I guess we shouldn’t be surprised at Congressional Democrats’ withering scorn for House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan’s proposal to turn Medicare into a voucher system, a plan to which their party has yet to offer an alternative.

This is the party that vituperatively opposed all GOP spending cuts for the past two years, yet unlawfully failed to pass a budget during that period.

The party that insists on calling Republicans the Party of No should be labeled the Party of No Ideas of Their Own.

Charles Blow, for example, filled a recent column with purple prose elucidating why voters find Ryan’s plan repugnant: “[T]he electorate is hurting—a pulsing mass of tender nerves, hypersensitive to things that portend pain, reflexively reacting to the thump of even the softest mallet.”  (And most of them don’t even read the New York Times!)  He continued: “This is not to say that Medicare isn’t in crisis.  It is.  But, we don’t have to gut it to save it.”  He then spent precisely zero space suggesting any alternative solutions.

Blow and other liberals have been crowing about the obscure special election Democrat Kathy Hochul won in NY-26 last week.  They claim that Republican Jane Corwin lost because of Ryan’s recently proposed Medicare plan, since seniors in the district were terrified that electing her would increase the chances of their Medicare payments being cut.  read more »