A few days ago, I reported on a hypocritical Republican policy initiative that would gut Medicare. The Republican “budget roadmap” proposes severe cuts, rationing, and — who knows — maybe even death panels.
But to some Republicans, the problem with the new policy initiative to gut Medicare is that it doesn’t go far enough. Republican Michele Bachmann says that we have to kill Medicare by weaning everyone off of it:
And wean everybody off because we have to take those unfunded net liabilities off our bank sheet, we can’t do it. So we just have to be straight with people. So basically, whoever our nominee is, is going to have to have a Glenn Beck chalkboard and explain to everybody this is the way it is.
Meanwhile, the Democrats are trying to force a House vote on the Republican budget proposals, so that Republicans will either have to vote in favor of cutting Medicare, or vote against balancing the budget. This is reminiscent of how the GOP forced Democrats to take stands on wedge issues back when the Democrats were in the minority.
Nationally, GOP leaders would prefer not to talk about their plans to kill Medicare. So far, they have been able to get away with talking tough about balancing the federal budget (to fire up their base), while at the same time hypocritically promising to preserve Medicare. I guess they still think we are stupid.
2 Comments
This is actually awesome.
I don’t expect to agree with Republicans on everything, but I do expect them to tell the truth. And Michele Bachmann is absolutely right, saying that weaning the population off of Medicare would balance the budget. Sure it doesn’t address the problem of the rising healthcare costs, but it’s basically the major way of reducing costs to the government (which Republicans added to with an unfunded prescription drug benefit).
Another major way to cut costs would be to just end all social security payments and return to an era when the elderly ate stolen dog food and represented the largest age cohort of people below the poverty line in America.
Finally, the numbers make sense.
I still think ALL elected officials in Washington should give up at least 25% of their pay and benefits, to show good faith to the people they want to kill off. So far, as I can tell, they and CEO’s of the banks and auto industry have NOT given their fair share of reductions, but keep right on taking from the poor and middle class.