Here's your regular reminder that while we won't have Paul Ryan to kick around next year (not as speaker of the House, anyway) he still has plans for his last months in office, and those plans are dangerous for millions of Americans. He laid it out at the end of last year in a chat with conservative Denver radio host Ross Kaminsky last year, while the House was busy passing the nearly $2 trillion tax cuts bill that would explode the deficit.
His story then, as always, is that it's not tax cuts that are the problem. No, Medicare and Medicaid are the drivers of "the debt and the deficit." Therefore:
"So we're going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit," Ryan said. He told Kaminsky that Medicare reform "has been my big thing for many, many years, because it's the biggest entitlement. It's gotta be reformed."
Next year is now, and right now the House is working on the budget for 2019, with the intent to go after social insurance programs. We haven't seen that budget yet—they're likely to try to spring it on us at the last possible moment to try to limit the electoral fallout in November—but by all accounts it's going to take aim at Medicare, Medicaid and potentially Social Security, too (which has already experienced unsustainable administrative cuts).
Destroying these programs has been the primary motivating factor in Paul Ryan's political life. Don't expect him, or his merry band of nihilists in the House, to see this phase of his career end without trying to make it happen.
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