Charlie Pierce eviscerates Paul Ryan's Randian excuse for a budget.
Paul Ryan's economics are not economics so much as they are a statement of political philosophy. All political economics are based in political philosophy but, in Ryan's case, political philosophy is not the root of his notion of a political economy. His political philosophy is his notion of political economics. He believes that there are certain things that the government should not do for its citizens, and he would believe that if the balance showed a 20-gozillion surplus. His goal is to stop the government from doing those things. Everything else he does — every "budget" he proposes — is in service to that philosophy. His whole career has been made within the confines of that philosophy. It has blinded him to the very real human effects of what would occur if his "budget" ever was adopted, it also has blinded him to his own staggering hypocrisy — a man seeking to demolish the very safety net that got him through high-school and college, a man talking about the perils of government who's never had a real job outside of it. He is engaged in an extended act of camouflage through which he concocts disguises for policy preferences that the country has told him, over and over again, it does not want, and which the country has told him, over and over again, do not reflect the country's idea of itself.
I don't believe Paul Ryan is a sociopath (at least, not in the way Mitt Romney was) but I cannot understand how he lives with himself, proposing a horrorshow like this. Does he not realize that people will die if they're thrown off Medicaid? Does he not know that all of us will end up paying for the people who no longer have insurance, who go again and again to emergency rooms to get pain relief for those workplace injuries, or antibiotics for those rotten teeth, but who can never solve the underlying problems because they can't afford it? Does he not envision himself getting older, with the slow inevitable creeping malaise of arthritis or diabetes or heart disease coming upon him, with no way to avoid it because the voucher (excuse me, "premium support") he gets from the government does not provide enough to pay for the care and screenings that could prevent it? Does he not consider that poor women who can no longer get family planning services from Planned Parenthood will end up giving birth to children they did not want and cannot afford, and everyone else will support said children? (Texas recently ran into this conundrum, and is now considering restoring funding. Gee, reality wins again!)
Really, how can you look at yourself in the mirror each morning while pushing such immoral bullshit?
Speaking of morality, here's a lengthy commentary from faith leaders condemning the Ryan budget.
This budget, if pursued and passed, will send a message, in both tone and tactic, that our government is more concerned with protecting those who control wealth and privilege than supporting those upon whom that wealth and privilege has been built.
It's getting to the point where, each time I see Paul Ryan on the tube, I'm looking for the rotting corpse of Ayn Rand shambling along behind him, attached at the hip.
Yet this smiling blue-eyed boy still advocates this nonsense, while ignoring, as Charlie Pierce said, the "staggering hypocrisy" of making sure other people won't get their Medicare and Social Security now that he's got his.
Just like Joe Biden said during the vice-presidential debate, "now all of a sudden these guys [pointing to Paul Ryan] are so seized with concern about the debt they created."
Yeah. They're so concerned they want to destroy the New Deal and all the progress we've made over the past century....all for our own good.
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