Ryan's Plan is Obvious, Except to Many in the Media.

The following comment states clearly reality of Rep. Paul Ryan dubiously titled "The Path to Prosperity."

John Farmer is a Star-Ledger columnist wrote this about Ryan’s plan:
“…his plan — draconian cuts in domestic spending, even the elimination or privatization of some social programs (notably Medicare and Medicaid) while lowering tax rates for corporations and individuals — would use an economic crisis as a vehicle for a partisan putsch on the liberal legacy and ideals. The burden of Ryan’s reductions would fall on the most vulnerable Americans, He would, in short, reward those who provide votes, manpower and money for the Republican Party while penalizing those segments of society most closely identified with the Democratic Party. And there’s a nasty term for that — partisanship. Economist Bruce Bartlett, a treasury official in the Reagan administration and a recovering supply-sider, was equally rough on Ryan. 

The proposal, he said, is “a monstrosity” that shreds the social safety to reward the wealthy, is based on “make-believe numbers and unreasonable assessments” that “pander to the tea party” while ignoring the need for more revenue — a.k.a. higher taxes. 

With the country so badly divided, no proposal as one-sided ideologically and politically as Ryan’s has any chance of becoming law — or even the instrument for a much-needed great debt debate. He blew it. Smart as he is, Ryan must have known as much. But he couldn’t shake his past as a zealous and partisan supply-sider. As he said in unveiling his plan, “this is not a budget. This is a plan.”

Two Republican arguments cannot be ignored; future seniors will not need the same coverage as our current retirees, and Democratic warnings of draconian cuts is “fear mongering” while they doom and gloom us with predictions that Medicare will break the country. Turning logic on its head, take a look at this convoluted lie in a Boston Herald editorial:

Senior Democrats already are accusing Ryan of throwing grandma under the bus without saying that Medicare would remain unchanged for everybody 55 or older today. We expect Democrats will soon discover that the old dishonest scare tactics don’t work. Grandma has become one savvy consumer — and the “kids” even more so.

That’s one BIG lie. Those savvy kids have got to know they will be just like their grandparents someday. In fact, they may even have access to costlier new technologies that’ll extend their lives dramatically. 

But Paul Krugman said it best with this recent commentary:

The stories I have in mind say things like this: “There are those who criticize the Ryan plan, saying that it’s too radical/goes too far.” 

As a card-carrying member of "Those Who," I protest. This is just wrong. People like me don’t say that the Ryan plan is too radical; we say that it’s a fraud. The spending cuts are largely fake, either because they’re just magic asterisks or because they wouldn’t survive politically; the revenue estimates are fake, because they combine huge tax cuts with vague assurances that extra revenue will be found by closing loopholes. There’s no there there — except for big tax cuts for the rich and pain for the poor. 

All I can think here is that reporters are so deep into the Beltway conventional wisdom that this is a Bold, Serious Plan, that they just tune out the people saying that no, it’s not.