Paul Ryan's Road Map "politically ludicrous"

Bruce Bartlett is sympathetic to the idea of making major cuts to entitlement programs to balance the budget. So he's sympathetic to some of Paul Ryan's ideas. That doesn't mean he thinks they'll get traction:

The Ryan plan is, of course, politically ludicrous. It would be impossible to get Congress to even implement one of its major provisions, let alone all of them simultaneously. And I say this as someone who in principle supports many of the ideas in his plan. For example, I believe we must raise the retirement age, and it's hard to see how we can meaningfully reform the health system to reduce cost inflation as long as health insurance is free of taxation. But I don't delude myself that it is possible to implement such changes absent a major transformation in political attitudes or conditions that do not now exist.