Would you buy a used car from Rep. Jeb Hensarling? (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)
Rep. Jeb Hensarling, responding to uproar over his
no tax increases for the rich remarks from last night, has bent. A little. And has he
got a deal for Democrats.
“Something has to be at the Congressional Budget Office by Monday,” Hensarling said.
Hensarling hinted that his hard line on new taxes might not be so hard … but only if Democrats are willing to fundamentally overhaul Medicare.
“I will give my Democratic colleagues credit for putting at least some reforms on the table, but fundamentally they do not solve the problem,” Hensarling said. “If you don’t like our plan, how about a bipartisan plan? We would be willing to negotiate around the Rivlin-Domenici Medicare plan — it’s not our version, it’s a bipartisan version.”
The plan he’s referring to, authored by former CBO director and current Brookings scholar Alice Rivlin, and former Republican Sen. Pete Demonici, would fundamentally change the single-payer nature of Medicare. It would give seniors a choice between traditional government Medicare, or provide them with a voucher to buy insurance on a private market. It mimics in key ways a plan Newt Gingrich proposed in the 1990s, which he claimed would cause government Medicare to “wither on the vine.” And it’s part of Mitt Romney’s campaign platform to win the GOP presidential nomination.
Yep, that's quite an offer. "Privatize Medicare, and give us a major issue to use against you in the next election, and we'll talk about taxes. Maybe. Oh, and do it by Monday."
And of course the traditional media can now happily say that both sides just won't bend and both sides are to blame. Because that's what matters.