Paul Ryan was a man with a dream. Or perhaps a scheme. He would convince everyone that the country was broke and then play on fears about a “debt crisis” to talk members of Congress into backing his plan to restructure Medicare so that federal money would be steered away from providing health care for seniors and toward bailing out for-profit insurance companies.

The House Budget Committee chairman sold House Republicans on his plan. And it looked as if he might force the hand of the compromise-prone Obama administration.

But then the American people caught wind of Ryan’s “entitlement reform” scheme and quickly recognized that it would end Medicare, along with retirement security, for most Americans.

Worse yet, for Ryan, they started noting that his plan would not put the federal budget in balance for decades.

Then they started asking why, if the federal government was so “broke,” did the Wisconsin Republican vote to bail out the nation’s biggest banks? Why was he fighting to maintain Bush-era tax cuts for billionaires? Why was he backing massive increases in Pentagon spending, including unnecessary weapon systems and unnecessary wars?