The problem is, a “burning down the village to save it” approach to our most popular social programs hardly protects them.īut for once, congressional Democrats are united in opposition to the president’s approach. “If you’re a progressive who cares about the integrity of Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid, and believes that it is part of what makes our country great … then we have an obligation to make sure that we make those changes that are required to make it sustainable over the long term,” he claimed Monday. And President Obama appears willing to play into their trap. So how can Republicans weasel out of their predicament?īy getting Democrats to agree to Medicare cuts. Their designs on Medicare are out in the open. Polling continues to show solid opposition to messing with Medicare. It didn’t take long for Republicans to shrug off campaign promises to seniors, and they’re now hell-bent on destroying Medicare in the name of “entitlement reform.” Yet the public isn’t buying their spin. That was a remarkable 22-point shift from 2008, when House Democrats won seniors by a single point, 49-48. Claims that Democrats were slashing Medicare were a major part of their 2010 House victories, allowing them to win the senior vote by a dominant 59-38 margin. It also speaks directly to the most engaged voters: seniors. It’s smart politics the issue unites the party’s progressive and conservative wings like no other. There are nearly 100 Republican-held House seats that are less conservative than the one the GOP lost in New York, and the Democratic House and Senate committees are committed to riding the Medicare issue through 2012. The defining issue? Medicare, and how Republicans were dead-set on destroying it. Instead of touting the success of Medicare as an example of how government managed health insurance can work, Democrats got hammered for cutting funding from the program, as Republicans purported to be the protectors of the closest thing to socialized medicine that exists in the U.S.Less than two months ago, Democrats scored a dramatic special-election victory in a solidly Republican congressional district in New York. But, on the ground level, most elderly Americans love Medicare and feel that it does good job at providing benefits. Sure, the system is flawed in a lot of ways – reimbursements to doctors are low and the program as it currently exists will eventually become insolvent.
It’s kind of surprising that Democrats never tried to sell their health care plan using the popularity of Medicare.
Her dismay with cutting $500 out of Medicare “all to help pay for government control of medicine” encapsulates a contradictory message I haven’t heard so overtly since a man attending a town hall last year told a South Carolina congressman to “keep your government hands off my Medicare.” Follow Ben Smith, here’s a new ad from a Tennessee Republican running for the House.
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