Boehner confirms the war on Medicare isn't over (Reuters/Larry Downing)
Speaker John Boehner appears
not on the same page as Majority Leader Eric Cantor and Ways and Means Chairmand David Camp on
dropping Medicare from the budget negotiations.
House Speaker John Boehner insisted Thursday that the House Republican Medicare and Medicaid reform plans are still "on the table" in the deficit reduction talks with Vice President Joe Biden—even as he acknowledged the "political reality" that Republicans can only do so much when they only control one chamber of Congress.
He told reporters that it's "absolutely not" the wrong time to try to move forward on House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's Medicare and Medicaid plans, despite all of the attacks Republicans have faced from Democrats over those plans....
Boehner said he thought Camp’s remarks were just "a recognition of the political realities we face" when Republicans control the House while the Democrats control the White House and the Senate.
"We've put our plan on the table. Now it's time for the Democrats to put their plan on the table," Boehner said.
What is off the table? Three guesses, and you'll only need one: "Nothing is off the table except raising taxes. Everything else is, and should be, on the table."
Maybe he's just trying to appease the idiot, Tea Party nihilists in his caucus by saying he's standing behind the disastrous budget they all voted for. But it's actually more than that. Medicare will always be on the Republican table, as reiterated by Camp who says a Medicare cut is still necessary and will be brought up after the debt ceiling negotiations. On this one, Jamison Foser is absolutely right. "[B]ad Republican ideas are like horror-movie zombies: They don't die easily."
It's important to keep in mind that Republicans are not abandoning their voucher plan because of a principled and steadfast commitment to ensuring that seniors have health care. They feel no such commitment. They are dropping their voucher plan because they don't think there's any chance of it becoming law with a Democratic president and Senate....
It's also important to keep in mind that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) didn't just come up with the plan to get rid of Medicare out of the blue. Dismantling Medicare isn't some idea that suddenly came up during a brainstorming session only to be discarded when its flaws became obvious. Dismantling Medicare has long been a goal of Republican leaders....
Overwhelming public opposition to the Republican effort to destroy Medicare appears to have saved the program — for now. But Republicans have opposed Medicare since it was created; they aren't going to stop now. They're just waiting for a better opportunity to get rid of it.
Not just Medicare, but Social Security (and Medicaid), too. Republicans will not rest until the New Deal and Great Society are undone. That's been a primary goal for decades, one which they couch in terms of "saving" the programs. They don't want to save the programs, they want to end them through privatization. That's killing two birds with one stone for them: ending the social safety net and with it the coalition that has backed Democrats for decades, and diverting public money to the private sector. They'll never abandoned those twin goals. Democrats who don't recognize that and who fall into the entitlement/deficit hysteria are fools.