By
My guess
is that Rep. Paul Ryan, the Republican Party’s highly touted budget guru,
doesn’t have a very tight grip on the concept of irony.
Otherwise,
why would he choose April Fools’ Day to release the latest version of what the
GOP intends to do to federal programs (and to the people who count on them) if
it takes total control of Congress?
But there he was on April 1, declaring with
a straight face that, “We [Republicans] believe that we owe it to the country
to offer an alternative to the status quo. It’s just that simple.”
Ryan
envisions turning Medicare into a privatized “WeDon’tCare” program.
He wants to outright pull the plug on the new health care law that just
extended coverage to millions of people, replacing it with, uh, nothing.
The
Wisconsin Republican’s budget scheme also slashes job training, education,
infrastructure repairs, medical research, public broadcasting, the arts, and
pretty much anything else that regular people need.
Still,
he claims that he’s “helping” — in an ideological, Republicany way. For
example, Ryan explains that whacking food stamps “empowers recipients to get
off the aid rolls and back on the payrolls.”
What
payrolls, you ask? That’s not my problem, says the guy drawing $174,000 a year
and a gold package of benefits from the government he pretends to despise.
Yeah,
let ‘em eat right-wing ideology. I wish it were all an April Fools’ joke. But
Ryan’s joke is on us.
OtherWords columnist Jim Hightower is a radio commentator,
writer, and public speaker. He’s also editor of the populist newsletter, The
Hightower Lowdown. OtherWords.org