STEVE BANNON'S NOT AS SCARY AS HOUSE SPEAKER PAUL RYAN.

     It was announced earlier this week that Steve Bannon would be the chief strategist in the Trump administration. People lost their minds. Somehow we were shocked that President elect Trump would nominate Steve Bannon as his chief strategist. In case you don't know who Steve Bannon is, he used to run Breitbart.com, which I have looked at. Its pretty rough. I didn't see anything absolutely racist while I was visiting the site, but all the articles just had a real bad, ugly feeling to them.

     These were some of the articles ran on Breitbart.com while Steve Bannon was there:

• “Bill Kristol: Republican Spoiler, Renegade Jew”
• “Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy”
• “There’s No Hiring Bias Against Women in Tech, They Just Suck at Interviews”
• “Does Feminism Make Women Ugly?”
• “The Solution to Online ‘Harassment’ Is Simple: Women Should Log Off”
• "Hoist It High And Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims A Glorious Heritage"
• "Donald Trump Would Be the Real First Black President"

     I got the article titles from ABC news, I didn't find them on my own on Breitbart.com. I didn't care for staying on the website Breitbart.com that long, it was..... odd. The point is, these are things I could see President Trump saying, so are you really surprised that Steve Bannon was selected as the chief strategist? Democrats and Never Trump Republicans lost, President Elect Trump gets to decide who he wants to have working in the White House with him. Besides, I don't think Steve Bannon is who every day Americans have to worry so much about. 

     House Speaker Paul Ryan is the person to worry about. I was watching CNN the other day, and House Speaker Paul Ryan came on and said if you want to see his plan, you should check out better.gop, so I did. Theres not a lot on it, general ideas, very little detail. Look at the web address in below for your own opinion. So, I had to go looking for other information on House Speaker Paul Ryan's plan, I've heard that he is for privatizing Social Security and Medicare, and for cutting Medicaid.

Is Paul Ryan for privatizing Social Security? Not that I can find, however. "Ryan has also supported limiting Social Security benefits by,  among other things, raising the retirement age for full benefits to as high as 69 or 70. (Under current law, it’s now 66 and will rise gradually to 67.)"

Is Paul Ryan for privatizing Medicare?  According to Forbes magazine and The Washington Post, yes.

Again, according to Forbes: "Medicare eligibility age: Ryan would gradually increase the eligibility age for Medicare from 65 to nearly 67 starting in 2020. That would require those 65 to 67 to purchase commercial insurance. Like other consumers, they’d receive new tax credits to help subsidize the cost, though the blueprint does not specify the size of those credits. In addition, the proposal would allow insurers to charge relatively higher premiums to older consumers than they can under the Affordable Care Act."

"Medicare Premium Support: As he has proposed many times in the past, Ryan is backing a plan that would effectively provide a fixed dollar subsidy that seniors would use to purchase Medicare insurance. That’s in contrast to today’s model, where Medicare pays a percentage of the cost, whatever it is.Such a plan would effectively shift the risk of health care cost increases from taxpayer to seniors. The idea has some bipartisan support, but the details matter. The biggest: How would the subsidy be calculated and by how much would it increase each year. The blueprint released today was largely silent on those issues." For example, The normal Medicare today pays 100 percent of your stay in a skilled nursing facility for the first 20 days, then 80% of your stay for the next 80 days. 

Is Paul Ryan for cutting Medicaid? Yes, and so is President Elect Donald Trump according to CNBC. 
What does this mean? "Medicaid spending hit $532 billion in fiscal 2015, with about 62 percent of that funded by the federal government, according to Kaiser Family Foundation data. "Trump's proposal to convert Medicaid funding into a block grant program would lead to much lower federal funding to states," "No matter how much states spend on Medicaid, any cuts in federal reimbursements would force them to reduce spending on other programs or raise taxes, or both."

     So, go ahead, be upset that Steve Bannon might be a bit of a jerk, but the guy I'm concerned about is House Speaker Paul Ryan. He wants to 1. Increase the Social Security retirement age to 69, 2. He wants to increase the Medicare eligibility from 65 to 67, 3. He wants to privatize Medicare, and 4. He wants to cut federal fundiing for Medicaid. All of that equals cuts to regular Americans.

     I'd like to thank NPR, ABC news, Forbes, the Washington Post, and CNBC. You are all wonderful news outlets, and do a really good job keeping the public informed, thank you.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/13/501937200/trump-taps-reince-priebus-as-chief-of-staff-steve-bannon-as-chief-strategist

http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-appointment-steve-bannon-raised-alarms/story?id=43554212

http://www.speaker.gov/general/speaker-ryan-s-interview-cnn

http://abetterway.speaker.gov/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnwasik/2016/11/16/three-ways-trump-gop-may-cut-social-security-medicare/#2201e6c24e0e

http://www.forbes.com/sites/janetnovack/2016/11/10/will-president-trump-cut-medicare-and-social-security-as-well-as-taxes/#1259dcb3a43f

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2016/11/15/paul-ryans-plan-to-phase-out-medicare-is-just-what-democrats-need/?utm_term=.d297af5eb111

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/11/10/trump-medicaid-plan-could-force-service-cuts-higher-taxes.html