GOP Rep. McKinley not so sure about Paul Ryan’s Medicare

The Congressional Budget Office determined that some of the out-of-pocket costs could double for seniors and that sent up a red flag for me… I think we can do it another way and now I’m going to be curious to see what the Senate does. I want to be an independent voice here.
GOP Rep. Dave MicKinley • Speaking on Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposed “Path to Prosperity,” which eliminates the traditional Medicare program (essentially, guaranteed health coverage) in favor of a voucher/privatized system. Quotes like these often strike us as noteworthy, specifically because it’s rather rare to hear Republican politicians break ranks around big policy proposals, especially when compared to Democrats. On the Democratic side, whether it’s Joe Manchin, Joe Lieberman, Ben Nelson, Bart Stupak (now retired), the list goes on — the conservative wing of the party last Congress provided a palpable thorn in President Obama’s side on a lot of his big initiatives. The GOP, on the other hand, always seems like an on-message, political machine — so to that end, we laud Rep. McKinley for speaking his mind on the hottest topic in Washington today. source

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So… how y’all feel about that speech? Reviews streaming in following President Obama’s remarks about U.S. budgetary issues are somewhat mixed, but that’s what you’d expect when the speech in question struck such a starkly firm, at times defiant tone. Indeed, the favorite words of the administration, like “bipartisanship,” “compromise,” and “common ground” were all there, but there was also a lot of base-feeding red meat to his pitch that likely inflamed conservative orthodoxy and left liberals feeling better than they had expected.

The Paul Ryan Plan President Obama flatly and sternly dismissed Rep. Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity,” stating the plan would “end Medicare as we know it,” has a “deeply pessimistic” vision for America, and there’s “nothing courageous about asking for sacrifice from those who can least afford it and don’t have any clout on Capitol Hill.”
The Tax Man plan? The crux of the President’s rebuttal is that taxes on our highest income earners not only must go up, but that they should go up — a marked departure from more moderate rhetoric he’s used in the past years, likely due to the opposition’s success in injecting the word “socialism” into the debate. source

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The fact is [Paul Ryan’s budget] is less about reducing the deficit than it is about changing the basic social compact in America.
President Barack Obama • Speaking about Rep. Paul Ryan’s “Path to Prosperity,” which liberals have bemoaned for placing too much additional burden on the financially poor. Whatever you may think about Ryan’s proposal, the claim the President is making seems astute. The ideological battle between Democrats and Republicans in modern America is much more about public vs. private function than it ever truly ends up being about spending; both parties spend a ton without a second thought (the Republican’s ability to whitewash this fact must rank as a political marvel of the highest order). Rather, the Republican consistency has usually been to cut government’s role in social equity whenever they can, shredding elements of the social compact being only a political issue, not a moral one. As Paul Ryan said, his proposal isn’t just a budget, it’s a “cause.” source

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18 Apr 2011 14:54