Posts Tagged ‘Mediscare’

US Is in Even Worse Shape Financially Than Greece. And Why Is That In The Age Of Obama???

June 14, 2011

Thanks for “fundamentally transforming” our economy, Barry Hussein!

We’re constantly being told that Obama has done a great deal to make our economy stronger.  Because who wouldn’t rather have 9.1% unemployment than that 7.6% that Obama started out with.

The thing that most killed the US economy in 2008 was the sheer weight of godawful subprime mortgages that Democrats imposed on Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and all the other mortgage lenders in order to create more “fairness” and allow everyone (especially racial minorities) to have “the right” to own a home whether they could actually afford to do so or not.  Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were “Government Sponsored Enterprises,” all the investors knew.  So even as Fannie and Freddie began bundling together thousands of riskier and ever riskier mortgages into giant mortgage backed securities to advance Democrat-enacted policies, large investment houses continued to gobble them up.  After all, this was an arm of the United States Government – and the United States Government ALWAYS pays its debts.

Like all scams, it worked for a while.  But as soon as there was a correction in the dramatically overvalued housing market, the whole boondoggle began to implode.  And since Fannie and Freddie had bundled all kinds of bad mortgages in with the good ones, there was absolutely no way for anyone to know how much risk was contained in any of these giant investment vehicles all these giant private banking houses found themselves holding.

And suddenly the perception that Government Sponsored Enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were “safe investments” turned into a “misperception.”  And the fecal matter began to hit the rotary oscillator bigtime.

Fannie and Freddie were the first to collapse.  The big private players who had played ball with them shortly followed.

President George Bush tried SEVENTEEN TIMES to reform Fannie and Freddie when there was actually a chance to do something.  Go back to what the New York Times stated in 2003:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 10—  The Bush  administration today recommended the most significant  regulatory  overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings  and loan  crisis a decade ago.

Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new   agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume   supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored   companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending   industry.

The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with   Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the   companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business.   And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks   of their ballooning portfolios.

Republicans were demonized for “deregulation” by the dishonest Democrat Party machine.  But they TRIED to regulate what needed to be regulated.  Democrats stopped them.

Many Republicans like John McCain literally begged Democrats to do something before it was too late.  But Democrats threatened to filibuster any bill that in any way prevented Fannie and Freddie from continuing the reckless economy-killing policies.  Conservative economists such as Peter Wallison had been predicting the Fannie and Freddie boondoggles would cause an economic collapse since at least 1999.  Wallison had warned back then:

 In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980′s.

From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,” said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ”If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.”

But rigid opposition from Democrats – especially Democrats like Senator Barack Obamawho took more campaign money from Fannie and Freddie and dirty crony capitalism outfits like corrupt Lehman Bros. than ANYONE in his short Senate stint – prevented any “hope and change” of necessary reform from saving the US economy.

The timeline is clear: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were giant behemoths that began to stagger under their own corrupt weight, as even the New York Times pointed out:

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are so big — they own or guarantee roughly half of the nation’s $12 trillion mortgage market — that the thought that they might falter once seemed unimaginable. But now a trickle of worries about the companies, which has been slowly building for years, has suddenly become a torrent.

And it was FANNIE and FREDDIE that collapsed FIRST before ANY of the private investment banks, which collapsed as a result of having purchased the very mortgaged backed securities that the Government Sponsored Enterprises SOLD THEM.  It wasn’t until Fannie and Freddie collapsed that investors began to look with horror at all the junk that these GSE boondoggles had been pimping.

The man who predicted the collapse in 1999 wrote a follow-up article titled, “Blame Fannie Mae and Congress For the Credit Mess.”  It really should have read, “Blame DEMOCRATS.”  Because they were crawling all over these GSEs that they had themselves created like the cockroaches they are.  But Wallison is nonpartisan.

That same New York Times article that said President Bush was trying to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac ended with this demonstration of Democrats standing against necessary reform:

These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac —  are not  facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative  Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services  Committee. ”The  more people exaggerate these problems, the more  pressure there is on  these companies, the less we will see in terms of  affordable housing.”

Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.

”I don’t see much other than a shell game going on here, moving   something from one agency to another and in the process weakening the   bargaining power of poorer families and their ability to get affordable   housing,” Mr. Watt said.

Why was Barney Frank deceitfully claiming that Fannie and Freddie weren’t facing “any kind of financial crisis”?  BECAUSE REPUBLICANS WERE RIGHTLY WARNING THAT THEY WERE.

Only about a month before the whole Fannie and Freddie boondoggles Democrats had fiercely protected collapsed – taking the entire US economy with it – Democrat Barney Frank was on the record saying THIS:

REP. BARNEY FRANK, D-MASS.: “I think this is a case where Fannie and Freddie are fundamentally sound, that they are not in danger of going under. They’re not the best investments these days from the long-term standpoint going back. I think they are in good shape going forward.”

So we blew up nearly COMPLETELY BECAUSE OF DEMOCRAT POLICIES.  But Democrats along with an ideological mainstream media that is the worse since Joseph Goebbels was the Nazi Minister of Propaganda were ready.  They ran on a platform that it happened while Bush was president, and that therefore Bush was entirely responsible for the thing he tried over and over again to fix while Democrats used their power to block those efforts.

Let me just say “Franklin Raines.”  Raines as Fannie CEO presided over Enron-style accounting policies and got $90 million in his account because of those corrupt policies.  But Raines was the first BLACK CEO of Fannie Mae.  And even though he was a Democrat and a Clinton guy, President Bush lacked the courage to push the “first black Fannie Mae CEO” out.  Which of course is the same reason that the “first black Fannie Mae CEO” didn’t do hard time in prison where he belonged.  “Political correctness” is a demonic device by which liberals protect themselves – usually from going to prison where they ought to go.  He got a sweetheart deal basically so Republicans wouldn’t be accused of being racists by
Democrats who of course call them racists no matter what they do.  My main point is simply that it was Democrats, Democrats, DEMOCRATS who did this to us.

Fannie Mae was well politically-connected Democrats went to make millions as they bounced back and forth between “public” employment where they developed contacts and “private” crony capitalism to get rich.

Here’s the conclusion of New York Times financial markets writer Gretchen Morgenson about DEMOCRAT Jim Johnson:

Morgenson focuses on the managers of Fannie Mae, the government-supported mortgage giant. She writes that CEO James Johnson built Fannie Mae “into the largest and most powerful financial institution in the world.”

But in the process, Morgenson says, the company fudged accounting rules, generated big salaries and bonuses for its executives, used lobby and campaign contributions to bully regulators, and encouraged the risky financial practices that led to the crisis.

And of course DEMOCRAT Jim Johnson who got rich plundering Americans was an OBAMA Democrat.

Morgenson – again a New York Times writer and not someone from Fox News – said of Fannie Mae on Larry Kudlow’s CNBC program on Monday, June 13: “Whatever Fannie Mae did, everybody else followed.”  And of course they all followed right into an economic Armageddon created by Democrats for Democrats.

But who got blamed?  Republicans, of course.  George Bush and Republicans were to Obama and the Democrats what Emmanual Goldstein was to Big Brother in 1984.  George Bush and Republicans were what the Jews were to Adolf Hitler.  Fascists always need a bogeyman.  And so the people who were truly to blame turned the people who tried futilely to stop them into the scapegoats.  All with the mainstream media’s complicity.

The analogy would be holding the police officer who tried but failed to catch the rapist for the rape of the woman rather than holding the actual rapist who raped her responsible.  But it was easier to say “This is the result of President Bush’s failed Republican policies” than it was to actually explain the facts to an enraged Attention Deficit Disorder-ridden ignorant pop culture – particularly when virtually no one in the biased mainstream media had any intention whatsoever of telling the truth.

Barack Obama – the ACORN community organizer who pushed these very America-killing policies – ran a demagoguing campaign promising to fix everything.

But has he?

How about a great big giant “NOT”???

What has Zero Obama done to fix that housing market that he helped collapse?  How about NOTHING???  After nearly three years of Obama, housing isn’t the worst since 2008; it’s gotten WAY WORSE than 2008 and is the worse since the Great Depression!!!  Obama started out with a terrible plan.  And we have terrible results to show for his terrible plan.  And yet this disgraceful fool actually keeps claiming he’s made things better!!!

Before you read this article, check out the “current account balance” compiled by the CIA.  Ours is a negative figure that dwarfs everyone else’s by so much it’s a joke.  Which is to say that Gross’s assessment is 1000% correct.

US Is in Even Worse Shape Financially Than Greece: Gross
Published: Monday, 13 Jun 2011 | 10:33 AM ET
By: Jeff Cox
CNBC.com Staff Writer

When adding in all of the money owed to cover future liabilities in entitlement programs the US is actually in worse financial shape than Greece and other debt-laden European countries, Pimco’s Bill Gross told CNBC Monday.

Much of the public focus is on the nation’s public debt, which is $14.3 trillion. But that doesn’t include money guaranteed for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, which comes to close to $50 trillion, according to government figures.

The government also is on the hook for other debts such as the programs related to the bailout of the financial system following the crisis of 2008 and 2009, government figures show.

Taken together, Gross puts the total at “nearly $100 trillion,” that while perhaps a bit on the high side, places the country in a highly unenviable fiscal position that he said won’t find a solution overnight.

“To think that we can reduce that within the space of a year or two is not a realistic assumption,” Gross said in a live interview. “That’s much more than Greece, that’s much more than almost any other developed country. We’ve got a problem and we have to get after it quickly.”

Gross spoke following a report that US banks were likely to scale back on their use of Treasurys as collateral against derivatives and other transactions. Bank heads say that move is likely to happen in August as Congress dithers over whether to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, according to a report in the Financial Times.

The move reflects increasing concern from the financial community over whether the US is capable of a political solution to its burgeoning debt and deficit problems.

“We’ve always wondered who will buy Treasurys” after the Federal Reserve purchases the last of its $600 billion to end the second leg of its quantitative easing program later this month, Gross said. “It’s certainly not Pimco and it’s probably not the bond funds of the world.”

Pimco, based in Newport Beach, Calif., manages more than $1.2 trillion in assets and runs the largest bond fund in the world.

Gross confirmed a report Friday that Pimco has marginally increased its Treasurys allotment—from 4 percent to 5 percent—but still has little interest in US debt and its low yields that are in place despite an ugly national balance sheet.

“Why wouldn’t an investor buy Canada with a better balance sheet or Australia with a better balance sheet with interest rates at 1 or 2 or 3 percent higher?” he said. “It simply doesn’t make any sense.”

Should the debt problem in Greece explode into a full-blown crisis—an International Monetary Fund bailout has prevented a full-scale meltdown so far—Gross predicted that German debt, not that of the US, would be the safe-haven of choice for global investors.

America is going down because her stupid citizens wickedly voted for corrupt dishonest Democrat fools – the very fools who imploded our economy – to have complete power.  Nancy Pelosi took over dictatorial control in the House of Representatives, and Harry Reid took over the US Senate, in 2006.

Thanks to Obama, America is now worse off than Greece.  But that didn’t stop Obama from offering to bail out Greece.  Maybe it’s because George Soros is Greek; maybe because the American left has always adored the European-style socialism in spite of Thomas Jefferson’s warning that “the comparison of our governments with those of Europe is like a comparison of heaven and hell.”  Maybe because Obama simply WANTS hell for America.  But there you have it.

Republicans acknowledged they failed to live up to their values and spent too much.  But the last Republican budget (Fiscal Year 2007) passed in 2006 had only a $161 billion deficit.  The very next Democrat budget for FY 2008 had a deficit of $459 billion – nearly three times larger than the one they’d demonized Republicans for.  Then their FY-2009 budget dwarfed that deficit with a black hold of red ink deficit of $1.4 TRILLION.  That was more money than any government in the history of the world had ever contemplated.  But Democrats dwarfed that the very next year with a FY-2010 budget with a $1.6 trillion deficit.  And as for FY-2011, the Democrat Congress simply refused to perform its most basic duty of governance and didn’t even bother to pass a budget.  Republicans are now forced to do the last disgraced Democrat-controlled Congress’ job for them – and Democrats are demonizing them for it.

That’s how this game is played.  Democrats are fascist demagogues who shrilly launch into Republicans as they try to save the American people from unparalleled future suffering.  They are people who ROUTINELY demonize, demonize, demonize until THEY are the ones forced to call for the very things they demonized and tried to prevent from happening.  But by the time they react this time, just as before, it will be too late.

Try this on for size: our actual debt isn’t the $14 trillion we constantly hear about; it’s more like $200 trillion.  And even THAT gargantuan number doesn’t take into account the massive debts that all the liberal labor unions have amassed in state pensions (e.g., California’s public pension system has unfunded liabilities of $500 billion).  We cannot possibly hope to pay this – and yet Democrats demand more and more and more, and demagogue Republicans for even trying to cut millions when we need to cut TENS OF TRILLIONS or collapse.

Democrats run ads showing a look-a-like of Republican Rep. Paul Ryan pushing an old lady off a cliff; but they want every single senior citizen to die terribly as the Medicare system completely collapses while they refuse to do anything to fix it – as even Bill Clinton openly acknowledged.

We are going to end like the PIIGS – Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain- because we elected Democrat swine to ensure we perished like pigs.

Greece just got downgraded to the point where they are the lowest-rated currency in the history of the planet.  And it happened yesterday.

When that happens to us it will be the worst nightmare in history.  300 million Americans are going to go into an insanity of panic – and of course the violence will begin with the left.  If you don’t have an arsenal, someone will kick down your door and murder your whole family just to eat the food in your house.  And that hell on earth will be entirely because you trusted Democrats like Anthony Weiner to run your health care, your pension, your economy, your life.

I hope you vote in 2012 like your very LIFE was at stake in these elections.  Because this time it truly is.

Nancy Pelosi Blown Away Over Her Demagoguery Of Bush (When Unemployment Was 5% And Gas Was $3/Gal)

June 7, 2011

The following comes from CBS’ “Face the Nation” Sunday, June 5, 2011:

BOB SCHIEFFER: You know, the unemployment figures came out and they were worse thanexpected.

REPRESENTATIVE NANCY PELOSI: Yes.

BOB SCHIEFFER: As you know. Unemployment actually ticked up to 9.1 percent but this wasjust part of the story.

REPRESENTATIVE NANCY PELOSI: Hm.

BOB SCHIEFFER: A series of numbers that have been really, really bad lately, the number ofnew jobs created–

REPRESENTATIVE NANCY PELOSI: Hm.

BOB SCHIEFFER: –fifty-four thousand, far fewer than expected. Home prices hit a new low inthe first quarter of the year. Home sales are down again. Consumer confidence is down. And gas and food prices are up. I have to say, congresswoman, many of the experts thought therecovery would be well underway by now.

REPRESENTATIVE NANCY PELOSI: Mm-Hm.

BOB SCHIEFFER: But it looks like we’re going backwards now, that– that we may be on the verge of a double-dip recession here. Do you– do you fear that’s what’s happened?

REPRESENTATIVE NANCY PELOSI: Well, I think we have to take a careful look at those figures to see. The unemployment numbers are obviously very disturbing. Are they an anomalyas some people suggest, because of the disasters in the South and the Midwest and the rest or is this something systemic that– that we have to accommodate in a different way? But all of ittranslates into hardship for America’s middle class and they’re feeling it very, very severely.

BOB SCHIEFFER: You know Mitt Romney launched his presidential campaign in New Hampshire. And he said basically the President has made the economy worse. Here’s– let’sjust listen to what he said.

GOVERNOR MITT ROMNEY: This is now his economy. And what he has done has failed the American people. And the borrowing and the spending and the 1.6 trillion dollar deficit, these–these numbers are his, they’re on his back and it’s why he’s going to lose.

BOB SCHIEFFER: So are you and the Democrats going to have to come up to an answer tothat?

REPRESENTATIVE NANCY PELOSI: Well first of all, I don’t stipulate to that set of facts thatGovernor Romney just said. Mitt Romney has said because the fact is that this deficit came to us largely from President Bush. But it’s no use going there. We have to go forward. It’s a question of what — what is the President and what are those who aspire to be President going todo about the future to create jobs, good paying jobs. What are they going to do about theeducation of our children, the security of our seniors, the strengthening of the middle class,reducing the deficit– reducing the deficit?

BOB SCHIEFFER: But the President has been there two-and-a-half years.

REPRESENTATIVE NANCY PELOSI: Mm-Hm.

BOB SCHIEFFER: I mean, why hadn’t he done that yet?

REPRESENTATIVE NANCY PELOSI (overlapping): Well, he’s done a great deal of it.

BOB SCHIEFFER: What’s happened?

REPRESENTATIVE NANCY PELOSI: I think if he hadn’t taken the actions he did that thesituation would be worse. He pulled us from the brink of a financial crisis, from an economiccrisis. And now we have to dig out of a deep– a– a deep debt. And– and we have to also makeit clear that we’re not getting into this situation again.

BOB SCHIEFFER: You were talking in a kind of a different way when unemployment went to five percent under George Bush. What you said then that Americans are struggling with skyrocketing energy prices, gas is only three dollars a gallon then. And you said this morning,this is January 4, 2008, “This morning’s jobs report confirms what most Americans already knew–President Bush’s economic policies have failed our country’s middle class.” I mean, aren’t Republicans entitled to say, you know, if then gas was three dollars and unemploymentwas five percent and– and– and the President has failed the American people, don’t they have a right to say that this President has failed the American people?

REPRESENTATIVE NANCY PELOSI: Well, if you want to go into the past, we can talk about the past all you want. The public wants to know about the future. What are you going to do to create jobs, good-paying jobs in our country?

BOB SCHIEFFER (overlapping): Well, what are you going to do?

REPRESENTATIVE NANCY PELOSI: Well, as I said what the President has done has improved the situation from where it may have been.

My question at this point would have been, “Has he improved it to 5% unemployment and three buck-a-gallon gas like it was when you were demonizing President Bush for being a failure?”

I also would have either repeated my question about how the Republicans had every right to lay into Obama as a failed president with unemployment at 9.1% and regular gas at $3.85 a gallon???  And when she didn’t bother to answer it a second time, I would have stated for the record that she refused to answer the question.

But they don’t let me handle such interviews.  Probably because I also would have reached across the table and grabbed her plastic face about the second time after she said “Hm” to the evidence of the devastating failure to the nation her president has been – with most of it occuring under HER House leadership.

Unemployment was 7.2% the day Obama assumed the presidency.  It’s been over 10%, and now 9.1% and heading upward.  2010 was the worst year in housing – EVER.  And 2011 is predicted to be the NEW worst year ever – and yet 2011 got  off to such a terrible start that it is incredibly even WORSE than “worst.”  The NEW news is that Obama’s bold leadership has resulted in the worst housing market since the Great Depression.  So it’s rather difficult to agree with Pelosi’s perspective on THOSE two most major of fronts.

In Fiscal Year 2007, Republicans passed their last budget before Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats took over Congress.  It had a deficit for $161 billion – which Republicans have openly admitted was way too much.

And then the Democrats got their shot.  Their Fiscal Year 2008 budget ran a deficit of $459 billion.  Nearly THREE TIMES that of Republicans.  Then there was their doozy of a Fiscal Year 2009 budget, which ran a deficit of a mind-boggling $1.42 TRILLION.  Which had never before been seen in the history of the human race – until they topped it the very next year with their Fiscal Year 2010 budget deficit of $1.6 TRILLION.  And then they didn’t even BOTHER to try to pass a budget for Fiscal Year 2011 – which was THEIR responsibility.  To the extent that the Republicans and Obama are fighting over the budget, it is ENTIRELY the Democrats’ fault.  We should have already had a budget for this year, because they should have already passed one last year.

Oh, yeah, President Obama – the man Nancy Pelosi so lavishly praises above – had his own budget which he submitted for approval in the Democrat-controlled Senate.  And how did messiah’s budget do in the Democrat-controlled environment?  It was such a despicable piece of garbage that it failed 97-0 with not ONE SINGLE DEMOCRAT voting for it.

That’s not just bad.  It is a disgrace.  President Obama is a disgrace to America.

So between the Democrats not even bothering to pass a budget for 2011 and Obama submitting the worst budget in history, who you gonna blame???

Obviously, Republicans.  Because we live in a world that all too largely consists of propaganda.

Oh, by the way, the conversation between Schieffer and Pelosi turned to Medicare.  Pelosi was talking out of one of her plastic holes and of course demagoguing Republicans.  And Schieffer broke in and asked:

“Don’t you– let me just interrupt you. Don’t you have to, though, give some plan or some idea of how you’re going to reform Medicare because we all know it can’t sustain as it is?”

Because, you see, Medicare is just like spending, and just like the budgets that Democrats didn’t bother to pass.

MEDICARE IS GOING TO GO BANKRUPT BY 2017 AT THE VERY EARLIEST (I say “earliest” because just recently they were saying it would be going bankrupt by 2019; are they going to revise the demise date forward again?).

AND DEMOCRATS HAVE NO PLAN TO FIX IT.

Even Bill Clinton said to Rep. Paul Ryan of his fellow Democrats’ “Mediscare” tactic, “I hope Democrats don’t use this as an excuse to do nothing.”  To which Rep. Paul Ryan responded, “My guess is it’s going to sink into paralysis is what’s going to  happen. And you know the math. It’s just, I mean, we knew we were  putting ourselves out there. You gotta start this. You gotta get out  there. You gotta get this thing moving.”

It’s going to be just like the Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac fiasco.  Republicans tried REPEATEDLY to reform these two housing mortgage goliaths for YEARS before they finally imploded the American economy in 2008.  Democrats fiercely resisted every single attempt.  As (again) even Bill Clinton acknowledged.  They blocked any chance to save the U.S. economy from the disaster that their policies had created years before – going back even into the Carter administration.

Democrats created the last mother of all crises (the housing mortgage market meltdown of 2008).  And they are already hard at work creating the next one (the impending Medicare implosion).

And only YOU can stop them.

[I feel like Smokey Bear pointing my bear paw and saying, “Only YOU can prevent Democrats.”  But there it is.]

As Democrats Rejoice Over Their Strategy Of Demonizing Republicans Over Medicare, Bill Clinton Takes GOP’s Side In A WARNING

May 25, 2011

Democrats have utterly demonized everything and anything Republicans have tried to do to show some actual leadership (note: which Obama REFUSES to do) and deal with the Medicare funding crisis before it implodes in just a few years.

A typical example of Democrat demagoguery is the attack ad that features a Paul Ryan-lookalike pushing an old lady in a wheelchair over a cliff.  It fails to mention that none of Ryan’s changes to Medicare would affect anyone over the age of 55, and that he is trying to save the current beneficiaries receiving Medicare from a disaster that will kill them all in only five years.

Only a few years ago experts were saying Medicare would go bankrupt by 2019.  That has now been changed; experts are now saying it will go bankrupt by 2017.  Which is only six years away.  And there’s plenty of time to find out that they were wrong again and no, it will go bankrupt even sooner than that.

If anyone is trying to save these people and save the Medicare system, it’s Paul Ryan and the Republicans.  It’s Democrats who want to let them all die while demonizing anyone who tries to prevent those deaths.

Democrats’ strategy is to do nothing – which will literally create the situation in which the system will crash and seniors WILL die – and attack Republicans for offering specific plans to bolster the Medicare system.

Bill Clinton Warns Democrats On Medicare: Doing Nothing Isn’t An Option
Doug Mataconis   ·   Wednesday, May 25, 2011

Former President Clinton doesn’t necessarily think his fellow Democrats are pursuing the right policy in their response to the Ryan Plan:

WASHINGTON (CNNMoney) — Bill Clinton had a word of warning on Wednesday for fellow Democrats: Don’t get too cocky about voters’ rejection of Paul Ryan’s Medicare plan.

In a special election for a vacant House seat on Tuesday, a Democrat candidate upset a Republican in a GOP-stronghold in upstate New York.

The race was widely seen as a proxy on Ryan’s controversial Republican proposal plan to convert Medicare into a voucher program.

Clinton, speaking at a fiscal summit sponsored by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, said the race showed that voters don’t like the Republican plan.

But he also told Democrats not to shy away from tackling entitlement programs.

“You shouldn’t look at the New York race and think that nobody can do anything to slow Medicare costs,” Clinton said.

Of perhaps more interest is a behind the scenes exchange between Clinton and Paul Ryan after the former President spoke:

ABC News was behind the scenes with the Wisconsin Congressman and GOP  Budget Committee Chairman when he got some words of encouragement none  other than former President Bill Clinton.

“So anyway, I told them before you got here, I said I’m glad we won  this race in New York,” Clinton told Ryan, when the two met backstage at  a forum on the national debt held by the Pete Peterson Foundation. But  he added, “I hope Democrats don’t use this as an excuse to do nothing.”

Ryan told Clinton he fears that now nothing will get done in Washington.

“My guess is it’s going to sink into paralysis is what’s going to  happen. And you know the math. It’s just, I mean, we knew we were  putting ourselves out there. You gotta start this. You gotta get out  there. You gotta get this thing moving,” Ryan said.

Clinton told Ryan that if he ever wanted to talk about it, he should “give me a call.” Ryan said he would.

Interesting to say the least.

Outsidethebeltway posts a video of that exchange between Ryan and Clinton.

The Democrats have proposed nothing to fix anything.  Rather, they have recklessly spent.  And spent.  And spent.

And our nation is on the edge of a depression that will make the “Great” one look like a nice day by comparison.

Meanwhile, Obama and Democrats stripped $575 billion from Medicare in order to fund a new entitlement program under Medicaid.  And what his plan will do is scaring the bejeezus out of providers who might well simply either go bankrupt (before America itself goes bankrupt) or will simply get out of providing healthcare altogether.

I can’t predict whether the Democrats’ “Mediscare” campaign will work or not in 2012.  But if it does, America is finished.  The people who created this disaster in the first place and then attacked anyone who tried to fix that disaster will have won to ensure the nation’s collapse.  It will be as simple as that.

I also know that this happened before the 2010 smackdown of Democrats.  Remember?  In the 23rd district, the Democrat won a “Republican district” in New York.  And Democrats triumphed over what they thought the meaning of that victory was.  They turned out to be profoundly wrong.

One thing I do know: the Beast is coming.