This is more like it - House GOP leader talks entitlement cuts

I've chastised the GOP nutcase crowd trying to cut the budget as not being realistic and not proposing real, long-term, it-would-do-something cuts to things like Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid. Well, maybe that could be changing. If they'd then just realize that the STUPID cuts they proposed to discretionary spending were the wrong way to go, then we'd really have something.

Health Care Benefit Cuts Being Mapped Out By House Republicans

"If you want to be honest with the fiscal problem and the debt, it really is a health care problem," he said Thursday. "If you look at the future of our debt, it primarily comes from our health care entitlements. We have to reform those if we are going to get this debt crisis under control."

Umm, yes, and that was also the reason for the health care reform bill passed last year -- which would eventually lower healh care costs. But they also have to cut entitlements.

"[Rep. Paul] Ryan has been calling for big changes to the social safety net for years. Known as "the roadmap," his approach calls for individuals to take on more of the financial responsibility for retirement, including the costs of health care. The government would provide a floor of protection for everyone, particularly the poor and those in failing health, but middle-class people who desire more than a basic plan would have to pay extra."

Finalmente:

"Republicans this week conceded that the government's budget can't be balanced this decade without cutting into current retirees' Medicare and Social Security benefits, something they've indicated they're unwilling to do. But many tea-party activists and junior lawmakers still believe the red ink can be reduced to zero with just a bit more pain, according to Ryan.

"They literally think you can just balance it, you know, (by cutting) waste, fraud and abuse, foreign aid and NPR (National Public Radio)," Ryan said. "And it doesn't work like that."


MY God, does Ryan actually partially get it?