Via AmericaBlog: BREAKING: House Republicans overwhelmingly vote to phase out Medicare

Yikes. They're going for it. Think Progress:

When President Obama proposed ensuring affordable health care to all Americans, Congress spent a year hashing out how best to achieve this goal. Yet when Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) decided that he wanted to phase out Medicare, the GOP-controlled House took only two weeks to debate and pass this radical proposal. This afternoon, House Republicans overwhelming endorsed his plan to eliminate Medicare, slash education, and jack up the middle class’ taxes. 235 Republicans supported the Medicare elimination bill, with just 4 GOPers casting a vote to leave Medicare unmolested[.]

The centerpiece of the House Republicans’ plan is a proposal that repeals traditional Medicare and replaces it with a health insurance voucher that loses its value over time. Because the value of the Republicans’ privatized Medicare replacement does not keep up with the cost of health care, their plan will gradually eliminate Medicare because its increasingly worthless vouchers will eventually only cover a very tiny fraction of the cost of a health insurance plan.

On the roll call vote, all Democrats voted No, and all Republicans except Jones, McKinley, Ron Paul, and Rehberg voted Yes.

Think Progress helpfully reminds us of Paul Ryan's hidden tax cut. The Center for American Progress has a nice summary:

Rep. Ryan’s budget simply doesn’t describe exactly how his tax plan would work, instead resorting to broad bullet points that conveniently skip over important details. Nonetheless, the broad outlines of his tax plan are to:

• Maintain the Bush-era tax cuts beyond their expiration in 2012 and cut the top individual tax rate down to 25 percent from 35 percent
• Consolidate the current six tax brackets into some, unspecified, fewer number of brackets
• Keep overall tax revenue levels the same
• Pay for the enormous tax cut for the top by eliminating or curtailing some, unspecified, tax expenditures

No shared sacrifice for you, Middle Class America; unless, of course, we can convince you this is it.

Let the games begin.