Ezra Klein: “Ryan’s suggestion that Medicare and Medicaid can or should be held to the rate of inflation is absurd. His budget has no way of making that happen, save for draconian cuts in both (this goes far, far beyond “means-testing”). And you don’t have to take it from me. Alice Rivlin, an eminent budget expert and co-author of Ryan’s original Medicare proposal, will tell you the same thing. But those cuts are how he saves so much money going forward. They’re the assumptions that make the rest of the budget work.”