Medicare spending rose an OUTRAGEOUS 5% !eleventy!!one!!!

That is according to the CBO:

Adjusted for timing shifts, Medicare spending rose by $7 billion (or 5 percent).

Of course this is reason to be outraged at all that government spending coming out of our pockets, right? Right? Thankfully those fiscally responsible Republicans have come up with the great idea of privatizing Medicare.

Rep. Paul Ryan self-destructively wants to destroy Medicare and Social Security:

He's shilling for Wall Street yet again as he usually does. He wants to privatize medicare and social security although he uses words like "vouchers" to mask what he's saying.

While I understand that pointing out a fact like that is called "attacking" their favoritest Republicans evah - and their ideas - by some defenders of the magic free market faerie dust. And as a moderate liberal I have grown used to the reality of their victim card being pulled out every time they are so wrong it is almost embarrassing to enjoin them in debate... But for now, let us look at how Medicare compares to St. Ronny's vaunted "free market", the free market that Rep. Ryan wants you to turn to solve all of our problems:

The AFL-CIO calls out Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield, which has requested a rate hike of up to 30 percent in Connecticut, for example, while spending more than $9.5 million on lobbying activities. Similarly, UnitedHealthcare recently proposed a premium increase for its Medicare supplemental insurance while spending more than $2.6 million on lobbying activities in the first half of 2009 alone.

Golly... You mean under the Republican healthcare plan people could get off of Medicare's outrageous 5% increases in costs and have the privilege of joining the Free Market's 30% increases? And double their pleasure by giving Corporate Welfare "vouchers" to the very people that cause 99% of the problems in American healthcare?

It is all very nice to claim the government will save money in your plan... But the reality is that it will save taxpayers a few measly pennies in taxes and cost them BIG DOLLARS in the free market to replace their plan. And the reality is that a lot of the government programs that faux-conservatives rant and rail about in the name of fiscal responsibility are pretty darn good government programs and they already are the real answers to being fiscally responsible. But they are not the Corporate Welfare you advocate for.

Let's put these to the voters and see how much they love your ideas, OK? While I come up with my sides' slogans for our bumper stickers... Here is the one for the GOP:

Of course, those of you that do support this Corporate Welfare as the cause du jour for the GOP, those of you that are the fringiest Republicans and the Teabagrrrrs in the minority of the minority party, can you please do us all a favor?

Get your own Connecticut GOP candidates on the record concerning where they stand on this.

Because when you do and no matter what they answer, we win.