaded to the states, but the states would not be given the resources to run them. The federal government simply would not be there to help the unemployed who need job training, or struggling students who seek college educations. Washington would be unable to respond when a city cannot properly treat its sewage, or when the poor and uninsured overload emergency rooms as clinics close.
More than three-fifths of the cuts proposed by Mr. Ryan come from programs for low-income Americans. These cuts are so severe that the nation’s Catholic bishops protested the proposal as failing to meet society’s moral obligations, saying the plans “will hurt hungry children, poor families, vulnerable seniors.”
To Mr. Ryan, the poor will benefit when they no longer rely on government handouts. But his plans contain no pathway to self-reliance for the tens of millions of people who are either poor, unemployed or uninsured. In his world, they will be entirely on their own, or will rely on charity.
He certainly can’t pretend to turn around the economy by eliminating the deficit. Mr. Ryan’s budget would not reach a surplus for 30 years, according to the C.B.O., because he would cut taxes, largely for the rich and for corporations, by $4 trillion. That’s even more than Mr. Romney’s extravagant tax giveaways, because Mr. Ryan would erase all capital gains taxes. Since investments are the principal income generators for Mr. Romney and millions of other high earners, Mr. Romney made the more prudent choice to cut capital gains taxes only for the middle class.
Five things Romney’s VP pick has fought for in Congress.
For 12 things you need to know about Paul Ryan, click here.
dreamboat
(Source: bestivals)
TOP FIVE WAYS THE RYAN BUDGET SACRIFICES WOMEN’S HEALTH CARE ACCESS
1. Slash Medicaid, a Lifeline for Families Across the Country
Right now 60 million Americans, including 21 million low-income women, rely on Medicaid for basic health care. For women, Medicaid means the difference between getting cancer screenings and birth control or going without. In fact, one in ten women of reproductive age relies on Medicaid for her health care needs. But Paul Ryan (R-WI) and other Republicans want to take away this essential coverage from millions of people.
Currently, Medicaid protects women’s access to family planning by ensuring coverage and giving women the ability to choose their own health care provider. The Ryan Republican plan would fundamentally change the program, and many women would lose access to these important benefits. Fifty percent of Planned Parenthood health center visits are paid for by Medicaid to access lifesaving breast and cervical cancer screenings, well woman exams, and birth control. For our patients and for all women and families, we are fighting back.
2. Prevent access to birth control and cancer screenings by trying to prohibit Planned Parenthood from participating in public health programs
“Planned Parenthood. We’re going to get rid of that.” On March 13, in his own words, Mitt Romney plainly stated he wants to take birth control and cancer screenings away from millions of women. This far right position has been echoed by other opponents of women’s health who would also bar Planned Parenthood from participating in federal programs like Medicaid. They would rather deny preventive health care, including birth control, lifesaving cancer screenings, annual exams, and STD testing and treatment, than allow Planned Parenthood to receive federal funding.
3. Eliminate the Title X Family Planning Program
Title X is America’s leading family planning program, providing access to birth control, cancer screenings, STD screenings, and other health care services to over five million low-income women and men each year in more than 4,500 health centers. In every state, women and men rely on Title X for basic primary and preventive health care. Planned Parenthood is a proud partner of the Title X program, providing care to 1.7 million people — one-third of Title X’s patients. But Congressman (and Senate candidate) Denny Rehberg (R-MT), Mitt Romney, and other extreme candidates want to eliminate Title X family planning, arguing that it will reduce the national deficit. Setting aside the fact that Title X represents about 0.01 percent of the budget, opponents have a bigger problem with this push — it won’t actually reduce the deficit at all. For every dollar invested in family planning programs, the government saves $3.74. This is an ideological agenda wrapped in bad policy.
4. Repeal the Affordable Care Act
Romney, along with Ryan, wants to repeal the groundbreaking health care reform law, which was the single biggest advancement in women’s health in a generation. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires insurance coverage for preventive services like mammograms, cancer screenings, and birth control, with no co-pays. Unfortunately, Romney wants to go back to the days when insurance companies discriminated against women, such as charging women higher premiums and denying coverage based on “pre-existing conditions” that could include breast cancer or even pregnancy. The ACA protects women from these bad practices, guarantees women’s access to ob/gyns, and expands coverage for 2.5 million young adults by allowing them to stay on their parents’ health plan until age 26, and that’s just the beginning.
5. Undermine women’s access to abortion
Out-of-touch politicians continue their relentless efforts to undermine women’s access to abortion. They have filed bill after bill designed to prevent women from accessing comprehensive care. One such way is by working to ban insurance coverage of abortion in the new health insurance exchanges under the ACA. This means that women who buy an insurance plan through the exchange may not have abortion covered as a health care service, even though most insurance companies cover abortion as part of their health plan.
(Source: jonathan-cunningham)
(Source: stayinbedgrowyourhair)
