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In the wake of its failure in Europe, Republicans must sense that being cheerleaders for austerity isn't a big winner in America. So what does Paul Ryan (R-WI) do, since his budget slashes tax rates on the wealthy and services for working people? He just pretends it doesn't.

GREGORY: This question of austerity in Europe. They had failing economies, nearly depressed economies. The answer throughout the region was to slash their budgets. Has it failed?

RYAN: Well, no David. I would say, they've also raised taxes, they have...This is a cautionary tale of what happens when politicians who make a lot of empty promises end up running out of the ability to borrow money at cheap rates and now they're broken promises. It's a cautionary tale of what will happen to us if we stay on the path we're on. What we're saying is let's get on growth and prevent austerity. The whole premise of our budget is to preempt austerity by getting our borrowing under control, having tax reform for economic growth, and preventing Medicare and Social Security and Medicaid from going bankrupt. That preempts austerity, the President, his budget...puts us on a path toward European austerity.

So now President Obama wants austerity? Seriously? I thought he was the biggest taxer and spender EVAH?

Of course, none of this makes any sense at all. Ryan's budget cuts spending by $5.3T over the next 10 years, including basically ending Medicare -- while giving huge tax cuts to rich people. That's the definition of austerity.

Oh, and if Ryan's so worried about "getting our borrowing under control" -- why does his budget make the debt worse?

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It can't be repeated enough: Republicans really don't care about debt or deficits. Case in point, Mittens gave a big speech on Tuesday in Iowa attacking the President over the national debt -- and yet, he wants to make it $2.6T larger in 10 years. And on Wednesday's Morning Joe, Scarborough put this very simple, direct question to Paul Ryan:

SCARBOROUGH: You're talking about how Mitt Romney's going to be responsible. You look at Mitt Romney's plans, though -- you add them all up -- the deficit goes up just as much as it does under Barack Obama. You know, if you look at their plans, there's not a big difference. [...] At the end of the day, Paul, how much is the national debt going to be reduced under Mitt Romney's tax plans and spending plans?

Ryan's response? He huffily protests that Romney's plan is very different from Obama's because it cuts "entitlements." But did you hear him ever say how much the deficit will actually come down under Mitt Romney? Me neither.

Also, Scarborough is wrong -- Romney would actually increase the deficit much more than Obama.

So why is Ryan praising Romney's plans? Because they reflect Republican values: cutting taxes even lower for rich people, while slashing services for the elderly and poor.

But this has absolutely nothing to do with debt and deficits, and Republicans should be called out on this little con game they've been playing every time.

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Lately the Catholic Church seems to be disturbingly active in the political landscape, playing both sides against the middle and projecting a fairly bipolar image at the same time. First there was the nun smackdown, and then a couple of days later those very same Catholic bishops came out swinging against Paul Ryan's budget proposal, blasting him for gutting programs that serve the poor and needy. Their specific criticism was that Ryan's proposals do not "meet moral criteria", and was an unusually strong condemnation. Keep in mind, those same bishops had just blasted the nuns for caring about the poor instead of stopping abortions or same-sex marriage. Alrighty then.

At any rate, Catholics United, an organization dedicated to promoting social justice and welfare issues, called on the Bishops back in March to speak out against the budget, reminding them that their focus should be on "the least of us."

Now we have Bill O'Reilly, who is Catholic, going after Catholics United's executive director claiming that the poor folks will take everything and bankrupt the country. Cry me a river.

Just for the record, Billo has a record of treading softly with some Catholic bishops. There's this interview with Bishop Dolan, where he allows the birth control debate to be framed entirely through the Pope's eyes. Or this rant at the Unitarians for their temerity to challenge the vaunted Bishops.

Nay, nay, forget all of these things and note what Billo himself has written about being Catholic and how that relates to others:

If you cut through all the bull, the doctrines of treating others as you want to be treated, forgiveness and redemption, and charity for all stand the test of time. Even if the atheists are right and there is no God, the philosophy of Jesus is full-force positive. Live the way he lived, and the world will be a better place.

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Perhaps finally realizing that praising the cruel, shallow philosophy of a second-rate novelist -- then writing legislation which pays tribute that philosophy -- isn't a big winner in American politics, Paul Ryan (R-WI) and his partners in crime at the National Review now want us to believe he was never an Ayn Rand disciple at all.

“I reject her philosophy,” Ryan says firmly. “It’s an atheist philosophy. It reduces human interactions down to mere contracts and it is antithetical to my worldview. If somebody is going to try to paste a person’s view on epistemology to me, then give me Thomas Aquinas,” who believed that man needs divine help in the pursuit of knowledge. “Don’t give me Ayn Rand,” he says.

O RLY?

"The reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand," Ryan said at a D.C. gathering four years ago honoring the author of "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead."

That would seem to be the opposite of "reject."

Nice try, Paul.

UPDATE
Check out this campaign video in which Paul Ryan praises Rand, saying she "best job of anybody to build a moral case for capitalism."

UPDATE 2
An alternate video, with a slightly different message, is shown above.

There was a time when there were statesmen among the GOP's elected and appointed officials. Men of academic and intellectual accomplishment, such as Dwight Eisenhower, Earl Warren, Nelson Rockefeller and yes, George H.W. Bush. Men and women who didn't brag about not having a passport (the estimable Dick Armey), misunderstand how birth control works or think French kissing was invented in Gaul.

Those were the days.

For the past generation, Republican leaders, talk-show hosts and elected officials have made it their mission to mock anyone of serious intellectual import (liberal elitist!), attack the professional class and wonder aloud about proven science on about as constant a loop as Sex In The City reruns on E!. They have fed at the trough of what the late historian Richard Hofstadter dubbed Anti-intellectualism In American Life.

These decisions have had their consequences. One of the most loyal groups to emerge among what Ruy Teixeira has called The Emerging Democratic Majority are professionals located among "Ideopolis" clusters around the country, usually major cities or college towns and their suburbs. Those who make their living with creativity that requires advanced education, such as software developers, architects and nurses, have abandoned the Grand Old Party in droves. For some reason, seeing gravity as part of suspiciously Semitic War on Christmas, or the principle of inertia as a left-wing plot to grow welfare rolls, just doesn't hold the same chant-"USA"-three-times-and don-an-American-flag-bikini cache for those post-GED.

So it should be no surprise that if you're conservative and you chew your own food, or are willing to try three syllables on for size, you might just become what Paul Krugman refers to as "a stupid man’s idea of what a smart person sounds like."

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It's taken nearly four years, but President Obama finally gets it. There's nothing "conservative" about the current Republican party. It's radical. And he should say so.

President Obama on Tuesday is expected to take aim at House Republicans, calling the budget proposal put forward by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) "a Trojan horse" that seeks to "impose a radical vision" on the United States.

"It's nothing but thinly veiled Social Darwinism," Obama will say at an Associated Press lunch, according to prepared remarks released by the White House. "It's antithetical to our entire history as a land of opportunity and upward mobility for everyone who's willing to work for it, a place where prosperity doesn't trickle down from the top, but grows outward from the heart of the middle class."

I'm not sure I agree that it's antithetical to our entire history. I think it's of a piece with the Republicanism of the Gilded Age. When businesses could pollute, violently put down strikes and employ child labor. When there was no income tax, no Estate Tax, and no social safety net. When the US Senate was a wholly-owned subsidiary of the trusts.

This is the time Republicans like Paul Ryan pine for. To them, America went off the rails with the Progressive Era (ironically championed by a Republican, Teddy Roosevelt), which set the stage for the New Deal and Great Society. They view progressive taxation as immoral and they don't believe government has any right to tell private businesses who they can hire and what they can pay. They are Randian Social Darwinists who think the rich are rich because they're morally superior and the poor are poor because they're not, and any interference with that (i.e., Social Security) is a violation of the natural order.

These people have nothing but contempt for the past 100 years of steady progress. Their positions aren't fact-based, they're faith-based -- so there's no reasoning with them.

Better late than never, Mr. President.

Paul Ryan may want to be Vice President, but he's not endearing the military to him with this kind of talk.

From National Journal:

House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., claimed Thursday that senior U.S. military officials and commanders were being dishonest in their budget requests to Congress.

“We don’t believe the generals are giving us their true budget,” Ryan said at the National Journal Live Budget Policy summit, adding, “I think there’s a lot of budget smoke and mirrors in the Pentagon’s budget.”

Ryan's comment referred to a common Republican complaint that the defense request -- which is strongly supported by the Joint Chiefs of Staff -- was not "strategy-driven," and was based instead on an artificial spending cap. The chiefs, in testimony and public remarks since early February, have said they carefully built a strategy and a budget to meet the required limits of the Budget Control Act that Congress passed last year and endorsed the fiscal 2013 request.

I think Paul Ryan is one of the nastiest and most cynical politicians on the planet, and this just proves it. Because the military actually honored the Congressional mandate to cut or be sequestered, Ryan calls them liars?

May I take this opportunity to ask you to support Blue America and Rob Zerban's campaign to send Paul Ryan back home and out of Congress forever, please? Paul Ryan's lack of respect for everyone, including a military that is making the effort to reduce defense spending is contemptible.

The trailer, yes I said trailer, for the Republican budget. Seriously.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka issued a statement condemning the extreme right-wing budget proposed by House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI), saying it was yet another Republican assault on America's working families:

Just as Republican governors and state legislators are assaulting the rights of working Americans under the guise of budget crises, Rep. Ryan and Republican leaders in Congress are using the federal budget to further their own political agendas. Their credo is that tax giveaways to the super rich and Wall Street should be paid for on the backs of working people.

They are holding the federal government hostage, along with hundreds of thousands of jobs and the services millions rely on, while simultaneously proposing irresponsible budget cuts. It is clear that they are not concerned with fiscal responsibility, but rather undermining their political opponents. This is simply further evidence of their determination to protect their friends on Wall Street at the expense of American jobs, seniors, our children and our future.

As we recover from the worst economic crisis of our time, cuts to essential programs threaten to push us back into recession, or even depression. Shame on those Republicans more worried about the politics of their choices than the economic consequences.

Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers similarly condemned the proposal:

"It is morally unacceptable and economically indefensible for House Republicans to put forth a budget that doubles down on a cuts-only approach to our economy at a time when our children and families continue to struggle to get by.

"Today, half of all Americans are either poor or low-income. Three million more children live in poverty today than when this recession began. And we've already slashed more than 300,000 education jobs at a time when our children and our public schools desperately need resources and support to compete in a 21st-century knowledge economy.

"This budget prioritizes huge tax breaks for the wealthy and big corporations, while likely cutting money from public education and programs such as Title I that go directly to support low-income children in the classroom. It would end Medicare as we know it and leave seniors without access to affordable, high-quality healthcare, and it would make college more costly. It would do nothing to help Americans find good jobs, keep their homes, and ensure our children have a better and brighter future.

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Credit: Commonwealth Fund

A new study last week from the Commonwealth Fund confirmed the shocking gap between lower and higher income Americans when it comes to health insurance coverage. While only 12 percent of families making $89,400 a year (or four times the federal poverty rate for a family of four) was uninsured at some point last year, that figure skyrockets to 57 percent for a family at about $29,700. Mercifully, thanks to the Affordable Care Act (ACA), beginning in 2014 that gap will largely be erased. Unless, that is, Republicans take control of the White House and Congress. If the GOP succeeds at the polls in 2012, the health insurance income gap will get much, much worse.

Last March, a previous Commonwealth Fund study found that since the start of the recession, almost 60% of Americans who lost a job and their health insurance - 9 million people - could not afford to regain coverage. Medical costs pushed four million more into bankruptcy. Its 2010 Biennial Health Insurance Survey of over 3,000 adults ages 19-64 highlighted the devastating toll of the Bush recession which started in December 2007:

Both insured adults--who are facing higher premiums and out-of-pocket costs--and uninsured adults cannot afford adequate health care. Seventy-five million adults did not get needed health care in 2010, skipping doctor visits, prescriptions, specialist care, and recommended tests and treatments because of costs. This represents a 60 percent increase from 2001, when 47 million people reported skipping needed care because of costs. Uninsured adults were the most likely to forgo care because of costs, with 66 percent reporting they did so. However, many insured adults were also less insulated from high health care costs--31 percent of adults who were insured all year went without the health care they needed because of costs, up from 21 percent in 2001.

Likewise, 73 million people reported problems paying their medical bills or were paying off medical debt, up from 58 million in 2005. The survey finds that because of medical bills, an estimated 29 million people spent all of their savings, 17 million incurred credit card debt, 22 million were unable to pay for basic necessities like food, heat, and rent, and 4 million declared bankruptcy.

Now, a new Fund analysis revealed the yawning chasm that constitutes the "Income Divide in Health Care":

The new Commonwealth Fund Health Insurance Tracking Survey of U.S. Adults finds nearly three of five adults in families earning less than 133 percent of the federal poverty level were uninsured for a time in 2011; two of five were uninsured for one or more years. Low- and moderate-income adults who were uninsured during the year were much less likely to have a regular source of health care than people in the same income range who were insured all year.

As Sarah Kliff of the Washington Post explained, "This underscores how central the health reform law's expansion of Medicaid -- in which anyone below 133 percent of the poverty line qualifies for the program -- will be to the law's expanded coverage. Everyone represented by the yellow triangles above becomes eligible for Medicaid in 2014."

But the reach of the Affordable Care Act doesn't end there.

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It's budget time again, and so Paul Ryan is making the rounds of talk shows to pimp the new-and-improved Ryan plan, one he claims has "emerging bipartisan consensus." Thanks to Senator Ron Wyden, it seems to at least have the appearance of bipartisan consensus but it's really just the old 2011 version with some cosmetic changes.

The Wyden-Ryan Medicare reforms would retain the public version of Medicare as a traditional fee-for-service plan, but instead of automatic enrollment, vouchers would go to seniors who could choose traditional Medicare or a private insurer's plan. It takes the very worst policy in both private and public healthcare plans and makes it the law of the land.

The Affordable Care Act addressed some of the issues around cost containment, which is Medicare's biggest failing. As a fee-for-service plan, Medicare's costs skyrocket because providers are paid based upon seeing and treating patients, rather than prevention or outcomes-based care. As ThinkProgress points out, adopting a plan like this allows private insurers to cherry-pick insureds, leaving the highest-cost and sickest in the public system, ensuring its demise.

Senator Wyden has long been a fan of privatizing Medicare and not just stopping there. In 2008 he introduced the Healthy Americans Act, which would have separated health insurance from employment, and bundled CHIP and FEHBP into the package, with tax deductions for insurance as incentives.

The problem with Senator Wyden's effort to sacrifice the social safety net on the altar of bipartisanship is twofold: It's bad policy and it's terrible politics. Yes, Medicare has problems, some of which were addressed by the ACA. But the problems it has could be remedied without dumping the system itself for one where the bulk of rising medical costs fall onto the shoulders of current and future retirees. Paul Ryan, on the other hand, has no difficulty being as partisan as he'd like, while capitalizing on Senator Wyden's naive and tone-deaf reach across the aisle. Statements like these are just desperate baloney, to quote another Republican in the news right now.

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