So much for that idea, Rep. Ryan (Reuters/Kevin Lamarque)
After early signs that the Ryan budget was causing heartburn for Republicans (see On budgets, deficits and public opinion), some late breaking events suggest a full retreat. From Health Affairs:
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp (R-MI) said this morning that his committee will not take up a proposal this year to replace Medicare’s defined benefits formula with a “voucher” or “premium support” system in which seniors would shop for private coverage using defined contributions from the federal government.
Such a reform proposal was contained in the fiscal year 2012 budget resolution authored by House Budget Committee Chair Paul Ryan (R-WI) and recently approved by House on a party-line vote. However, speaking at a Health Affairs Newsmaker breakfast, Camp said he did not want to pass a plan that had no chance of surviving in the Democratically controlled Senate.
and from the
NY Times:
House Republicans signaled on Thursday that they were backing away for now from the centerpiece of their budget plan — a proposal to overhaul Medicare — underscoring the political risks of addressing the nation’s long-term fiscal problem.
The debt-ceiling talks were never likely to settle long-term issues like the soaring costs of Medicare. But the decision by Republicans to put the Medicare plan on the back burner was a tacit acknowledgment that the politics of entitlement reform remain volatile, so much so that pressing ahead in the face of intense Democratic opposition made little sense.
Their decision was signaled by Representative Dave Camp, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, which would have to draft the Medicare legislation. In an appearance at the National Press Club on Thursday, he said he did not intend to try to turn the proposal into law any time soon.
There's a purpose to intense Democratic opposition. Hopefully,
Kent Conrad reads the blogs, or at least his staff does and can explain it to him.
And what's the fallout? The NYT, again:
Still, the comments took many Republican lawmakers by surprise, and roiled the party’s rank and file in the House, who expected their leaders to follow through on what is likely to be a signature vote of the new majority headed into the 2012 elections.
Some members — especially freshmen Republicans who hace steep re-election hills to scale in their districts — were upset to hear that the plan could be scotched after they had invested so much hard work trying to sell it back home.
Welcome to reality, fellas. In the real world, you have to represent everyone. And the public doesn't like where you were going.
Some advice: Suck it up, Republicans, and get over it, because the Ryan budget was a really bad idea. How bad for you?
Privately, some top aides said that the conflicting and unclear message from the leadership about the Medicare proposal had left many Republican lawmakers confused and unhappy.
“It is a big problem,” one aide said. “Things are unraveling.”
That bad.
Still, there's bad news behind the good. If the GOP can't sink their teeth into Medicare, they'll assuredly go after Medicaid. Why? Because the children and disabled whom Medicaid services are politically powerless, that's why. And that's all the GOP needs to know.