36 thoughts on “Ryan’s Plan”

  2. Tweet of the week:

    David Burge @iowahawkblog 11 Aug
    Nominating Ryan was an underhanded dirty trick to make people talk about the economy instead of Romney’s horse.

    1. Ryan got survivor benefits for a fathers death. So nice of the left to use this as an attack on Ryan. So classy. So what we expect of them.

      How did we all survive before FDR? How low can they go?

      1. Ken,
        let’s just hope Ryan isn’t SO classy that he won’t fight the (D)’ openly and strongly, until he’s surrounded by dead burnt (D) bodies, with veins in his teeth…

          3. I like how Gerrib defines “destroy” as “replace with something that does the desired job better.”

            There’s no way that Ryan’s plan — a 34% cut totaling $1.4 trillion between 2013 and 2022 — would help Medicaid do its job better.

            Ryan is at least honest when he describes the social safety net as a hammock that needs to be cut down to discourage dependency. His shtick that he’s “strengthening” or “securing” the safety net by slashing its funding is positively Orwellian.

          4. Let’s go ask Obama how cutting $700b from Medicare is destroying the system and killing old people. Why do Democrats hate old people so much? Is it because they smell like summertime tourists in DC?

            Doesn’t Obama’s cuts take Mediscare off the table? (rhetorical question)

          5. How, in a privatized Social Security plan, do survivor’s benefits work?

            I’d think like other privatized things, the deceased can choose the benefactor(s) to receive what was privately theirs. That’s the nice thing about private property, what gets done about it is up to the property owner’s will. It’s communal property rights that cause problems.

          6. How, in a privatized Social Security plan, do survivor’s benefits work?

            There’s this thing out there called “life insurance.” You might want to look into it. It can be a stand-alone product or part of an annuity program. The policy would be in the individual’s name so its proceeds would pass to the survivors. Strange stuff, huh?

          7. “How, in a privatized Social Security plan, do survivor’s benefits work?” (I’m responding to this comment, in case it doesn’t thread properly)

            Gee, Chris, I would imagine not unlike life insurance works now: you designate a beneficiary. Obviously details will have to be worked out, but surely you are not unable to come up with a basic idea for such a thing.

        3. Hypocrisy is labeling any change that your party makes as hope and progress but anything proposed by someone else as destruction.

          There are countries that mix their social security programs with a guaranteed payout and the chance for a greater return through investment in the market. Something like that would be the best of both worlds.

          1. Gerrib is using the word like he doesn’t know the meaning. Ryan isn’t telling people who are owed payments under present law to refund them.

        4. Gerrib, you disgust me with that comment. All of us who have lost a father would much rather have them here with us instead of the $255 death benefit.

          1. And I’m sure Ryan would have too. That doesn’t change the fact that he benefited from a program that he wants to gut.

            Also, since he put himself through college on the payments, I suspect it was more than $255.

          2. That doesn’t change the fact that he benefited from a program that he wants to gut.

            You keep saying this like it’s an argument of some sort. Feel free to educate yourself with respect to how grown-ups argue things like law and ethics.

  3. Romney is insisting that Ryan’s plan isn’t his, but that he doesn’t know exactly how they differ. So the GOP is stuck with defending unpopular ideas (tax cuts for the rich, tax hikes for the middle class, benefit cuts for the poor) on behalf of a waffling candidate who won’t let himself be pinned down to any position in particular.

    Romney’s best shot was making the campaign about Obama’s economy. Instead he’s made it about House budgets, when Congress is the least popular institution in the country.

    1. Taxes hikes for the middle class? Doesn’t Ryan’s plan call for two tax brackets 10% and 25%? That looks like tax cuts for everyone but you think Bush’s tax cuts were for the rich too so…

      1. There is a difference between “tax cuts” and “tax rate cuts”. A “tax cut” is when You pay less in taxes. However, a “tax rate cut” can still lead to a “tax increase” if the amount to which the lower tax rate applies is sufficiently larger than it would be otherwise.

        1. A tax rate cut is a tax cut unless it brings in more revenue than the original rate would have.

          Supply siders have a religious belief in the ability of tax rate cuts to not be tax cuts, and it would be a wonderful thing if they were right. We could cut tax rates, collect more revenue, and everyone — taxpayers and recipients of government spending alike — would be happy! It’d be like eating ice cream to lose weight!

          But Romney and Ryan don’t really care about collecting more revenue, they just care about cutting taxes, particularly for the wealthy who make up the ideological and fundraising base of their party. For their purposes the business about tax rate cuts not really being tax cuts is just a dodge. They want to give a big tax cut to their supporters, but they don’t want to say who’ll be paying for it, so they wave their hands and say it’ll be free.

          1. Demand-siders have a religious belief that they can tax people near or at the Laffer maximum and not make everyone poorer in the long-run.

          2. So even though a tax rate increase for the middle class is not stated by ryan, you think there has to be one because the government will need more money. Ryan is committing a thought crime but the only one who knows his thoughts is you.

            You know what else the government could do? Cut spending.

          3. Hey, I’m not the one saying that Romney/Ryan’s tax plans will be revenue-neutral — they are. If they really mean that they’re going to cut revenue, they’re free to say so. Instead, they say they’re going to raise the same amount of revenue, and they’re going to raise less of it from the rich. That implies they’re raising more from the non-rich.

          4. Supply siders have a religious belief in the ability of tax rate cuts to not be tax cuts, and it would be a wonderful thing if they were right. We could cut tax rates, collect more revenue, and everyone — taxpayers and recipients of government spending alike — would be happy! It’d be like eating ice cream to lose weight!

            Except we have actual evidence that it works. That’s in stark contracts to the morons who believe we can jack up the tax rates and get proportional increases in revenue despite all evidence to the contrary.

      2. Taxes hikes for the middle class?

        Romney’s promised to lower the top tax rates, not raise taxes on investments, abolish the estate tax, and keep the whole thing revenue neutral. The first three parts mean that revenue from the rich will go down, requiring that revenue from the non-rich go up, and the overall burden of taxation shift towards people with lower incomes.

        Ryan’s tax plan goes even further, eliminating the taxes on capital gains and dividends, so people like Romney would pay basically no federal taxes at all.

        None of this is fertile ground for the GOP, compared to Romney’s original campaign message (“The economy is terrible and Obama doesn’t know how to fix it”). No wonder down-ballot Republicans are freaking out over the Ryan choice.

          2. Many of these people don’t care that much about Romney — they always felt he faced an improbable path to victory

            Oh… those are the ones “freaking out”. Check.

            You’re right Jim, 2010 was an outlier. [eye roll]

        2. Ryan’s plan will remain revenue neutral by flattening the tax rates, simplifying the tax code by removing loop holes that benefit the rich, and growing the economy. Erskine Bowles calls it a honest and serious plan. Even Obama praised it back in 2010 as being a serious proposal.

    2. tax cuts for the rich, tax hikes for the middle class, benefit cuts for the poor

      And you’re using the term “Orwellian”? Find a mirror, dude.

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