The Republicans Were Against Medicare Before They Were For it. Or Something.
When does political expedience become cowardice? When you’re Republican congresspersons who vow to gut Medicare, the sick and poor be damned, gets faces full of reality from senior citizens with canes and walkers at town hall meetings back home, and return to Washington with their tails between their legs.
That should surprise no one with an intelligence quotient north of Eric Cantor’s.
Speaking of the House majority leader, who has sung from the Take From The Poor And Give To The Rich hymnbook louder than anyone east of Paul Ryan, he now wants “to seek common ground” with Democrats after he and his colleagues were tongue lashed back on the hustings, as well as being the recipients of a few unkind words from the man with the long-form birth certificate.
With deficit reduction talks resuming today, Cantor suggests that savings might come from ending payments to wealthy farmers, limiting lawsuits against doctors, and expanding government auctions of broadcast spectrum to telecom companies.
In yet another example of why health-care reform is so popular and that Republicans try to gut it at their peril, insurance companies are reporting a flood of applications from young adults taking advantage of a provision in the law that allows people under 26 to remain on their parents’ health plans.
WellPoint, the nation’s largest publicly traded health insurer with 34 million customers, said the dependent provision was responsible for adding 280,000 new members, or about one third of its total enrollment growth in the first three months of 2011.
While there seems to be a ceasefire in the Republican war on the middle class and poor people, the war against women continues full bore, and at the top of House Speaker John Boehner’s post-recess to-do list is not dealing with that pesky deficit or any number of ailments in the body politic, but ramming through the No Taxpayer Funding For Abortion Act, which among other things would require rape audits.
Yes, rape audits.
Rape and incest victims who are not persuaded by Sharron Angle’s view that getting raped is “God’s plan” and want abortions would have to prove their trauma to IRS agents.
The bill passed the House yesterday and will now move on to the Senate where it will receive a well deserved death.
This still leaves the the pesky matter of being able to get cervical cancer screenings at Walgreens, which was first reported on Fox & Friends.
The filibuster has been a favorite tactic of Senate Republicans (yes, Democrats have done it, too) regarding judicial nominees, but an effort yesterday to block the nomination of John McConnell to the federal bench bombed when 11 Republicans joined Democrats to vote yea.
The chamber, which pretty much dictates what the GOP does when it comes to business, asserts that McConnell, a Rhode Island trial lawyer, is an anti-business ambulance chaser.
I thought I was being a bit rash in predicting the day after Ryan introduced his Reverse Robin Hood deficit reduction plan that it would die in its crib, but now I’m feeling pretty chuff about it.
Well, at least the Obama As Weak On Defense meme is holding up.
16 Responses to “The Republicans Were Against Medicare Before They Were For it. Or Something.”
You got this one right. Not just the Medicare hypocrisy*, but the little abortion stunt in the news yesterday (making them clowns). It even employed the GOP staple gimmick, tax deductions or credits, saying that the costs of abortions aren’t tax deductible.
(HR 3, GOP brainchild, even has the hated IRS do abortion audits.)
Here’s a quick view for those who are curious (or didn’t know).
http://www.gop.gov/bill/112/1/hr3
This is an easy veto for Obama if it somehow gets past the Senate.
In case you didn’t notice it, there was some more Republican hypocrisy from a currently somewhat-obscure Sarah Palin, who must have read her statement from Democratic publications. She defended oil company subsidies because the cost was trivial compared to the rest of the budget. Just like Dem pet programs.
Re. the Medicare hypocrisy: First, the assault on freedom vs. bashing the Dems for raiding and reducing Medicare (to pay for other entitlement items), and now rather than defend Medicare and bash the Dems for raiding it, they (Ryan plan) want to gut it. But there’s more:
http://www.slate.com/id/2292901/
As for the new (Ryan plan) GOP “stance” on Medicare: The GOP seriously expects the Ryan plan to be the starting GOP bargaining position, too. At least with “single-payer,” which wasn’t serious as a health care reform starting point for the Dems in 2009 (it was too extreme), it might be in as early as five years. Transforming Medicare into a partially filled husk is not serious.
Now, the Dems still carry bad baggage and they might yet throw away a great chance as they have done before (post-2008 Dem control of the House as well as the White House, Social Security in mid-2000s), but the GOP looks clownish right now. That is, in the House (Congress), not just in the early Presidential nomination contest. This has got to start making the Dems gloat.
Thanks for telling it like it is, Shaun–and for telling it in the way you alone can.
Dorian
Even after watching politics for so long, it’s still hard to believe at times the extent to which the GOP is willng to openly work against the good of the people of this country. Maybe the scales are slowly starting to fall from the eyes of more voters, but if so it has been a long time coming. Given the recent poll results re: Mitt and Mike though, I won’t hold my breath. It isn’t really that hard to identify who the clowns are, but American voters are still behind the curve. Expect the democrats to bring forth many reminders (thoughtully provided by the GOP) to refresh those memories for 2012. There is certainly no shortage of material.
JS:
I agree (and hope) that the “scales are slowly starting to fall from the eyes of more voters,” but I would use the increase in popularity of “Mitt” for example (and the fall in the polls of The Donald and the Sarah) as an example that those on the right are perhaps finally beginning to veer away from the clowns and the fakes.
(Don’t ignore or neglect Medicaid, because what is being done with it, by the GOP or by Dems, eventually will affect those on Medicare once means testing is sought.)
“This is a source that should be favored by you TMV lefties rather than extremist Brasch or other trendy-style far lefties.” – DLS
Actually I consider myself to be more of a moderate, just as many who are perceived to be left are in fact closer to being moderate. This is the result of spectrum shifting since the eighties, based mostly on repetitious talking points that gradually soaked into the citizenry. Of course the shift is correctable, but it won’t happen overnight.
[...] common ground with Obama on MedicareThe Associated PressSlate Magazine (blog) -Reuters -The Moderate Voiceall 160 news [...]
[...] But Delayed Entitlement ReformFox BusinessThe Associated Press -Slate Magazine (blog) -The Moderate Voiceall 186 news [...]
So Republicans aren’t really trying to save Medicare. Agreed.
Democrats aren’t either. The money will run out.
Right now, no one wants social security or medicare touched, but they want the deficit reduced. Cutting the military will help, but not enough.
Touch SS/Medicare/Medicaid, you’re doomed. Don’t meaningfully cut the deficit, you’re doomed. Doomed if you do, Doomed if you don’t.
Harry Reid (Social Security), Nancy Pelosi (Bowles-Simpson findings and recommendations, which Obama promptly ignored), and the President (no retirement age increase, no payout decrease) simply are unreal. (Of course, look at whom these people are appealing.)
I normally skip articles here that claim a party the author doesn’t like is engage in “a war” on some segment of society or some other demonization. (And these have become depressingly common). However, having been pulled in because the headline led me to believe it might make a point substance (and how the headline actually relates to the article is unclear to me) let me ask about this…
This seems self contradictory, since the defections seem undermine the claim that the chamber of commerce “dictates” to the Republicans.
davidpsummers:
You’re being a bit too literal, sir. Not every Republican votes the CofC line on every bill, although most do.
Clearly I don’t have the hang of block quoting yet….
davidpsummers:
That’s okay. Once you master block quoting you might move on to nuancing. (Wink!)
Well, all I can say is that I hope I don’t end up confusing hyperbole for nuance.