Apparently it is much worse than what I wrote about the highlights that were released in advance of the full budget plan:
The plan would condemn millions to the ranks of the uninsured, raise health costs for seniors and renege on the obligation to keep poor children fed. It envisions lower taxes for the wealthy than even George W. Bush imagined: a permanent extension for his tax cuts, plus large permanent estate-tax cuts, a new business tax cut and a lower top income tax rate for the richest taxpayers.
Compared to current projections, spending on government programs would be cut by $4.3 trillion over 10 years, while tax revenues would go down by $4.2 trillion. So spending would be eviscerated, mainly to make room for continued tax cuts.
[...]
They certainly won’t solve the two most pressing problems in the nation’s health care system: the relentlessly rising cost of care and the shamefully high number of uninsured Americans — now hovering around 50 million. Mr. Ryan is also determined to repeal the new health care reform law. Never mind that the law would make real progress on both fronts, covering more than 30 million of the uninsured and pushing to make health care delivery more efficient and effective and less costly.
One of Mr. Ryan’s most damaging ideas is to change Medicare and Medicaid from entitlement programs — covering everyone who is eligible for a defined set of services. Instead, Washington would contribute set amounts that would almost certainly grow more slowly than medical costs. You will hear a lot about how squeezing outlays will mean more efficiency. The real result is that the most vulnerable — the elderly, the poor, the disabled — will have to pay more for care or forgo treatment.
[...]
Mr. Ryan would largely privatize Medicare starting in 2022. New enrollees would be given “premium supports” to help them buy private insurance. The rich would get lower subsidies, the sickest and poorest would get additional assistance. Once again, the federal payments would likely grow more slowly than costs forcing individuals to buy skimpier coverage or pay more.
And it is laughably titled "The Path to Prosperity." Sure, the Path to Prosperity if you're incredibly fucking wealthy and can afford your own retirement and health care costs now that Republicans are seeking to effectively abolish Medicare, cripple Medicaid to the greatest extent possible by federal action, slash federal spending (except for defense of course), and do all of this while cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations.
I already said this before, but the most terrifying aspect out of all of this is that the enormous pussies in the Democratic party do not offer serious alternatives, or not in the manner in which Ryan proposes such utter batshit. That is to say, the Democratic alternative is almost always a less evil version of whatever the Republicans are proposing. Rarely ever do they stake out a position equally far to their end of the ideological spectrum and then negotiate downward from there. And they think that this piss-pants approach to negotiation is good policy, or that what voters really want is compromise and agreement over, you know, getting fisted by the GOP. Fortunately, not all of our Democrats are useless:
WASHINGTON -- House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) laid out the Democrats' plan of attack on the Republican budget proposal, telling progressive bloggers on a conference call Wednesday that the plan "has to be snuffed out" immediately to prevent changes to Medicare.
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Her approach will be similar to the House Democrat strategy in 2005, when President George W. Bush wanted to privatize Social Security. At the time, Democrats held town hall after town hall to criticize the president's plan, but did not offer their own proposal -- the lack of which Pelosi said was "the most important" part of the 2005 strategy's success.
"We couldn't have our own proposal on Social Security, because it would confuse the public [about] which one does this and which one does that, and once you put another proposal on the table you're conceding that there must be some big problem," Pelosi said. "And we're saying that we have a proposal on the table. It's called Social Security."
Pelosi said the main difference between that fight over Social Security and the current budget fight over Medicare is the amount of time Democrats have to raise awareness about the plan.
"This has to be done in a matter of days," she said. "This thing has to be snuffed out. The public needs to know that this is what [Republicans] would do left to their own devices. [...] They would end Medicare for seniors."
Exactly. You don't negotiate or compromise with a policy that is clinically insane and threatens to plunge us even deeper into our national aspirations of third world/banana republic status. You call it what it is - Republicans want to end Medicare, gut Medicaid, slash non-discretionary spending while exempting defense, cut taxes for the rich, and they want to do it on the backs of seniors and the poor and middle class.
If the Democrats cede any ground on this issue, then they may as well just give up on being a national party. This is not a moment to flog their bipartisanship fetish or compromise. Poll after poll shows that the public is diametrically opposed to every policy that Ryan is so fucking "courageous" for proposing. This is the hill to die on, and could very well fuel a resurgence in the 2012 election if they play their cards right.
But what's almost more disgusting than the plan itself is how the media has slobbered all over the plan, visibly unable to contain their excitement at the mere thought of Republicans fucking over 90% of Americans. It has been called everything from "courageous" to "serious" to "commendable." Apparently fucking over poor people and seniors while lavishing even more wealth on the rich is what qualifies for good economic policy these days. Many commentators and pundits have admitted that they do not necessarily agree with the policy, and admit that it has very little chance of being enacted. But nonetheless, they scream with glee about how courageous Paul Ryan for the very act of proposing such a regressive, draconian budget. In a normal reality-based world, with an independent press with a vested interest in conducting objective oversight of Washington, we might hear it reported that economic policies that involve tax cuts for corporations and the top 1% of the population and tossing future generations off of Medicare as health care costs spiral out of control are regressive, wrong-headed, and should be categorically rejected. Or you know, if any of the individuals in our very serious media were to actually be adversely affected by the Ryan travesty, maybe they would actually give a shit. But we do not live in that world, and we do not have that press corps. This is America - the land where stagnating wages, extreme income inequality, regressive tax policies, and millions going hungry or bankrupt from getting sick or injured constitutes sound, commendable economic policy. All we have to do is wait for the free market to touch us or pull on those bootstraps a little harder and we too can reach the economic heights of our plutocrat overlords.
It is times like these that our lack of a functioning press is so incredibly dangerous and desperately needed.
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