I must be a masochist, but I watch "Morning Joke" on MSNBC, to catch the news and to keep up with the alternative framing of what goes on in Washington. I'm amazes at the number of guests on the show who praise representative Ryan for his "courageous" budget proposal. As I see it, there's nothing courageous about it at all. Some details:
1) At a time when we have a 40% shortfall in taxes compared to our expenses, he actually proposes more tax cuts for the rich and for corporations. In any analysis except for that of the Heritage Foundation, this just increases the deficit.
2) To make up for the lost tax revenue, he adds a value added tax, in essence, a middle class tax increase. The added revenue from the VAT doesn't quite make up for the tax cuts for the rich, so after two parts of his budget are in place, he has still increased the deficit in the out years.
3) Now he needs to make up some serious money, so he cuts it all out of Medicaid (by making it a block grant and cutting funding) and Medicare (by ending it and giving a partial subsidy for private insurance.
After all of that, he still hasn't solved the budget deficit problem.
So tell me, how courageous is it to suck up to the rich and screw over the middle class. Better yet, now that we have newt Gingrich back in the political mix, and get reminded (ad nauseum) of his history with Bill Clinton, why don't we all just ask representative Ryan:
"If you Republicans impeached Bill Clinton for consensual sex, what should we Americans do to you, when you will do to the rich what Monica did to Bill?"