Ryan's Recycled "Tipping Point" Scare Tactic Divides Americans, Hides Hypocrisy.

Have you seen the Paul Ryan headline yet?

Ryan says U.S. at financial and cultural 'tipping point'

Hmm, that late breaking headline sounds really familiar. Oh my gosh, here’s that same story as summarized so perfectly by Dana Milbank way back on March20th:

Ryan’s justification (for his plan) was straight out of Dickens. He wants to improve the moral fiber of the poor. There is, he told the audience  at the conservative American Enterprise Institute later Tuesday, an “insidious moral tipping point, and I think the president is accelerating this.” Too many Americans, he said, are receiving more from the government than they pay in taxes.

Deja vu. That’s what Ryan said in the story I read today on the front page of the Wisconsin State Journal. He's a demagogic genius and class warrior. 

But are conservative voters just plain stupid? Think about it; with more people relying on unemployment, state Medicaid programs and food stamps, Paul Ryan has decided to attack the problem his party created, by going after these victims of Wall Street and corporate off shoring. Ryan, like most Republicans, is a freeloader with an easy answer. Cut, cut, cut:

Ryan would cut $770 billion over 10 years from Medicaid and other health programs for the poor, compared with President Obama’s budget … and $1.9 trillion from a category simply labeled “other mandatory.” Pressed to explain … Ryan allowed that the bulk of those “other mandatory” cuts come from food stamps, welfare, federal employee pensions and support for farmers … Ryan would cut spending on such programs by $5.3 trillion, much of which currently goes to the have-nots. He would then give that money to America’s haves: some $4.3 trillion in tax cuts, compared with current policies, according to Citizens for Tax Justice.

Dana Milbank went on to explain:

After recalling his family’s immigration from Ireland generations ago, and his belief in the virtue of people who “pull themselves up by the bootstraps,” Ryan warned that a generous safety net “lulls able-bodied people into lives of complacency and dependency, which drains them of their very will and incentive to make the most of their lives. It’s demeaning.”

Demeaning, like when Ryan pulled himself up by the bootstraps with the help of Social Security?

FiredogLake: Turns out, when Ryan was an able-bodied young lad, he used that hammock to pay for his college education.

One day as a 16 year old, Ryan came upon the lifeless body of his father. Paul Ryan, Sr. had died of a heart attack at age 55, leaving the Janesville Craig High School 10th grader, his three older brothers and sisters and his mother alone. With his father’s passing, young Paul collected Social Security benefits until age 18, which he put away for college. College costs have skyrocketed since Ryan entered Miami University in 1988, yet Ryan wants to slash the very system that he benefited from because it produces “dependency.” Figures. This is a guy who requires his staffers to read Atlas Shrugged, and we now know that Ayn Rand was a big welfare queen herself.

Here's Ezra Klein's take on the Ryan budget: