President Obama and Democrats DO have an alternative to Ryan's Budget/vouchers:

[Proud Liberal Dem]

4. We're not really "running out of money" like the right/Republicans want everybody to believe

I'll believe that we are in a serious monetary crisis when and ONLY when:

1. Republicans agree that there is not enough to afford tax cuts for the wealthy
2. Republicans agree that we can't keep affording to give a bunch of money to corporations (corporate welfare)
3. Republicans agree that we can't keep spending a vast fortune on our military and/or start unnecessary wars

It's not always how much money we have/don't have but how it's managed and it seems to me that we're having the money problems that we're having because the spending priorities of our elected officials- mostly Republicans- is seriously screwed up and Republicans are eager to use situations like this to call for drastic cuts in social spending- but refuse to demand cuts in pretty much anything else and/or find other ways of making up any shortfalls.

I'm all for a reasonable discussion regarding the future of Medicare/Social Security, which I believe is eminently possible given sane individuals acting in good faith but the current GOP is NOT geared towards such a discussion and IMHO we need to quickly- and forcefully- shut down any plans that call for the elimination of Medicare/Social Security and get everybody to the table for a real *adult* discussion of the problems with these programs- most of which could probably be easily resolved with a more surgical approach that President Obama and the Democratic Party prefers as opposed to the Republican/Ryan approach of taking a sledgehammer to both of them.