Free Republic

Democrats are facing a senior problem that could get even worse this year. The party has traditionally had trouble with older voters, losing the group aged 65 and over by 21 points in 2010 — when Republicans picked up 63 seats — and by 12 points in the 2012 presidential race. Seniors are the GOP’s most reliable voting bloc in midterm years, turning out in higher numbers than Democratic base voters. A recent Gallup poll showed seniors have become even more Republican over the last two decades; in 2013, 48 percent considered themselves Republican. That spells trouble for Democrats, who...

House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan said he rejects the premise that President Barack Obama’s healthcare law can’t be repealed now that its first class of 7 million enrollees has signed up. “I don’t think it can last,” Ryan said in an interview with Bloomberg Television to air on “Political Capital with Al Hunt” this weekend. Ryan this week unveiled a budget plan that seeks to repeal the 2010 law known as Obamacare and would revise the U.S. safety net in an effort to eliminate the deficit in 10 years. The House will vote on the plan next week. House...

resident Obama was doing his favorite thing this week: talking to crowds of adoring young people who already agree with him while acting like he persuaded them about something. They also seemed to give Obama the impression that he's a really funny guy. On Wednesday, he told a crowd of 1,400 at the University of Michigan that he visited a local deli, Zingerman's. He proceeded to tell a long story about ordering the small Reuben sandwich, which he said was "killer." That description got a good laugh. Then he explained how he thought the sandwich was too big, so he...

Our post-partisan President reached a new low yesterday. Speaking at Zingerman’s in Ann Arbor, Michigan he declared Paul Ryan’s budget a “stinkburger” or “meanwich.” Obama is apparently promoting an increase in the minimum wage. He went to Zingerman’s because they allegedly offer a “fair” wage. The left doesn’t seem to understand that a “fair” wage is whatever an employee agrees to work for. In other words, it isn’t determined by government bureaucrats or academics. That’s beside the point of course, we know Obama believes everything in our lives must be decided in Washington. The problem of course is that Zingerman’s...

On Tuesday, House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, R-Wis., presented his 2015 budget proposal. The Senate Democrats did not provide any such proposal; President Barack Obama's proposal posited an unending federal deficit and massive tax increases. Ryan's proposal, by contrast, lowered the rate of increase of spending moderately (by $5.1 trillion over the next decade), struck Obamacare from the rolls, and suggested revamps to Social Security and Medicare. This was possibly the dumbest thing Ryan could have done. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., immediately jumped on the budget proposal, suggesting that Ryan's budget came from "Kochtopia," and that it...

Paul Ryan has laid down another marker. Pity he doesn’t have the power to lay down the law. Representative Ryan has a budget, and the Democrats do not have one, nor do they plan to produce one. The proverb holds that you can’t beat something with nothing, but that is precisely what congressional Democrats are going to do with this Republican budget, just as they have with earlier iterations of the same concept. Representative Ryan finds himself in much the same position as Senator Rand Paul: ready to lead, a bit short on followers. My recent pessimistic assessment of Senator...

Whatever objections anyone might have to various details in Rep. Paul Ryan's bold new plan to cut $5 trillion of government waste, one fact trumps all else: Unlike Democrats, he offers solutions, not denial. The one thing that stands out in the long-term budget plan unveiled Tuesday by House Budget Committee Chairman Ryan, R-Wis., is his acceptance of a fact Democrats want to hide: You can't squeeze enough extra money out of the rich to pay for our endlessly expanding entitlement programs of Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Tax revenue over many decades has been relatively unchanging . And it...

Are you kidding? You’d think one who is representing the mighty Badgers, who made it to the Final Four based on sacrificial work ethic and discipline that obviously pays off in the end, he who represents the great state of Wisconsin that hosts this underdog celebrated college basketball team, would understand that future success depends on hard work and sacrifices. The latest Ryan (R, Wisconsin) Budget is not an April Fool’s joke. Palin said that the budget that was presented, though,"really IS a joke because it is STILL not seeing the problem." "It STILL is not proposing reining in wasteful...

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan unveiled an updated Republican budget plan Tuesday that would slash $5.1 trillion in federal spending over coming decade and promises to balance the government's books with wide-ranging cuts in programs like food stamps and government-paid health care for the poor and working class. Ryan's plan would also cut Pell Grants for low-income students and pensions for federal workers, while steering away from cuts to benefits for senior citizens, at least in the short term. The proposal would reprise a voucher-like Medicare program for future retirees that would be the basis for...

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid preemptively slammed the budget proposal Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) will release Tuesday, calling it a document written to pander to the Koch brothers and other billionaires. “It’s a blueprint for a modern… how would we say this? Koch-topia. Yes, that’s it,” Reid said. “Call it whatever you want. We might as well call it the Koch budget because that’s what they’re doing, protecting the Koch brothers.” Reid’s remarks mark the latest volley in Democrats’ mid-term election year strategy of attacking the Kochs repeatedly, hoping to fire up their liberal base and associate Republicans with the...

"Tighten the belts" is one tired takeaway from House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's budget proposal, released today. The budget proposes to cut $5.1 trillion from projected spending over the next 10 years, getting a lot of its savings from repealing the president's health care law and changing Medicaid. The document, titled again, "Path to Prosperity," is largely for show, as the bipartisan budget agreement authored by Ryan, R-Wisc., and his Senate counterpart, Senate Budget Chairwoman Patty Murray, D-Wash., already set discretionary spending levels for the 2015 fiscal year. The budget agreement passed in both the Senate and the House...

When Rep. Barbara Lee, D-Calif, went off on Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis, for his remarks that “We have got a tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work,” the wrong part what she had to say got all the attention. The big buzz that Congressional Black Caucus member Lee generated was her accusation that Ryan’s remarks were a “thinly veiled racial attack.” But the part of her remarks I found most interesting was “…Mr. Ryan should...

After a short discussion with guests about some controversial statements from Paul Ryan, that some asserted were racist, Maher then read a quote that he falsely attributed to Ryan. He then dropped the hammer by identifying the source: Michelle Obama.Maher made made the point that black people can say things that white people cannot. I’m just asking: Is something less true if a white person says it about black people? This sounds even more like, ‘Hey Black people, don’t be lazy.’ Comedian W. Kamau Bell, obviously uncomfortable, responded back: She’s talking to Black people,” Bell retorted. “We talk to each...

“Real Time” host Bill Maher caused some real confusion with his knee-jerk liberal guests Friday night when he offered them a “racist” quote from Paul Ryan that turned out to really be from Michelle Obama. And he did it to make a point. Maher was piling on the latest liberal meme of Paul Ryan as piñata for comments he made in mid-March about inner-city “men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value and the culture of work.” Two of Maher’s guests, Center for American President Neera Tanden and comedian W. Kamau...

Rep. Barbara Lee is firing back at Bill O’Reilly, saying the Fox News host’s comments about race were “disgusting.” “Unfortunately we’ve come to expect language like ‘welfare queens,’ ‘food stamp president,’ and now ‘race hustlers’ from the right wing and Mr. O’Reilly,” the California Democrat said in a statement Wednesday. “It is disgusting and divisive and should never be accepted in our national discourse.” O’Reilly had Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on his program Tuesday night to discuss controversy over some comments Ryan had made about poverty and inner city culture that he later called “inarticulate.” Ryan’s remarks were seized...

President Obama at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Annual Phoenix Awards in Washington, 2011. The relationship between culture and poverty starkly divides not just liberals against conservatives, but also liberals against each other. Yet liberals rarely think through their disagreements publicly, even though — or perhaps because — they pit figures like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama against their own supporters. Ta-Nehisi Coates is an exception, having written a series of well-received columns (a year ago, a couple months ago, and then yesterday) objecting to President Obama’s regular habit of urging higher levels of personal responsibility in the black community....

Ryan said on William Bennett's talk radio show, "Morning in America," that there was a "tailspin of culture, in our inner cities in particular, of men not working and just generations of men not even thinking about working or learning the value of work."

This was an interesting statement made by the 2012 GOP vice-presidential candidate, equating school lunches to an “empty soul.” So one would think the anecdote, described by the National Review as “moving,” would be rock-solid. But the story seemed a bit pat.... ...It did not make much sense in part because [original sources] Schroff and Mazyck are partnering with a group called No Kid Hungry to help end childhood hunger in the United States. One key part of the program is connecting hungry kids with federal programs such as school lunches and food stamps. The group also opposed Ryan’s 2013...

House Budget Chairman Paul D. Ryan told his local newspaper that Republican leaders do not have the votes yet to pass a rewrite of the nation’s immigration system. “We don’t have the votes right now,” the Wisconsin Republican told his local newspaper, the Janesville Gazette, in an interview Monday. “Right now, we’re working hard to find where that consensus lies.” Ryan said both the right and left are holding up an overhaul. A poll of House Republican offices by CQ Roll Call found that just 18 members, including Ryan, publicly support the immigration principles Speaker John A. Boehner of Ohio...

A group of Catholic bishops, evangelical leaders and advocates pressured top House Republicans to vote this year on overhauling immigration in a series of private meetings on Wednesday. With legislation stalled in the House and prospects dimming, proponents argued that action is a moral imperative and offered the unique, united front of Catholics and evangelicals imploring the House to move ahead. Bishop Eusebio Elizondo of Seattle called it an "historic moment" and said they "reaffirmed that every day of delay, the consequences are separated families." The participants, who spoke to The Associated Press, said they received neither assurances of a...