Republicans clearly think that NY-26 didn’t matter, and that they can spin the Ryan plan to their advantage. For example, John Boehner’s new strategy is to say that Democrats are the ones who want to cut Medicare:
“The only people in Washington, DC who have voted to cut Medicare have been the Democrats,” said Boehner, “when they voted to cut $500 billion in Medicare during Obamacare.”
Karl Rove thinks that the Ryan plan is fine, and that people just needed to see more ads:
An earlier, more aggressive explanation and defense of the Ryan plan would have turned the issue: 55% in the Crossroads survey agreed with GOP arguments for the Ryan reforms while just 36% agreed with the Democrats’ arguments against it.
Marco Rubio says that he loves Medicare so much that he has to kill it to save it, since it’s going bankrupt:
Rep. Paul Ryan has offered a plan that would make no changes whatsoever for anyone age 55 and older. I support it because, right now, it is the only plan out there that helps save Medicare. Democrats oppose it. Fine. But, if they have a better way to save Medicare, what are they waiting for to show us? What is their plan to save Medicare?
Either show us how Medicare survives without any changes or show us what changes you propose we make. Anyone who supports doing nothing is a supporter of bankrupting Medicare.
None of these strike me as especially convincing defenses of turning Medicare into $15,000 vouchers, but perhaps I’m just a partisan. But, as a partisan, I do know that when you see Republicans without a coherent message, they have a big problem.
foosion
The Rs seem to be converging on “The Ds tried to kill Medicare by cutting spending, and they’re trying to kill Medicare by not agreeing with our plan to save Medicare by cutting spending.”
Bobby Thomson
The most corrupt members of the caucus (looking at you, Hoyer) still have time to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
Zifnab
Everything sounds a lot better after the millionth iteration. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the popularity of Medicare privatization start edging up if they hammer on this continuously for a few months. Go swing by Reddit, and you’ll find swarms of lunkheads that are throughly convinced Social Security is a completely bankrupt Ponzi scheme that will never pay them a dime when they retire (and yet – they continue to have enduring faith in 401(k)s because none of them ever lose money in the market, or something).
hildebrand
…and Romney sent leftover pizza to Obama’s campaign HQ in Chicago as a prank – although nobody seems to know what the joke was or why Romney thought this was clever.
http://tpmdc.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/05/special-delivery-romney-sends-leftover-pizza-to-obamas-campaign-hq.php?ref=fpb
WereBear
This crazed Frankenstein’s monster the R’s have slapped together is starting to break the chains. We’ve got a bunch of nuts out there who actually believe the stupid stuff they say.
Stealthy lying has always been the R’s friend. I applaud this embrace of what they really think! Keep it up!
Steve
The Democrats passed a law last year to save Medicare. That is their plan. Did the Republicans fail to notice?
Villago Delenda Est
These guys are as deluded as the trolls. They’re ignoring the NY-26 results furiously.
The teatards are in control now, and no one dares try to wrest the steering wheel from them, even as they drive with deliberation off the side of the road into the canyon.
Redshift
Yay! It’ll be much easier to keep this alive until 2012 if they keep helping.
I would like to see more pushback from Dems on the concern-troll “the Democrats need to present their own plan in response to Ryan, because doing nothing isn’t a response to a real problem.”
The Democratic plan is called the Affordable Care Act, and it improves Medicare’s finances more than anything Republicans have ever proposed. The Ryan plan is explicitly a response to our plan, since it repeals it. We’ll stick with our plan, thanks.
jibeaux
God willing and the creek don’t rise, they will continue to feel this way.
Culture of Truth
Indeed, when you’re blaming the stupid voters, you’re not winning.
People like Rubio think they can ‘support it’ because it’s the ‘only thing’ but only in a theoretical sense, but I suspect such nuance will be lost on the average voter. You support it, plain and simple. Not to mention, even indulging in Beltway nuance, the Ryan plan passed through the House of Representatives as a proposed law, and was not a Randian undergraduate exercise.
The biggest tell is not the protestations to save Medicare but the “under 55” bit. We all know the elderly do vote in large numbers, but the GOP can’t seriously think the all those youthful 50-55 year-old kids out spend all their days skateboarding with the Bierber, can they?
Comrade Javamanphil
Fling the poo faster, wingnuts. That is the strategery for winning.
arguingwithsignposts
Ok, i have a question: mistermix just quoted $15,000. I’ve seen kay use $8,000, and yesterday someone used $6,000. Does anyone have an accurate figure on the amount proposed for the vouchers?
cleek
@foosion:
that message worked like a charm in 2010. the Dems got killed by seniors who believe the Dems were destroying medicare.
don’t overestimate the power of misleading ads.
MattR
@arguingwithsignposts: According to Paul Ryan, it is not a voucher system because that would mean the government was handing out coupons that citizens could redeem when buying private insurance. Instead it is “premium support” where citizens go out and buy insurance and then the government gives them money to subsidize it.
If you can figure out why that is a distinction with a difference, you are a better man than me.
J.D. Rhoades
@Steve:
No, they’re lying like they always do. Whether there’s a Democratic plan or not, the sheep always bleat: “No PLAAAAAAAN! They have no PLAAAAAAAAN!”
PurpleGirl
@arguingwithsignposts: I think it was stated as “up to $15,000”. But I was unable to find a number in a pdf of the Ryan plan at one of his web sites — the site froze on me.
Hunter Gathers
Can Doug J come out to play? Bobo’s latest is a real doozy.
Sure, there may be high unemployment, but a values agenda is what this country really needs.
eric
the real problem for the GOP is that when millions of Americans watch Obama debate the GOP nominee, he will hit this out of the park…that is what he does….he will say we have a plan…it is already a law called ACA. Here is how it “saves” Medicare without privatizing it. Here is how the GOP plan puts people at the mercy of insurance companies. He will so cream that meatball of a pitch that no amount of spinning by the GOP can save them.
ETA: Remember the Health Car Summit?
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
@Villago Delenda Est:
The teatards are the psycho girlfriend who steers the car into a telephone pole because they think the boyfriend in the passenger seat was looking at another girl at the party.
After the car is totalled and the boyfriend is nearly comatose in the hospital bed, the weepy psycho shows up visit and to proclaim her love for the boyfriend.
arguingwithsignposts
@MattR: My real question is, if i get old and don’t want to subsidize private insurance companies, can i spend my premium support/voucher on hookers and blow?
MattR
@arguingwithsignposts: That got a chuckle out of me. But it also got me thinking/wondering how long it will take for the GOP to start spinning tales of people misusing their Meicare voucher money (ala Welfare queens with Cadillacs or young bucks buying T-bones with their food stamps)
Failure, Inc.
@Villago Delenda Est: “I’m flying, Mommy! I’m flying!”
Yevgraf (fka Michael)
@Hunter Gathers:
Yeah, ‘coz the unemployed have a bunch of heavily taxed income, and the only thing keeping them from opening the small business of their dreams is the tax rate.
Stupid fucker.
I dream of the day that Bobo gets curb stomped.
Comrade Javamanphil
@MattR: My suspicion (and this is 100% internet conjecture based on no readings of the plan whatsoever but rather extrapolating the concepts to their logical conclusion) is the GOP plan would actually require more federal employees as the reimbursement claims would have to be processed, verified and no doubt closely inspected to make certain no t-bones or Cadillacs were purchased. A voucher system you can just print coupons and send them to all eligible people. Therefore, the GOP plan makes up for in inefficiency what it lacks in intelligence.
(Disclaimer: This post was written with as much research and thought as any piece by Jonah Goldberg.)
eric
@arguingwithsignposts: given that is what the insurance execs are using the profits on, economic efficiency dictates that we cut out the middle man … go for it
300baud
To be entirely fair to the Republicans, this has always worked for them before. They propose something obviously unsustainable and probably evil, but in conformance with their ideology. They back it in unison, attacking anybody who disagrees as unamurrican. And they do it fast and hard enough that things hold together until the media moves on to the next missing blond girl. Meanwhile, the reality-based community grumbles ineffectively.
Honestly, I don’t know why it isn’t working for them this time. I’d like to think we’ve finally passed some historical watershed, but I’ve been disappointed on that score since Katrina at least.
bemused
Judging from the wingnut letters to local papers, the “Dems voted to cut $500B from Medicare” is their favorite GOP lie to repeat.
ET
Wonder what Republicans are saying behind closed doors? i.e. what they really thinking about NY-26?
PurpleGirl
I got a PDF open of the Ryan plan finally and couldn’t find the term “premium support.” So I searched on “premium.” From what I found they do not state a single specific number — they do talk about an average cost and the premium aid as a tax credit that can be applied to the insurance cost and the amount of which would be based on your income. So they are planning on means testing.
I hate these people.
jibeaux
Just a question, when people spout stuff like this, do they ever, ever have anything concrete to propose for it? Other than banning teh ghey, of course? It’s genuinely confusing to me. I, too, wish that more people were able to find and keep a true love and not see their kids on Wednesdays and every other weekend, and I kind of assume they wish it had worked out better, too. But I’m at a loss as to what the federal or any other government is going to do about it. Date night vouchers? Victoria’s Secret coupons? Secretly coming into your house and taking out the trash, dusting the fan blades, and declogging the sink so you’ll think your husband did it?
japa21
The under 55 canard is insulting to those of us over 55. For the record, I ma 64 so the plan theoretically would not affect me. But the Republicans act as if I shouldn’t care about my kids or grandkids trying to find insurance at a reasonable price that covers pre-existing conditions. Hate to tell them, but I do care.
I have decided that the new Republican slogan is “I got mine – screw you.”
PurpleGirl
@bemused: Actually it was from Medicare Advantage plans because they cost some 14% more than expected. They are restructuring a list of approved Medicare Advantage plane.
Oh, and in the Ryan plan, there would be an approved list of insurance plans seniors could buy their insurance from and where the tax credit could be used.
James E. Powell
Obama & the Democratic campaign committees should not confuse “the Republican’s are flailing” with “the Democrats are winning.” The general, non-political public does not distinguish messages and senders very well.
The Democrats need a short, coherent message that is more than “the Republicans want to kill Medicare.” They need something more like Nancy Pelosi. While it may seem strange that programs as popular as Social Security and Medicare need a vigorous defense, it is nevertheless true.
I am just remembering how, for thirty years, the Republicans hammered the ‘balance the budget’ message until it became one of those national priorities without a purpose and an extremely popular idea. Then a Democrat actually balanced the budget. In a very short time, Republicans were able to turn a balanced budget into no big deal, not something to be concerned about, maybe even a problem. Then, very sharply on January 20, 2009, ‘the deficit’ became the new terrorism.
They own all the media, their incoherence never lasts, they work together, they sing the same song, over and over and over. You can’t consider them beaten just because they are losing one right now.
El Cid
I think it’s completely unrealistic to say that under the Ryan plan, direct Medicare coverage would be replaced with a voucher program (“premium support” as he calls it).
(In the plan that Dick Gephardt and David Stockman proposed in 1981, the Medicare voucher program [“defined contribution”] would act like those proposed by Ryan, but would have been voluntarily joined. So it was a voluntary voucher choice system.]
That’s mainly because I think that whatever dollar amounts are assigned to seniors of varying income to pay as premium support into their private health insurance system would vanish very shortly after the program began.
There would be another deficit crisis, or tales of woe of how these premium supports are being removed, or whatever combination of excuses would be needed.
And then the ‘premium supports’ would be slashed.
PurpleGirl
@jibeaux: The social net programs that could be used to support families are those familiar ones of unemployment insurance, food stamps, Medicaid, cash assistance, support for public education, support for job training, etc. — all those things that they want to cut so they can give even more tax cuts to the rich.
IOW: Get married and be responsible for yourself.
eric
@jibeaux: I believe they would pass the “We Need More White Christian Babies Act”.
Failure, Inc.
@jibeaux: If you have a narrow, rigid definition of acceptable expression of sexuality, then anything that you do to transgress outside of that is “dirty and shameful” and a LOT of people get off on that.
This explains the constant parade of mind-blowing perversion, wetsuit-and-dildo hanging, rape, mule-fucking and Congressional page assault that we’ve been seeing out of the GOP for the last 2 decades.
WereBear
I would think it would be easy to find out how much for private insurance for a 65 year old man with a couple of existing conditions (and just try to get to 65 without them.)
Throw THAT number around a bit.
Bill in OH
@bemused:
And it would be really nice if the Dems (and all the rest of us) would start pointing out that the Ryan plan keeps the exact same Medicare Advantage cuts in place!
For FSM’s sake, if we can’t even point out that complete and total bullshit, we deserve to lose.
ETA: I know what you mean by “lies”, bemused, but it doesn’t even have to be that complicated. It’s a very simple question: “If the republicans are so against the Medicare Advantage cuts, why does their bill contain the same cuts?”
Villago Delenda Est
@James E. Powell:
Actually, it was earlier than that. Moments after 8PM PST on 4 November 2008, the deficit became the single most important issue facing the United States.
Had the victory celebrations that started around that time taken place in Phoenix, not in Chicago, no one would have noticed the ongoing deficit issue.
gypsy howell
Here’s what every democrat should ask every republican – if the plan is so fucking great, why don’t we put current medicare enrollees on it, starting right fucking now?
What really pisses me off is the idea that medicare and medicaid can somehow “go broke” but the defense department, for example, can never “go broke” because we simply allocate more money for it whenever we need to. For some reason, we could never, ever do that for medicare.
Bill in OH
@jibeaux:
I heart this comment (in a completely manly and heterosechual way).
bemused
@PurpleGirl:
@Bill in OH:
You can’t convince wingnuts who think facts are highly suspicious and a commie plot. One recently scoffed that blaming high gas prices on speculators is just a Democratic talking point.
Frankensteinbeck (The ex-Uloborus)
Messaging is not going to save them on this one. Maybe if they’d started at the very first moment.
The people who react to Republican messaging are gut thinkers. Generally they’re stupid and paranoid. They grab onto the first convincing thing they hear and refuse to listen to evidence or explanations. The Republicans COUNT on this. It’s an essential part of their messaging machine, and it produced the Tea Party. The Republicans attacked Medicare overtly this time. They didn’t try to hide it. The paranoid senior who flips out because he’s sure the 500B in cuts in the ACA will hit him somehow is also sure voucherizing Medicare will hit him. You’ve attacked Medicare and that’s *all he cares about*, not details or facts, and he will never change his mind now that it’s made.
The only thing the GOP can do is try and distract them so they’ll forget. I, for one, welcome the GOP doubling down to try and justify killing Medicare overlords.
Bill in OH
@bemused:
Yep, those folks are not coming around. But, call me naive (and I probably am), but I’m hoping that some non-wingnuts can be convinced. It has the advantage of being short, easy to understand and true.
jibeaux
@Bill in OH:
Aw, thanks. Me and my comments are female, so you can heart them without fear of non-heterosechuality.
But, really, if I try to think of how the federal government can shore up my marriage and family cohesion, what occurs to me is to send over a free babysitter twice a month with a nice restaurant gift certificate, and not with any damn “alcohol excluded” bullshit on it either. If the babysitter fixed the kitchen sink faucet that’s always leaking out of the base, there would be shorin’ galore.
PurpleGirl
@bemused: That’s true but we can help ourselves with our own supporters by being specific when we talk about provisions of various plans. The ACA takes the money from Medicare Advantage plans not general Medicare.
Robert Waldmann
It bears repeating and repeating and repeating that the Republicans voted for each and every Medicare cut in the HCR bill. They were allll included in the Ryan plan. The Republican position on health care for those currently over 55 is exactly identical to the Democrats position. They voted for all the cuts they ran against in 2010.
Then, in
additionsubtraction, the Ryan plan went on to eliminate Medicare as we know it for people now under 55 and replace it with inadequate vouchers reducing efficiency and shifting more than all of the additional burden to the future elderly.It is true that even with the improvements to efficiency *and* the squeezing of hospitals nursing homes and home health care agencies (but not doctors with office practices) in the HCR bill, Medicare spending is forecast to grow so that huge tax increases would be needed to finance it.
But that is because the CBO refuses to calculate possible savings from experimental approaches. Basically to be small c conservative it assumes that nothing which hasn’t been proven to work will work at all. Therefore it just assumed that none of the many ideas for reducing the growth of Medicare costs which Democrats proposed *and enacted* will work. To say that Democrats have no plan, because they have no plan which has been proven to work, before it is implemented (which how could that be ?) is to lie.
They have a plan. It is enacted. It might or might not work. This is a lot more than one can say for the Republicans Laffer curve cut taxes on the rich and all will be wonderful Ryan plan which has been tried and has failed.
Also Medicare plans B (outpatient care) and D (drugs) don’t have trust funds. By Rubio’s logic, they are bankrupt already. They aren’t funded by their committed funding stream, they are funded from general revenues. No one seems to have noticed this. But Rubio claims that, if plan A requires funding from general revenue too, then the whole program will collapse.
This talk of bankrupt Medicare is even more nonsensensical that talk of bankrupt social security OASDI. Plan A and OASDI will not be fully funded by committed revenue streams. So they will be bankrupt the way the DOD say is bankrupt. That is the way OASDI was bankrupt before Greenspan (not headed for bankruptcy but there already according to the BS language). No one but budget wonks will notice.
Of course, the real point is that Boehner argues that Democrats have done too much to reduce Medicare spending (not mentioning that all but 13 Republican legislators have adopted allll of those cuts as their own) while Rubio says they have done too little. So they don’t have a message.
The fact that both are lying seems almost impossible, but it is true.
The way it can be true is that one can increase health care spending while reducing health care if one reduces efficiency. Ryan’s plan would achieve that if implemented. So under the Republican plan, we will spend more to take care of the elderly and they will be sicker. This is possible. Compared to all other developed countries the USA has already managed it.
bemused
@Bill in OH:
@PurpleGirl:
Every once in awhile, I will reply to some of these idiots in one paper’s online comment section but I’m usually ignored. The idiots like to talk wingnut trash to each other. A couple of times my comments didn’t even appear. The editor is a rightwinger and not too bright either so he may not have liked facts and numbers tossed into the liberal bashing fun.
Triassic Sands
Funny, I don’t remember the Republicans having a coherent message — they may mercilessly hammer something nonsensical, but that isn’t coherence, in the sense of being logical and consistent. Sure, they can be consistent, but logical? When did proposing cutting taxes as the solution to everything become logical?
Bill in OH
@jibeaux:
I was just riffing on the “bromance” schtick. Consider you and your comment officially hearted! You make really great point. Wingnuts are always telling us that the government can’t create a job. OK, then how can it save a marriage? Where are the specifics? What does “shore up marriage and family cohesion” even mean?
ETA: I like the date night idea. Where do I sign up?
Jman
@jibeaux: Another tax credit per child for married heterosexual couples.
BC
Yeah, I don’t know how the Democrats lost the messaging on Medicare in 2010 either. The $500 B was to end the Medicare Advantage program, which cost the government 14% more than regular Medicare. It did not take anything away from seniors in terms of health care, just whether an insurance company paid the bills or the government did. I think none of our political types really understands policy; they all just rely on talking points from either the RNC or the DNC. Another point: which insurance companies are going to be in the pool of companies under the new “medicare”? Are they just going to use the ones from Medicare Advantage? If you don’t have the government-paying part of Medicare, will the new exchanges have to do Medicare Parts A, B, and C? (Right now, Medicare Advantage does not have to do Part A, the hospital cost part – just B and C)
Jody
Since when has coherence been a GOP staple?
Failure, Inc.
The problem – the lethal problem with Ryan’s legislation that he’ll never be able to get over, is that he phrased the government compensation as “vouchers”.
We all know what “vouchers” are to Republicans: They’re what you give black and brown kids when you’re trying to chisel them out of the school system and restore it to the glorious days pre Brown v. Board of Education.
Fatal mistake.
jibeaux
@Jman:
This reminds me of a news story in our local paper about a black couple who had adopted a whole slew of foster kids, some of whom had special needs, and the mom was a stay at home mom and they were good Christians and somehow from quirks of the tax laws, I think credits and so forth for adopting out of the foster care system, they got a large cash tax refund that they planned to use on things like much-needed home repairs and not on going to Disneyland or tipping 40s or anything. So I’m reading this and thinking, “there is no way on Earth anyone wingnutty could possibly object to anything in this story, this is just a nice story about 2 very dedicated people who are making a huge difference in the lives of kids who need them and thanking Jesus the whole way, and they’re getting their hard-earned dollars back from the evil big gubmint. And YET, I know when I reach the comments section on this article, multiple people will have found a way to turn this into a variation on welfare queens driving Cadillacs” and I’m sad to tell you that I was psychically correct on that one.
cleek
the GOP’s plan, as TPM tells us, is to make the GOP’s support of Medicare destruction moot by forcing Dems to cut Medicare.
crafty little devils.
lonesomerobot
I do love reading the comments here. I was about to chime in about the “$500 billion” but looks like folks here already have.
So learning from PurpleGirl and Bill in OH, the correct response to the wingnut “fact” of the month is that yes, $500 billion was cut from Medicare Advantage to get rid of wasteful spending… and in fact the Republican plan put forward by Rep. Ryan also includes those cuts.
lonesomerobot
@cleek: and as we learned yesterday, the Big (blue) Dog is right behind the concept of Dems cutting Medicare. The great centrist Democrat way: turn your win into a loss in the name of “bipartisanship”.
cckids
@Bill in OH:
With tax breaks. Duh.
Carol from CO
Whether the defenses are effective or not remains to be seen. Worth noting, though, is how fast the party, the whole party jumped in to turn it around and blame the Dems. I do envy the cons that particular talent.
Bill in OH
@cckids:
Ha! Of course! How silly of me. Tax cuts are truly the magical cure for everything.
sneezy
@eric:
I agree.
Exactly. He schooled them that day and they knew it. Whoever the GOP nominee is, they’re going to get similarly schooled in presidential debates. Or that’s how I’d bet, anyway.