There is an awful lot of rampant speculation right now, much of it masquerading as confirmed fact, about how well the House Republican’s proposed Medicare reforms are going over with the American public. But there is very little hard evidence. There have only been two polls, to my knowledge, that have described and then asked about the Paul Ryan-authored Republican plan since President Obama invited Ryan to sit in the front row for his April 13th deficit reduction speech, during which Obama lambasted Ryan’s proposal. 

That was the same speech in which Obama offered a “framework” to save “$4 trillion” in deficit spending. But his “framework,” were it actually a budget, would actually increase deficit spending over the next decade by about $1 trillion more than under current law — and current law already puts us on course to spend about $7 trillion that we do not have. His proposed deficit spending, moreover, is on top of the $14 trillion in national debt that we already have on the books, roughly a third of which has been accrued since Obama’s election.