bapifar01: Senate Republicans not whipping support for Ryan's Medicare repeal plan

Saturday 21 May 2011

Senate Republicans not whipping support for Ryan's Medicare repeal plan

Mitch McConnell won't whip his colleagues to end Medicare (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

The Hill reports Mitch McConnell is giving his caucus the freedom to vote however they want on Paul Ryan's budget plan to repeal Medicare when it comes up for a vote. McConnell says he'll personally vote for it, but won't pressure GOP senators to vote one way or the other, a clear indication that Senate Republican leadership understands the political toxicity of Ryan's plan to end the Medicare program in ten years.

Among Senate Republicans, only Susan Collins has publicly come out against it, but Scott Brown has waffled, and neither Chuck Grassley nor Dick Lugar would tell The Hill whether they support it or not.

One Republican Senator was willing to criticize Ryan on the record, albeit anonymously:

One GOP senator who spoke on the condition of anonymity expressed his belief that Ryan made a serious tactical mistake by spelling out Medicare reforms in his budget plan.
?All Ryan had to do was set an overall number and leave it up to the policymaking committees how to come up with the savings,? said the lawmaker. ?The important number to focus on is that the federal government takes in $2.2 trillion and spends $3.7 trillion.?

The lawmaker, who did not want to be quoted on the record criticizing a fellow Republican, said that by laying out specific Medicare reforms, Ryan gave Democrats political ammunition.

?The only people talking about Medicare are Republicans, and we?re just arguing with ourselves,? said the lawmaker.

First of all, if Republicans really are the only ones talking about Medicare, it's because the Democrats are actually doing something about it, reducing Medicare costs by $500 billion over the next decade thanks to health reform. And while Republicans congratulate themselves for talking about Medicare, up until now, most of their talk has focused on accusing Democrats of cutting Medicare benefits and trying to kill grandma.

Second, obviously this Republican senator understands the real fiscal problem isn't just a function of expenditures, it's also a function of revenues. And the reason we have a revenue problem is a result of (a) the Great Recession, which Republicans caused and (b) historically low tax rates, which Republicans also caused. And yet this Republican is unwilling to actually say anything about the need to address that problem.

Finally, saying that Paul Ryan should have just used a magic asterisk instead of proposing to end Medicare is a pretty clear concession that Republicans are getting their asses kicked on this issue; the magic asterisk is simply an attempt to avoid talking about specifics. But the real problem isn't that the Republicans dared to be specific; Ryan's plan really isn't all that detailed beyond the basic notion of ending Medicare as a provider of health care services.

The real political problem Republicans have is that they think that the best way to reduce Medicare costs is to shift the burden from government to individuals. That may solve a budgetary problem for the government, but it simply creates a new problem for individuals. In contrast, Democrats have focused on reducing the cost of health care overall by looking at systemic reforms.

Obviously, there is a ton more work that needs to be done to reduce overall costs?we still need to keep things like the public option on the table?but the Democratic approach of reducing overall costs is superior on both policy and political grounds to the Republican approach of burden shifting. For the GOP, the only path out of the wilderness is to recognize this reality, but their reaction to Newt Gingrich's criticism of RyanCare shows they are nowhere near understanding the box they've put themselves in.