Class Warfare

Time for the gloves to come off.

Here's what the Ryan plan does:

It effectively ends Medicaid and Medicare.  Medicaid - which benefits mostly children and the elderly - will be squeezed into irrelevancy by block grants.  States will commence a race to the bottom.  I'm guessing Mississippi will lead the way.  Medicare will be phased out and replaced with vouchers to be used to buy health insurance.  This was the plan behind Medicare Advantage, and it proved to be LESS efficient than single payer Medicare.  Once you get older and sicker, it is tough to see $15,000 buying much insurance at all, especially in 2022 (the number does not appear to be adjusted for inflation in health care costs).

That was outrageous.

But it gets worse.

Ryan's plan cuts taxes for businesses and the wealthy.

On the one hand, it's unlikely to pass the Senate, and good Lord, I would hope if it did, Obama would veto it.  So it's unlikely to become law.

At the moment.

What needs to happen is a real debate, which Obama promised us at Christmas, about taxes and the deficit.  The GOP has now just laid its marker down: less benefits for the poor and elderly, more tax cuts for the rich. Again, the Democrats need to demagogue the living shit out of this.  They got hit with Death Panels in 2010, so turn about is fair play.

And they need to do so quickly and forcefully.  Already, the news media is buying the line that this is a "courageous" budget, because it attacks sacred cows.  When ACA put reforms in place to limit Medicare's growth, it was "risky" and "socialism", but Republicans are courageous.

But what's so courageous about rich Republicans cutting other people's benefits?  They aren't going to get hit with this.

Here's the terrifying scenario:  You're 67 and you have a massive heart attack and need triple bypass surgery and a regimen of drugs for the rest of your life.  You think $15K will cover that?  Bullshit.

So before you know, you've run through your savings, your depleted 401K, which took a hit because we deregulated Wall Street again under President Bachmann and they tanked the economy again.

You lose your house, your savings and you're forced to move in with your kids who are already struggling because all the good jobs have been outsourced to Chindia.

What am I missing here?

This is class warfare.  This is the minions of the malefactors of great wealth destroying the social safety net.

And it's patently unfair (which matters in politics).  I have paid into Medicare my whole working life.  I subsidize a generation of retirees, and will subsidized another one before I myself retire.  For that, I am promised that my kids and my students will subsidize my Medicare.

That's the social contract of the post-New Deal America.  And the GOP wants to tear it to pieces, urinate on it, light it on fire and feed the ashes to the swine.

I am having trouble managing my outrage over this, also because I am aware that there will be little outrage in the comfortable halls of Washington.  This won't hurt them.

It would hurt me.  It would hurt my kids.

Fuck you, Republicans.  This is personal.

UPDATE: What Josh Marshall says.