Ayn Rand fan boy Paul Ryan’s plan to destroy social security in order to ‘reform’ it

EddieMunsterNo one despises the GOP’s alleged boy genius, Ayn Rand fan boy and failed vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan (R-WI), more than I do. Not even Professor Paul Krugman, who has accurately portrayed Paul Ryan as The Flimflam Man.

Well, I take that back. Charles Pierce at Esquire does share my despise for Paul Ryan with an equal level of contempt. Paul Ryan’s Dubious Leadership: The Margin Of Finagle Revisited:

There are three things that have happened over the past few weeks that are connected, albeit with largely invisible tendrils of bullshit and cupidity. First, under the leadership of Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin and First Runner-Up in our most recent vice-presidential pageant, the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives, of which Ryan will be chairman of the House Ways And Means Committee, determined that, henceforth, a three-card monte technique called “dynamic scoring” would be employed by the CBO to judge the effect of what Ryan insists on calling “tax reform.” Dynamic scoring is a scam.

The ways you know it’s a scam are twofold: 1) Paul Ryan is proposing it, and Paul Ryan should not be trusted around the federal budget for the same reason that we would not trust Bernie Madoff with our checkbooks, and 2) it purports to prove, almost always, something that history has taught us is not the case, and that common sense should have told us never made any sense; namely, that tax cuts actually raise revenues. Adopting this measure would have the happy consequence of demolishing the credibility of the CBO, which has made it a habit of demonstrating that most of Ryan’s “budgets” were ludicrous documents written in moonshine.

The second thing that happened is that, yes, there’s again a bustling in the hedgerow about Social Security, and the zombie-eyed granny starver is in the middle of this one, too, and it is a remarkably cynical strategy even for a guy who spent his formative years getting a high school education on my nickel and everyone else’s through Social Security survivor’s benefits. (You’re welcome again, dickhead.) Ryan plans to use crippled people to scare old people into helping him impoverish them. I am, of course, paraphrasing, but not by much.

The House has adopted a rule that could force lawmakers to tackle the issue by the end of 2016, when the program is projected to run out of reserves, triggering automatic benefit cuts. An easy fix was available. Congress could have redirected payroll tax revenue from Social Security’s much larger retirement program, as lawmakers have done before. But Tuesday’s new rule blocks such a move, unless as part of a larger plan to improve Social Security’s finances, by either cutting benefits or raising taxes.

The disability program, on which 11 million people and their families depend, always has been a fat target, as I learned in researching the story of Marcus Stephens back during the Clinton administration. But this is an entirely new method of ratfking the program to death. Instead of doing what the Congress always did, the House majority, at the urging of Paul Ryan, is framing this as the disabled robbing from the elderly, and the House majority is saying that, if you want to do that now, you have to come up with a “larger plan” to “improve” the entire program — and for “improve,” read, “privatize.”

Rep. Tom Reed, R-New York, said he sponsored the provision to prevent Congress from “raiding” the retirement fund to prop up the disability program. Reed said lawmakers are working on proposals to bolster the disability program’s finances, but that taking tax money from the retirement program is “a short-term Band-Aid.” Added the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisconsin: “We just want to make sure we improve the integrity of the Social Security trust fund all across the board.”

His plan to improve the trust fund’s integrity is to hand it over to the Wall Street oligarchs who financed his political career after he graduated from college and got off the public dime.

And, Part The Third, is Ryan’s announcement yesterday that he doesn’t plan to compete for a seat in the Clown Car this time around. This ought to be no surprise. He brought nothing to the ticket in 2012, not even his home precinct, let alone his home state. If he ran, he might have to explain in public and in some detail his new math that doesn’t make sense, or the “tax loopholes” that he keeps talking about but resolutely keeps to himself, or his plans to destroy Social Security in order to “reform” it. The magic asterisks lose their magic when you have to explain the trick behind them, which is why Joe Biden laughed Ryan off the stage in their one debate.

If Ryan were in any way honest, he’d lose 49 states. But, if he were in any way honest, he wouldn’t be Paul Ryan, either. The man is the single biggest fake in American public life. He should have no more credibility on these issues than does Sarah Palin, his predecessor in the second spot on the national ticket. Any Democratic congresscritter who seeks to make a deal with him should be drummed out of Washington. Any reporter or pundit who takes his plans for the economy seriously should be reassigned to the custodial staff.

* * *

[Ryan] is perfectly positioned to reward the “makers” and punish the “takers.” He is perfectly positioned to demolish the entire idea of a social safety net, piecemeal, and to get government out of the lives of the people who need it most while making it more fully the servant of the people who will keep him in expensive wine now that the rest of us don’t have to pay for his beers at the campus pub. He’s got his, Jack, and he’s coming after yours.

All you elderly people who voted for Republicans because you waste your retirement years watching FAUX News all day and swallow copious amounts of their bullshit GOPropaganda, you are responsible for your social security now being under attack by the GOP. You have no one to blame but yourselves.

5 thoughts on “Ayn Rand fan boy Paul Ryan’s plan to destroy social security in order to ‘reform’ it”

  1. If republicans want the benefits cut they can start by cutting benefits to their republican constituents.

  2. Maybe him an U.S. Senator John McCain can run for the president and vice president together. In every war social security has always been raided to pay for the wars. McCain has gone all over the world kicking in everyones teeth and starting wars. Maybe they can work together in stripping America and pocketing the money from the wars industrial complex that McCain and is state has their hands in. McCain just stold the Arizona American native copper and sold it to a foreign company that Iran owns a lot of stock in. Arizona has a huge war industry complex.

Comments are closed.