Congressman Paul Ryan claims that we’re “not going to refight the past,” but that’s clearly what he has in mind as he proposes his most comical budget yet.
It has it all – tax cuts for the rich, repealing the benefits of Obamacare, ends the expansion of Medicaid under Obamacare, block-grants Medicaid, cuts Medicare, block-grants foot stamps (SNAP), and it increases the deficit by counting fictitious revenue that will spring up from the ground if we simply water Wall Street and watch it grow. In short — it’s everything they ran on (and lost on) in 2012.
Perhaps nothing puts it in a better perspective than this
With the exceptions of Rick Perry and Scott Walker, virtually every other Republican governor that stood with the Romney/Ryan campaign in 2012 on the issue of Medicaid expansion has since caved and reversed course. The gears have already begun to churn and state insurance exchanges, which the new Ryan budget would defund, have long been in the works. There’s no going back.
This is a fantasy. It’s the junk-shot of every bad idea Paul Ryan has had since 2011 aimed at the leaking Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico, except in this case what’s leaking is social progress and the GOP’s electoral future, not oil.