REP. PAUL RYAN (R-Wis.): The concern that people like me have been raising is we do not want to encourage a dependency culture. This is why we called for welfare reform. This is what welfare reform in 1996 was. This was what the new rounds of welfare reform we're calling for do, which is to increase social mobility, economic opportunity, self-responsibility, those kind of things.
But earned entitlements, where you pay your payroll taxes to get a benefit when you retire like Social Security, Medicare, are not taker programs. And I think when the president does kind of a switcheroo like that, what he's trying to say is we are maligning these programs that people have earned throughout their working lives.
And so, it's kind of a convenient twist of terms to try and shadowbox a straw man in order to win an argument by default. It's essentially what that rhetorical device is, that he uses over and over and over. (The Laura Ingraham Show, January 22, 2013)
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