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Tea Party opposes cuts to Medicare

RJKarl

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"The Tea Party movement is supposed to be the engine driving Republicans' push for sharp cuts to spending and reform entitlements. Representative Paul Ryan's 2012 budget, which passed the House last week, phases out Medicare for people under 55 and turns Medicaid into block grants. But it turns out that Tea Partiers, like most Americans, strongly oppose cutting Medicare and Medicaid. A new McClatchy-Marist poll shows 70 percent of "Tea Party supporters" oppose cutting those programs--and 80 percent of registered voters agree.

So though The New Republic's Jonathan Chait has argued that "the Ryan budget represents the victory of the Tea Party mentality over mainstream conservatism within the Republican Party," it looks like Ryan's plan doesn't represent the activists, either. Slate's Dave Weigel calls the Marist poll a "nice present" for Democrats, and "pretty ugly numbers" for Republicans. He adds: "If Democrats can keep portraying the cuts as worse than they are--this was done successfully in the 2005 Social Security fight--there's a win here." For another articulation of this view, recall that even when House Republicans passed Ryan's budget Friday, NBC News' Mark Murray marveled at their political gambit: "Either the normal rules of American politics have changed, or Republicans have walked into an electoral buzz saw--on a Medicare plan that won't pass the 112th Congress and that many of them didn't campaign on in 2010."

OOPS.......
 
I agree with that, Willis. What has really been lost so far in the Ryan proposal is the opportunity to have an actual debate/discussion about entitlements and how we can reform them so that they won't overwhelm us all. Instead, the president ran out and started up with the same, tired "Republicans hate old people" arguments that have been made for the last 50 years.
 
Ryan's proposal is out of touch with reality. It needs to be changed to become sensible.

However he truly believes in privatizing Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. That is obvious and has been for y6ears. Privatizing Medicare in the fashion that he wa nts to do will harm seniors. There's no way around it.
 
Of course, the Republicans didn't miss their chance during the health care debate.
 
The greatest savings are in Medicaid. Blocking that out (which the governors support) and blocking Medicare changes in the plan, still result in trillions of savings.
 
Ryan's proposal is out of touch with reality. It needs to be changed to become sensible.

However he truly believes in privatizing Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. That is obvious and has been for y6ears. Privatizing Medicare in the fashion that he wa nts to do will harm seniors. There's no way around it.

Reality is 14 trillion dollars in debt.
 
From a political standpoint, the budgetary attack on Medicare and Medicaid may end up playing like a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Debate the merits all you like, but the Pubs are risking all of their momentum with this issue.
 
As Arlington says, these are third rail issues. It's one thinng to want to make needed changes like upping the age or eliminating the cap on Social Security. People will support such things.

The public is about 70-80% against privatizing either.

Ryan's plan privatizes Medicare and the public is staunchly opposed to doing so. They are so opposed to it that this one issue could be big on its own to give Obama a landslide.
 
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