Tag Archives: Gop

Mitt
Romney’s presidential campaign featured frequent attacks on
President Obama for cutting $716 billion out of Medicare. Romney
made
ads criticizing the president for the cuts, and pegged Obama as
the only president who has cut Medicare. “When you see your friends
with signs that say keep your hands off our Medicare,” Romney
said ;last
year, “they are absolutely right.”Well, anyone who liked that
line ;may be disappointed. The cuts are back. And this time
it’s Republicans who are proposing them. Again. ;
The attacks were politically convenient, and seemed with
resonate with seniors. But they never made much sense. In part
that’s because Romney was simultaneously pretending to be running
as someone who wanted to cut spending and reform health care
entitlements. An even bigger reason, though, is that Romney’s own
running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan, the GOP Chair of the House Budget
Committee, had proposed those exact same cuts in budgets that he
and most of the House Republicans had voted for.
Romney promised to nix Obama’s Medicare cuts, and restore
spending to the program. ;But now it looks like Rep. Ryan will
once again propose to keep those cuts in place. The Hill

reports that Republicans on the Budget Committee expected that
the cuts will remain in the next GOP budget, despite their
prominence in the campaign. ;
Stories like these tell you something about the lack of a strong
policy vision in the Romney campaign, as well as the willingness of
other Republicans to follow along, despite the campaign’s
weaknesses. More than that, they ;offer a reminder that
Romney’s line of attack was always a gamble for entitlement
reformers. And at this point it’s clear that it was one that didn’t
pay off. ;
No, Romney wasn’t the first Republican to run against cutting
Medicare, and I suspect he won’t be the last. But Romney’s attacks,
combined with his frustratingly non-specific Medicare reform
proposal, helped position the GOP as a party defending
against cuts and changes to Medicare. The party that won’t
make cuts, that wants the government to keep its hands off
Medicare, not the party that wants to transform and reform the
nation’s biggest long-term fiscal problem. ;
In this case, I suspect that Republicans will just ignore what
Romney said during the campaign and proceed to include the $716
billion in cuts in future budgets. But I also suspect that if the
time comes to negotiate more substantial Medicare reform, the GOP
will have Romney’s words thrown back at them. ;

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