Could it be, Rep. Ryan, that transfer payments like Social Security in particular are shifting away from lower-income households because there aren't as many lower income households? Because it works the way the CBO says, and "transfers boost income the most for lower-income households"? For example, here's this from the National Bureau of Economic Research on elderly poverty. Check out what's happened to the poverty rate among the elderly since 1979. The poverty is the darker line. The one that keeps falling as the other line, Social Security expenditures, rises.



This shift reflects a growth in programs that focus on the elderly population and are not for the most part income-adjusted, such as Social Security and Medicare. In other words, the structure of some of our largest entitlement programs has decreased the share of government transfer payments going to lower-income households and increased the share going to wealthier seniors.

Ryan is using the shocking finding that the lowest quintile is receiving less in transfer payments (the lowest quintile being the lowest 20 percent of the population) to argue that the remainingshould be subject to means testing. He says, "There is something wrong with our government transfer programs if they are increasingly steering assistance to the wealthy."In Ryan's worldof seniors are wealthy. That will be news to probably 75 percent of seniors. And they got that way because Social Security and Medicare have helped them out of poverty. So Social Security and Medicare have to be adjusted so that more seniors are forced into poverty. That, Ryan says, is "promoting the natural rights and the inherent dignity of the individual."