Seems like a lot of people don’t know much about Paul Ryan and his plans. Here’s a bit of reading if you want to learn more.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities has extensive analysis of Ryan’s budget plan and what it would entail. It’s worth posting this short summary from their overview:

“The new Ryan budget is a remarkable document — one that, for most of the past half-century, would have been outside the bounds of mainstream discussion due to its extreme nature. In essence, this budget is Robin Hood in reverse — on steroids. It would likely produce the largest redistribution of income from the bottom to the top in modern U.S. history and likely increase poverty and inequality more than any other budget in recent times (and possibly in the nation’s history).”

Ezra Klein’s morning Wonkbook has a primer on Ryan. He links to a long New Yorker profile written by Ryan Lizza that is well worth a read, as well as three interviews of Ryan by Klein himself.

Bill Moyers has a page of links to Paul Ryan backgrounders, including several posts by Moyers on Ryan’s budget proposal, “The Path to Prosperity 2012“.

It’s important to note that Romney claims that his budget proposal is not exactly the same as Ryan’s, but I believe they are similar in one important respect: neither one has budget math that adds up. Both rely on hypothetical spending cuts that the candidates will not specify, making it impossible to fully appreciate the impact these Republican plans would have. I suspect that is working as intended, to keep us from understanding just how bad the Republican plans would be for the middle class and the poor. So please look past their rhetoric and study the reality behind the men.

Updates as new info is found:

Igor Volsky at Think Progress has Twelve Things You Should Know About Candidate Paul Ryan. The one thing that stands out for me is how extreme Ryan is on the abortion issue. He actually submitted legislation in the House that would declare fertilized eggs to be persons under the law, the sort of legislation that is so far right it was rejected in Mississippi, and twice has been rejected in my home state of Colorado. Amanda Peterson Beadle adds Five Reasons Why Paul Ryan is Bad for Women’s Health. In addition to the abortion issue, he doesn’t want birth control funded in insurance plans.

Jamelle Bouie at The American Prospect offers us Five Things to Know About Ryan’s Plan for America.

And it’s important to remember that Romney/Ryan are ripping on Obama for the cuts to the privatized Medicare Advantage plan, but those same cuts are included in Ryan’s budget, too. And Republicans in the House and the Senate voted to approve that.

AP fact-checks Romney/Ryan’s claims during their announcement speeches, and finds that they lied a lot.

At at the Wonkblog, Suzy Khimm points out that Ryan has proposed harsh cuts to Medicare in particular. Republicans don’t much care about the middle class, but they really hate poor people.