Republicans have been trying to get rid of this country’s social safety net ever since it was first enacted. Now, they have a new proposal to benefit the wealthy at the expense of the working/middle class.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI), the ranking member of the House Budget Committee, recently introduced the Roadmap for America’s Future Act of 2010. In a nutshell, this plan would:

• Privatize Social Security and Medicare for everyone under age 55, and increase the retirement age to 70
• Impose a freeze on non-security discretionary spending from 2010-2019
• Cap the top income tax rate at 25 percent for everyone who makes $50,000 or more
• Eliminate income and payroll tax exclusions for employment-based health insurance starting next year

“The Roadmap would put the federal budget on a sustainable path, generating an annual budget surplus of about 5 percent of GDP by 2080,” the CBO wrote in its analysis. Hey, that’s only 70 years from now!

Ironically, the spending freeze is similar to the one President Obama recently proposed, that Republicans and Democrats immediately denounced.

The House will vote down Rep. Ryan’s proposal, but really I think it deserves a series of town hall meetings. Let’s take this plan to the people and let them express their candid opinions in open forums across the nation!

Michelle Bachmann thinks the Republican Party ought to go all the way with this. Over the weekend she said, “[W]hoever our nominee is, is going to have to have a Glenn Beck chalkboard and explain to everybody this is the way it is.”