Entitlement-hating Paul Ryan collected Social Security benefits until he was 18.

[I AM NOT THAT GUY 5,715]

Liberals attack Paul Ryan because his father died young, resulting in survivor benefits

At the age of 16, Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., suffered the death of his 55-year-old father. Because of his father’s early death, the government made survivor payments for a few years to Paul Ryan’s family – including for Paul Ryan himself. Ryan collected benefits for two years, until he turned 18.

The net effect of the death of Paul Ryan’s father was likely to reduce taxpayer expenditures on Ryan’s family, since retirees typically collect at least a decade’s worth of benefits. (My own father died five years short of retirement. The result was that my mother, who could otherwise have collected spousal benefits when he retired, instead had to wait well over a decade for benefits, reducing her lifetime social security benefits. She was effectively punished for his death.)

But the Daily Kos blog is now using his father's early death against Ryan. A Daily Kos diary attacks Ryan in a post entitled, “Entitlement-hating Paul Ryan collected Social Security benefits until he was 18.”

Not all Daily Kos diaries reflect the views of Daily Kos as a whole, but this one does, since it was briefly featured on the top of the front page of Daily Kos, and is still listed as a “recommended” blog post in the sidebar on the right side of Daily Kos's main page. More than 183 Daily Kos readers have commented in response to it – virtually all in agreement with its hateful sentiments.

Liberal bloggers frequently smear conservatives and libertarians as hypocrites for seeking to collect social security and other benefits. For example, Ayn Rand was attacked by the liberal blog Balloon Juice as being a “welfare queen” for receiving Medicare benefits even though she had contributed lots of tax money in her lifetime through income and self-employment taxes she paid based on her best-selling books.

But there’s nothing hypocritical about criticizing a government program as being a bad deal for the public, and yet wanting to recover some of the tax money you were forced to pay into that program in benefits. Refusing to accept such benefits is as stupid as refusing to accept the return of stolen money. If a program is wasteful, people should be encouraged to criticize it so that the program will be reformed, not punished by being denied the same benefits that every other taxpayer receives – including people who are too lazy or uninformed to demand reforms.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://washingtonexaminer.com/blogs/opinion-zone/2011/04/liberals-attack-paul-ryan-because-his-father-died-when-paul-was-16?utm_source=EOZ&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=JDell&utm_content=feed#ixzz1KAfZTZmW

[mawilson 2,133]

Not really fair since Ryan's budget doesn't touch Social Security at all.

[Dakine10 5,452]

But there’s nothing hypocritical about criticizing a government program as being a bad deal for the public, and yet wanting to recover some of the tax money you were forced to pay into that program in benefits. Refusing to accept such benefits is as stupid as refusing to accept the return of stolen money. If a program is wasteful, people should be encouraged to criticize it so that the program will be reformed, not punished by being denied the same benefits that every other taxpayer receives – including people who are too lazy or uninformed to demand reforms.

Politicking aside, it's hard to imagine anyone would have a real problem with him getting survivor benefits.

Seems like the whole government has turned into a friggin dog and pony show sometimes.