From Ace via the National Review.

The point is, though, that based on unrealistic scenarios (Doc Fix repealed, and Medicare starts paying Medicare doctors 30% less immediately, etc.), Medicare goes bankrupt in 2024.  But realistically, it will go bankrupt in eight years or something like that.  And what happens then?  Immediate, automatic cuts in payments made.

Seniors need to wake the hell up. In eight years or so they’re going to be facing doctors unwilling to treat because Medicare will, by law, pay doctors even less than the below-market-rates it’s paying now.

That’s the current plan. That’s the system seniors are rallying to protect.

If the trust funds are exhausted, immediate benefits cuts would go into effect. Starting in 2024, Medicare could pay about 90 percent of benefits, but that would drop to about 75 percent in 2045. In other words, despite Democratic attempts to savage the Ryan/GOP budget for “ending Medicare as we know it” (starting in 2022), the fact is that “Medicare as we know it” simply won’t be around much longer anyway on it’s current path. Social Security benefits, meanwhile, would receive an immediate 25 percent cut. This is exactly what Paul Ryan is talking about when he stresses to need to address entitlement spending now, on our terms, before cuts are imposed swiftly and indiscriminately.

Starting in eight years (or less), the death panels spring into effect automatically. And honestly, I have to say this: Don’t count on my vote for pouring more money into the system. You won’t have it. And while pouring more money into a broken system to bail out those who stood against reforming it will have some political support, I don’t know if you’ll have the 60 votes necessary to end a filibuster on this in the Senate.   As a conservative, I believe in personal responsibility. The information is available. The mathematics are inevitable. The conclusion is unavoidable.

If, faced with these facts, seniors not only acquiesce to this outcome, but in fact affirmatively choose it, then they’ll have no one to blame but themselves, and they can cry to someone else when they can’t get coverage. Sorry, that’s the way it is. People make their own choices. And they have to live with those choices.  If the choice is calamity and collapse, so be it, but no one will be able to say “I wasn’t warned.”

More: Collapse as a Feature, Not a Bug: Collapse as part of a scheme for universal government health care? At least that makes some sense. More sense than collapse for the sake of collapse.

This whole thing deserved to be blockquoted because these are undeniable FACTS.

I guess Paul Ryan and the rest of the GOP aren’t perfect.  However, the apparent failure to develop a spiritied counterpunch because of poor coordination or understanding of the Ryan plan by GOP congressmen, and the ineptness of the NRCC are mucking things up.  Why the above information isn’t being hammered in NY-26 is beyond me.  If it was, I would venture that Jane Corwin would be in a lot better shape than what she is right now.  However, the successful sale of the Ryan plan will rely on the above simplified specifics (something Abraham Lincoln was awesome at) which drastically illustrate what will happen if the Ryan plan isn’t passed. Defeatist Republicans like Newt Gingrich and the GOP establishment feel that this battle cannot be won and that we should roll over and let government find the solutions to our problems.  They cannot be more wrong.  Seniors and people 40+ only need this presented and explained.  It would be interesting to see how the Democrats would counter this.  The problem is that they wouldn’t and would only continue to parrot their old talking points.

The Democrat playbook has been predictable because it has always been used in the past.  They are expert criticizers, offering no budgets or legislative plans of their own so long as their ideology is not embraced by the majority of public opinion. Why do you think Harry Reid and the rest of the Democratic majority in the Senate has been sitting on their hands this whole session, not offering a budget of their own?   They want to keep their majority in the Senate and their best chance is to engage in political footdragging, criticizing any GOP legislation that comes out of the House and make sure it never comes to a vote in the Senate.  They are more concerned with staying in power while the country careens toward fiscal catastrophe.  After all, they can’t have their vulnerable Senators in red states to take votes that could cement their defeat in 2012.  You’ll remember that Democrats engaged in this always during the Bush years, particularly the Iraq war and they have always done so in the past.  The point of this political strategy is simple.  They don’t offer any plans because their ideas are not popular, cost too much, and always push the country away from freedom to the people and away from a government that serves but instead rules because the people would rather put their faith in elected politicians of government to be virtuous because they have lost their faith in their fellow American brethren to do good unto each other. Their platform is always pessimistic, not optimistic.

Democrats only come into power when they are successful at persuading people through tools of anger, envy, jealousy, bitterness, and the GOP doesn’t fight back because they are afraid to and won’t stand and fight for what they believe in.  These tactics are exploitative of course but only serve to keep them in power and in the ultimate end, make our country something it was never intended to be:  A Marxist state.

The Democrats of today are not the party of hope, they are the party of lost hope.  Lost hope in democracy, freedom, the free markets, belief and faith in God and in each other (not government), to work hard and to be able to enjoy the fruits of your labor without envious Democratic politicians taking it away from you in the name of “social justice”, telling you what you should do with your money and how you should live.

This country will not dig out of the hole it has dug itself into until it starts to believe in each other, not government officials again.  It will not dig itself out of the hole unless the GOP as a whole stands on their convictions, doesn’t engage in petty infighting, pushes forward sound legislation like the Ryan plan, and have the guts to put their political lives on the line so our country’s life and way of living may be saved.