Paul Ryan waves goodbye to Medicare (in his dreams)
House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy
tells Politico that he thinks the odds are ever in the GOP's favor when it comes to passing the latest incarnation of Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's budget plan:
I predict a win.
You can file that under "no s**t, Sherlock." After all, House Republicans have a version of Ryan's repeal Medicare budget each year for the past four. There's no reason to believe they will end the streak now, even if the Ryan budget is a
Draconian fiscal plan that would destroy the GOP if it were ever to become law.
But even though the fate of Ryan's plan isn't much in doubt in either the House, where it will almost certainly pass, or the Senate, where it will die, it's worth noting that the reason there's any question at all isn't that some Republicans are threatening to oppose it from the left—it's that a lot of Republicans don't think it's conservative enough.
In the words of one of the House GOP's leading loons:
“I’d like to have it balanced in nine instead of 10, because that’s what we said last year,” said Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa), who said he is undecided. “But it’s a lot better than 26 years, and so I recognize Republicans need to pass a budget. You can’t bring it to the floor and let it fail. We’d hand this agenda to the other side.”
The good news is that it doesn't much matter what happens on this vote; for all practical purposes, it's just a symbolic document. But if you needed another reminder that the GOP is still every bit as crazy as it was when it shut down the government last fall, look no further than the fact that for the only question they have about a plan to repeal Medicare is whether the Steve King's of their party will think it's too liberal.