Ryan’s Medicare Killer Is Dead
Have you been watching this unfold over the last day or so? The House GOP leadership has been throwing Ryan under the bus and walking back any idea of privatizing Medicare as part of a budget scheme. Why?
There’s a new Q Poll that says that 6 in 10 Americans oppose this cockamamie idea. Which is consistent across all of the poling that I’ve seen — majorities — including majorities of Republicans (scroll down) — want the Government out of our Medicare. After a recess where representatives were asked some very tough questions about their votes to privatize Medicare, they’ve apparently come back to tell Mr. Ryan that the GOP Caucus is finally brave enough to throw him under the bus.
Representative Cantor, though, does his best to come up with a resonating excuse for losing Ryan — The President was Mean to Our Plan! And besides, its not off the table! Tax cuts are off the table!
Speaker Boehner notes that the Ways and Means Committee chair won’t bring up the privatization plan in committee, because Democrats in the Senate and the White House won’t let their monster off of the raft. Once again, not even acknowledging that there are crowds of citizens on each side screaming for privatization’s head.
Democrats in the Senate write to Eric Cantor, telling him that he was a good boy for walking away from the thing that has already exploded in the faces of him and his colleagues. (And more like this, please! But NOTE Delawareans — our own Tom Carper is reported as NOT signing this letter. What’s up with that?)
But Chuck Schumer reminds the GOP that while they made a smart move here, their on-the-record votes to kill Medicare will be in their faces for eternity. I hope this isn’t an empty threat.
And apparently this decision isn’t sitting especially well with the Freshman class of teahadis. They’ve retreated to whining about Democrats for their failure to brainwash their own constituents.
There’s a new Q Poll that says that 6 in 10 Americans oppose this cockamamie idea.
The Senate really doesn’t care what public opinion is. Didn’t we at one point have around a 60% margin of support for a public option? Whatever the Senate’s and Obama’s reasoning for opposing the Ryan plan, it isn’t public opinion.
Harry Reid has promised a Senate vote on the Ryan plan. The question now is, will Weak-Kneed Harry Reid give his Republican Senate BFFs a pass?
SENATE REPUBS: “Harry, can you get us off the hook? For old times’ sake?”
REID: (smiling broadly) “Sure, paisano – I was just kidding! Had you there for a minute though, didn’t I?”
You know, if you were actually paying attention to the politics going on around you, you might be dangerous.
The public option was defeated by the insurance companies that fund Senators’ (like Carper) campaigns. Calculating further that the idea of a public option would be less in 2014 when all of this goes into effect.
The Public Option isn’t exactly part of the Third Rail of American politics, either. It is very hard to get rid of a benefit that lots of people like and see the results of every day. A benefit that a huge slice of reliable voters take advantage of.
If Dems had framed the public component of HCR as an expansion of Medicare, we might be in a different place today, given the obvious public support for Medicare. All those Dems and Repubs who voted against the public option very well might not have dared to vote against Medicare. #FAIL
There were plenty of people who talked about the Public Option as buy-in Medicare. Howard Dean even proposed a Medicare buy in at 50 or 55 as a compromise. All of this stuff polled well, which should tell you something of the intensity of insurance companies. But it still wasn’t something that people were beating their reps up on at Town Halls. That year, the wingnuts held the field with the bullshit about pulling the plug on grandma.
Even as it warms our hearts to see Obama and the Senate moving to the left, it is important to remember they are still far to the right of Candidate Obama 2008.
There were plenty of people who talked about the Public Option as buy-in Medicare.
Unfortunately, none of them sat on the relevant Senate committees. In the Senate the crap floats to the top.
It’s all starting in VT…yesterday they passed their single payer health care system. Dont think for one minute these repukes are backing off. They see the polls and will drift backwards until after 2012, hoping to get a repuke president and more repukes in the Senate. Its just a stall tactic for now.