Please indicate the portion of Ryan's budget that "cuts off programs". I expect the answer will be related to reducing the rate of increase over time (which counts as a cut nowadays) and privatizing a portion of the funds (private apparently now meaning it will just vanish forever without cause).

So if I understand you correctly, one of your two chief complaints about the Ryan budget is that it does not contain a provision for a raise in the retirement age that is taking place anyway? And on the second point, you come to the meat of the ACTUAL cap argument, to charge people NOT to receive benefits. But that destroys the entire argument that SS is supposedly not an entitlement because people paid into it. That would change it from a social insurance program into an "oldness tax" of sorts. You cannot escape the prevailing problem with these programs, in that they cannot raise enough revenue to meet their obligations in perpetuity. Therefore, they need to be changed.

Not like the abortion issue, right, Mr. Gehring?

Keep in mind, though, this is like his third try to reform the system. He has been dialing back his expectations slowly with each new budget, since no one seemed to have the stomach to fix the problem now. Dems lost a chance to look conciliatory by choosing his "fix things over 40 years" solution over the "refuse to raise the debt ceiling and outlaw deficit spending right now" solution.

The problem with your "raise the retirement age" argument is that it has been part of conservative proposals in the past and have always been roundly rejected as immoral and pushing grandma off a cliff and making her eat cat food and whatever. Obama has said he WILL NOT do this. The problem with the "increase the cap" argument is that benefits are based on contributions, so raising the cap creates a little more income in the short term and a larger payout in the long term, exchanging long-term survivability for short-term solvency. Ryan doesn't need to "destroy" these programs, they are scheduled to collapse under their own weight within our lifetimes. The only question is whether we replace them with something workable before then.