Showing posts with label Paul Ryan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paul Ryan. Show all posts
Sunday, August 26, 2012
This Guy Is Not Cool !
THIS GUY IS NOT COOL!!
Well, early Saturday morning we learned that Congressman Paul Ryan, Republican from Wisconsin , is to be Mitt Romney's pick for the next Vice President of The United States.
What are we to think of this selection? He's not a graduate of Columbia University . He's not a graduate of Harvard. He wasn't selected as the President of the Harvard Law Review. He didn't get a special free quota scholarship ride to any prestigious university and, instead, had to work his way through Miami University of Ohio. For God's sake the man drove the Oscar Mayer Wiener Truck one summer and waited tables another!
One morning when Paul Ryan was sixteen years old he went in to wake his father up and found him dead of a heart attack. He didn't write two books about that experience. Instead, he assumed the role of adult at an early age, never having the luxury to pursue youthful drug use and the art of socialist revolution.
Instead, Paul Ryan and his mother took his grandmother, suffering from Alzheimers, into the household and served as the primary care provider for his grandma. His grandma wasn't the Vice President of the Bank of Hawaii so she could offer nothing in return, except the element of "need".
Once Paul Ryan got his BA in Economics from Miami University of Ohio he was hired as a staff economist in Wisconsin Senator Kastin's office. The job must have not paid well because young Ryan moonlighted as a waiter and fitness trainer. No one offered him a "token honor" position at the University of Chicago and a $200,000 dollar a year salary.
When a still young Paul Ryan returned to Wisconsin to run for Congress he didn't demonize his opponent and dig up dirt to shovel against him. He waited until the standing Congressman vacated the office before seeking the office. In Janesville , Wisconsin they don't have a big political machine to promote you, to criminalize your opponent; instead Paul Ryan had to go door to door and sit at kitchen tables and listen to his future constituents.
After getting elected to Congress Paul Ryan didn't triumphantly march into Washington , buy himself a Georgetown townhouse and proceed over to K Street to rub elbows with lobbyists. He bunked in his Congressional office and used the house gym for showers and a fresh change of clothes.
Paul Ryan then married and took his bride back to Janesville . He lives on the same street he lived on as a kid and shares the neighborhood with eight other members of the Ryan clan. He hunts with the local Janesville hunt club and attends PTA meetings and other civic functions.
For those who can't make those public functions, Paul Ryan bought an old bread truck, converted it into a "mobile constituent office" and drives around to meet with those who need his help and attention.
No, I don't know if we can vote for a guy like this. He doesn't have a regal pedigree; he's Irish for God's sake! No one awarded him a Nobel Peace Prize two months after getting elected. No one threw flowers or got "chills down their leg" as a he took his seat in Congress.
What is most despicable about Paul Ryan is that he has had the nerve to write the House Budget for three years in a row. He is brazen and heartless in advocating in that budget for a $5 trillion dollar reduction in federal spending over the next ten years! The House passed his budget three years in a row and three years in a row the Democratically controlled Senate has let it die in the upper house, without ever proposing a budget of their own. What is wrong with this guy? If Congress were to cut $5 trillion dollars from the budget where would the President get the money to give $500 million dollars to a bankrupt Solyndra? Or $200 million dollars for bankrupt Energy 1? Or $11 billion dollars to illegal aliens filing INIT, non-resident tax returns to claim $11 billion big ones in child tax credits, even for their children living in Mexico ?
I don't know. Paul Ryan seems heartless to me. He keeps wanting to cut government waste, he keeps wanting to put a halt to those big GSA conventions in Vegas and, worse, he keeps trying to make people look at that $16.7 trillion dollar deficit! The guy's no fun at all!
Who wants a numbers cruncher? Who wants someone spoiling the party by showing folks the bill? Nothing will spoil a party quicker than sending the host the bill before the party's over.
Party Hearty folks! At least until November.
Thursday, August 23, 2012
Ryan's Medicare plan
Obama frequently attacks Ryan's Medicare plan -- but is he correct?
By Jim Angle
Published August 22, 2012
FoxNews.com
Aug. 22, 2012: Republican vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., speaks during a campaign event at SMT, Inc. in Raleigh, N.C.
Though the Medicare plan proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan has bipartisan support, the Obama campaign went after it early and often after Ryan was selected as Mitt Romney's running mate.
President Obama ripped into the plan before a crowd in Rochester, N.H., last weekend.
"Their plan would shorten the life of Medicare and end Medicare as we know it, because they'd turn it into a voucher system," he said.
At another stop, in Windham, N.H., he repeated the assertions, adding that it would be "a plan in which you could not count on health care because it would have to be coming out of your pocket."
Actually, the Ryan plan would affect no one who today is 55 or older. Then, in 2023, private insurers could bid for seniors' health insurance alongside traditional Medicare.
Ryan's plan would offer federal money to cover premiums equal to the second lowest bidder -- an amount updated every year -- meaning seniors would always have at least two choices of plans at no cost.
“A senior would have the option of taking that plan, taking a cheaper plan and pocketing some of the savings, or taking a more expensive plan and paying the difference,” senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute Avik Roy said.
"It's not going to be an entirely different structure," Jim Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center said. "It's going to be very much building upon things that are already there."
In part, because the plans would have to offer the same benefits Medicare does, and because private insurers already provide plans to one in four Medicare recipients -- something called Medicare Advantage -- they're attractive because they cover more than regular Medicare, avoiding the cost of supplemental plans called Medigap.
"They often will sign up for a Medicare Advantage plan because they get more comprehensive coverage without the need for a second plan," Capretta said.
He added that many of the same advantages are in the Ryan plan.
Nevertheless, Obama told a group in East Davenport, Iowa, last week that seniors would get stuck with the bill if they choose to opt out of Medicare.
"They'd get a voucher to buy private insurance," he said. "And if it doesn't keep up with costs, well, that's the seniors' problem."
The Congressional Budget Office couldn't quantify the savings from competition in an earlier Ryan plan, so it assumed the cost of private plans would increase as much as health care generally, while the premium support was to be fixed.
So Ryan changed the plan -- so much so that it's now co-sponsored by liberal Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, who believes the current system is doomed to fail.
In an interview with Fox News about his embracing of the Ryan plan, Wyden predicts "a steady diet of benefit reductions for senior citizens and cost shifting."
"That will all take place until the Medicare guarantee is threatened, and I'm just not going to sit by and let that happen," he said.
"The whole idea is that this competitive process would lead to cheaper insurance for seniors at the same level of benefits that they currently enjoy," Roy said.
Since Medicare has promised tens of trillions of dollars more in benefits that it can possibly pay for, Ryan and Wyden argue it must be changed in order to survive.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/22/obama-campaign-attacks-ryan-medicare-plan-early-frequently/#ixzz24N4KMISI
By Jim Angle
Published August 22, 2012
FoxNews.com
Aug. 22, 2012: Republican vice presidential candidate Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., speaks during a campaign event at SMT, Inc. in Raleigh, N.C.
Though the Medicare plan proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan has bipartisan support, the Obama campaign went after it early and often after Ryan was selected as Mitt Romney's running mate.
President Obama ripped into the plan before a crowd in Rochester, N.H., last weekend.
"Their plan would shorten the life of Medicare and end Medicare as we know it, because they'd turn it into a voucher system," he said.
At another stop, in Windham, N.H., he repeated the assertions, adding that it would be "a plan in which you could not count on health care because it would have to be coming out of your pocket."
Actually, the Ryan plan would affect no one who today is 55 or older. Then, in 2023, private insurers could bid for seniors' health insurance alongside traditional Medicare.
Ryan's plan would offer federal money to cover premiums equal to the second lowest bidder -- an amount updated every year -- meaning seniors would always have at least two choices of plans at no cost.
“A senior would have the option of taking that plan, taking a cheaper plan and pocketing some of the savings, or taking a more expensive plan and paying the difference,” senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute Avik Roy said.
"It's not going to be an entirely different structure," Jim Capretta of the Ethics and Public Policy Center said. "It's going to be very much building upon things that are already there."
In part, because the plans would have to offer the same benefits Medicare does, and because private insurers already provide plans to one in four Medicare recipients -- something called Medicare Advantage -- they're attractive because they cover more than regular Medicare, avoiding the cost of supplemental plans called Medigap.
"They often will sign up for a Medicare Advantage plan because they get more comprehensive coverage without the need for a second plan," Capretta said.
He added that many of the same advantages are in the Ryan plan.
Nevertheless, Obama told a group in East Davenport, Iowa, last week that seniors would get stuck with the bill if they choose to opt out of Medicare.
"They'd get a voucher to buy private insurance," he said. "And if it doesn't keep up with costs, well, that's the seniors' problem."
The Congressional Budget Office couldn't quantify the savings from competition in an earlier Ryan plan, so it assumed the cost of private plans would increase as much as health care generally, while the premium support was to be fixed.
So Ryan changed the plan -- so much so that it's now co-sponsored by liberal Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon, who believes the current system is doomed to fail.
In an interview with Fox News about his embracing of the Ryan plan, Wyden predicts "a steady diet of benefit reductions for senior citizens and cost shifting."
"That will all take place until the Medicare guarantee is threatened, and I'm just not going to sit by and let that happen," he said.
"The whole idea is that this competitive process would lead to cheaper insurance for seniors at the same level of benefits that they currently enjoy," Roy said.
Since Medicare has promised tens of trillions of dollars more in benefits that it can possibly pay for, Ryan and Wyden argue it must be changed in order to survive.
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2012/08/22/obama-campaign-attacks-ryan-medicare-plan-early-frequently/#ixzz24N4KMISI
Sunday, August 12, 2012
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