[sickoflibs]

RE :”At the same time, we are going broke, and I don't know how to fix that without adjusting entitlements. Maybe the GOP should have not produced a budget, and then been more “flexible” after 2012?”

You mean proposing ‘adjusting’ future entitlements 10 years in the future so that those Republicans proposing it will be safely retired, or voters memory of the act will, before anyone can claim it affected them?

I would have been much more sympathetic if they didn't split the voters into groups by age, the BIG winners and the BIG losers, based on who they need the most, similar to what Dems do.

In 2010 when they were using the Obama-care medicare cuts to their advantage we heard little from them about requiring medicare cuts for the deficit.

[stephenjohnbanker]

” You mean proposing ‘adjusting’ future entitlements 10 years in the future so that those Republicans proposing it will be safely retired..”

Yeah..

[ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas]

You mean proposing ‘adjusting’ future entitlements 10 years in the future so that those Republicans proposing it will be safely retired, or voters memory of the act will, before anyone can claim it affected them?

I don't think the budget changes are supposed to wait 10 years before they begin. Here is a chart of Ryan's 2011 budget. Do you have a chart for the 2012 budget? In the chart, Ryan's deficits are purple (yes, the Ryan budget will borrow money, but not as much as the govt. is planning to do). The red bars are what would happen in a perfect world.

You raise some good questions:

1) If the Ryan budget, even if it works as advertised, will not balance the budget, is it worth losing votes to sucklings of the govt. teat (many through their own fault, but not all of them)? Is the best we can hope for a last minute "continuing resolution" that grants Obama only 90% of what he wants? Theoretically, a Ryan (house) bill would wrestle with a Reid (senate) bill, but they don't seem to do that in congress any more. Clinton's vetoes of Newt's bills in the 1990s are the stuff of legend for Dems.

2) Bearing in mind that the Gramm-Rudman bill failed to control spending, is there any hope that congress can behave itself in a 10 year period?

[ding_dong_daddy_from_dumas]

I would have been much more sympathetic if they didn't split the voters into groups by age, the BIG winners and the BIG losers, based on who they need the most, similar to what Dems do.

Maybe they should have made it a more gradual change, but "gradual" changes tend to become perverted over time. I don't know any sensible way to do it without making age the main variable.