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Josh Marshall has an excellent piece over at TPM as to why the Ryan (R-WI) budget matters.
In other words, it's sort of a 'shadow budget' or first draft of the Republican budget. And among a lot of other things it calls for deep cuts in Social Security benefits, partial privatization of Social Security and big shift of taxes to the middle class and abolition of Medicare in favor of vouchers which seniors will use to purchase private health insurance.
Marshall says Minority Leader Boehner and others are playing it coy, saying the budget is full of Republican ideas to cut deficit spending, but stopping short of saying it is the official Republican budget.
... the question is whether the entire 2010 congressional mid-term is going to be fought out as a colossal bait and switch gambit.
If the Republicans can dance around these issues, they may take the majority. This would be catastrophic on many levels, especially because the policies they're espousing are the ones that caused the financial meltdown. Individuals who counted on Social Security and Medicare and their families will be in a never-ending state of financial collapse.
As with school voucher programs that never pay the total cost of private school tuition, health insurance vouchers will not pay the total cost of insurance premiums. People who have worked all their lives for retirement will not have one, unless they are very wealthy. Instead of a "death tax" for the few, there will be paupers' deaths for the many.
On all these points, press failure to report the policies the Republicans are actually running on can pretty much be assumed. It's happening now. And House Republicans are already up in arms that they're being pressed on their support for privatizing Social Security and abolishing Medicare.
Voters need and deserve to know where each side stands on these issues. Because it's what is on the table in the 2010 election.
