The announcement that Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) would be Mitt Romney’s running mate in the 2012 presidential elections caused a furor among Democrats. Party leaders seized upon his budget plan, put forth during his time as the chairman of the House Budget Committee, to paint him as a man out to, among other things, destroy Social Security and Medicare, thereby disrupting the lives of all of our grannies. The truth of the matter, however, is very different, and closer examination reveals that large parts of his budget plan have merit.

I don’t need to explain the necessity of reducing the debt, which now stands at about $15.93 trillion, rising by around a trillion dollars every year. Politicians at every point on the ideological spectrum agree that our current spending levels—approximately 3.6 trillion in FY 2011—are unsustainable. Ryan frequently mentions the ominous “looming debt crisis,” and his Democratic counterpart on the House Budget Committee, Congressman Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) has said that “there’s no disagreement about the need to reduce our long-term deficits.” In the last fiscal year, Medicare and Medicaid made up 23%, or $835 billion of spending, Social Security, with $725 billion, another 20%. By comparison, the Department of Defense, a popular (and occasionally warranted) punching bag for liberal pundits accounted for 700 billion, or 19%.

Enter the Paul Ryan Plan. First and foremost, seniors have nothing to worry about. Medicare benefits for anyone currently receiving them would be untouched, as would those of anyone who would be eligible to receive Medicare benefits in the next 10 years. As things currently stand, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services decide what Medicare will cover, irrespective of cost, and for everyone 55 and up, that’s how the Medicare process will remain for the rest of their lives. The charges that Ryan’s plan would be to the detriment of seniors is little more than mudslinging on the part of Democrats, who want to keep the senior vote and maintain Obama’s lead in Florida.

For everyone not 55 or older, however, things would be radically changed. Instead of the federal government saying what it will cover, it would say how much, or in the political vernacular, a voucher system would be introduced. It’s extremely easy to attack this on the grounds that the government would massively underfund the vouchers (as indeed, under the original proposal, it would have after a couple decades); however, the Ryan Plan would require that insurers submit estimates of how much their plans would cost, charging the same amount for people of the same age, and able to turn no one down, and then provide vouchers for the amount of the second cheapest plan. Seniors opting for more expensive plans would pay the difference, but if they chose the cheapest, they would receive a rebate. Furthermore, traditional Medicare would be one of those options, though probably not the cheapest. For some idea of savings, in 2009, this would have saved the government 9%. Is it inferior coverage? Absolutely, but when debt is spiraling out of control, this is entirely acceptable.

Another important piece of the Ryan Plan is Social Security. He is not trying to privatize it. His 2010 plan called for allowing Americans to open private accounts invested in stocks, which would have been optional, insured by the government, and heritable, but his last two budget plans have been far more modest. They have called instead for the retirement age to be increased – and in a world of ever-increasing life expectancies, who can blame them? – and reducing benefits for wealthier retirees, in accordance with Obama’s bipartisan fiscal commission, of which Ryan was a member.

There are of course problems with many aspects of the Ryan Plan that mean it should not be passed in its entirety. It’s extremely difficult to touch Medicaid, which provides health insurance to low-income persons who meet additional requirements, without cutting off those people from any sort of health insurance at all. And the proposed tax plans are ludicrous, slashing them for people of every income level, but mostly for the “job-creators” who occupy the highest income brackets; the smallest bracket would see post-income tax gains of 2%, while the highest would see gains of 12.5%. More tax breaks, at least for the super rich, is not the way to solve a debt crisis. Still, it is the Medicare and Social Security reforms that are most blasted in the media and on these two issues, the Ryan Plan is worth implementing.