Paul Ryan's Budget: From the Great Minds Think Alike Dept

     Yesterday I wrote about Ryan's new budget scheduled to be released this week that he revealed last night will not only again call for the voucherization of Medicare but the full repeal of ObamaCare. I wondered what exactly he thought the election was about as this was the ticket he ran on.

    http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/03/do-elections-have-consequences-paul.html

    The great minds I have in mind in my title are both Talking Points Memo and Greg Sargent's the Plum Line who both have variations on the question I asked in the above link. Talking Points Memo front page this morning said 'Election? What Election?'

    http://livewire.talkingpointsmemo.com/entry/ryans-new-budget-repeals-obamacare?ref=fpa

    Sargent's piece's title asked the question "Didn't We Just Have an Election?"

     http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/03/11/the-morning-plum-didnt-we-just-have-an-election/

     I guess the reason everyone is asking this question is it's the obvious one that is just begging for an answer  in light of Ryan's latest budget being if anything more stringent than his last-it will have to be if it really does balance in 10 years, though we'll have to see this to believe it.

     Ryan claimed yesterday that the election was not in any way a vote for ObamaCare or against his voucherization scheme-he has asked however that we not refer to it as vouchers as nothing actually shows up in anyone's mailbox but rather call it "premium support."

      ""I would argue against your premise that we lost this issue during the campaign: We won the senior vote," Ryan said."
  
       http://diaryofarepublicanhater.blogspot.com/2013/03/do-elections-have-consequences-paul.html

       Well, of course, the clever part of his scheme was to assure senior citizen's that he would let them keep their Medicare-that he would only voucherize those of their children and grandchildren. 

        The question which really begs, however, is what exactly Ryan thinks this election was about? Does he think the lost any issue during the campaign? You sure wouldn't know it by a look at this budget. 

         "Imagine that Mitt Romney had decisively defeated Obama in the 2012 election on a platform of tax cuts for the rich and deep cuts to government as the only way to reduce the deficit, dramatically repudiating the President’s call for higher taxes on the wealthy, continued implementation of the biggest expansion of the safety net in 60 years, and more government spending to boost the economy."

         "Then imagine that Democrats in the Senate (the only part of government they controlled) responded to this by proposing to dramatically expand health care and stimulus spending and pay down the deficit only with 100 percent tax hikes — and not a single penny more in spending cuts — and on top of that, then suggested President Romney has failed to sincerely try to find common ground with them."

        "This is pretty much what Republicans did on the Sunday shows yesterday — in reverse. On Fox News Sunday, Paul Ryan confirmed that his budget will repeal Obamacare (even as he counts in his budget the $700 billion in Obamacare Medicare cuts that Republicans campaigned against in 2012). The Ryan budget will supposedly wipe out the deficit in 10 years. This likely will mean even deeper cuts than the ones in his previous budget, which represented the GOP’s fiscal agenda writ large and broadly speaking was rejected by voters last November."

       "At the same time, Republicans fanned out across the Sunday shows to claim that they’re glad Obama has tried to reach out to them, but only time will tell whether Obama will make real offers to them that prove his outreach is genuine. Paul Ryan — the same Paul Ryan who again called for repealing Obamacare yesterday — said this: “The proof will be in the coming weeks as to whether or not it is a real sincere outreach to find common ground.” Meanwhile, there were no signs GOP leaders are willing to give an inch on new revenues, even though they are being offered more in entitlement cuts in exchange for them."

     http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2013/03/11/the-morning-plum-didnt-we-just-have-an-election/

      So Ryan is having it both ways-he calls for the end of ObamaCare yet at the same time he includes the savings from it in the budget calculation.