Paul Ryan's Attack On Military Pensions Has Helped Make The GOP Even More Toxic

You've probably read that Paul Ryan's plan to screw over military families with cuts to compensation and pensions has been backfiring, making the apostle of Randian greed and selfishness even more toxic than he's been in the past. Wednesday, when the Senate voted 95-3 to throw out Ryan's wretched calculations to steal from military veterans for the sake of his Big Business paymasters who hate paying their share of taxes, even the worst of the right-wing extremists like Ted Cruz (R-TX), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Mike Lee (R-UT) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) voted with Elizabeth Warren, Barbara Boxer, Al Franken and Bernie Sanders against Ryan's ideologically-driven determination to wreck the social safety net.

Now it's becoming clearer to voters in the first district. Last year voters in Kenosha and Rock counties rejected him outright for Rob Zerban and his margin in Racine was tiny. This year voters in Walworth and the Milwaukee suburbs have been telling Democratic canvassers that they're dismayed that Ryan has taken the ax to the pensions of the military men and women who have sacrificed for the country while young Ryan was memorizing his talking points from the Ayn Rand books he reads instead of the Bible.

Wednesday, Politico said Ryan's proposal has backfired-- "highlighting," they wrote, "the perils of scaling back entitlement programs… [M]any of his fellow conservatives jumped ship amid a backlash from powerful advocacy groups for service members and veterans."

The Wisconsin Republican’s gambit was viewed as an attempt to get the ball rolling on military compensation reform-- something top commanders say is badly needed-- and to show that entitlement cuts are possible, that nothing is sacred.

So far, it’s had the opposite effect, unleashing a massive lobbying campaign and forcing vulnerable incumbents to explain to constituents why they voted to cut benefits for those who’ve sacrificed for their country.

Congress has now overturned the short-lived pension cuts, providing political cover for members in both parties up for reelection this fall but undoing a rare victory for those seeking to scale back entitlements.

On Tuesday, Ryan blasted the House bill as taking “a step back” after he cast one of just 90 votes against it. “Compensation costs are hollowing out the Pentagon’s budget,” he said in a statement. “They are taking resources away from training and modernization-- and putting our troops at risk.”

…Under December’s budget deal, working-age military retirees-- some of whom retire with pensions in their 40s after 20 years of service-- would see those pensions grow at a slower pace. Their annual cost-of-living adjustments would be pegged to the rate of inflation minus 1 percentage point. But once they turned 62, they’d go back to receiving cost-of-living adjustments pegged to the full rate of inflation.

Zerban isn't shy about clobbering Ryan over the head with this kind of approach. "We've come to expect intense political pushback whenever Paul Ryan tries to insert his extreme agenda into legislation. While his 'ideas' might be popular with Tea Party groups in Washington DC, voters throughout Wisconsin's 1st district understand that Ryan's policies will have devastating consequences. It was bad enough when he tried to end Medicare as we know it, but not even his fellow Republicans could support his attack on hard-working military families."

If you'd like to help Rob extend last year's victories in Kenosha and Rock counties into Kenosha, Walworth and Milwaukee counties... no contribution is too small.