Senators Bernie Sanders and Sheldon Whitehouse had a conference call with reporters Monday, essentially a prebuttal to tomorrow's response from Rep. Paul Ryan to Obama's State of the Union.
The fact that Ryan, House Budget Committee chair, was chosen to provide the response and that Majority Leader Eric Cantor embraced Ryan's radical economic roadmap Sunday on Meet the Press, makes fairly clear how radical the GOP House intends to be on the budget.
CANTOR: David, we’ve–we have a program that we have seen one of our members, Paul Ryan, the chairman of the Budget Committee, put together called the “Roadmap.” And he and Kevin McCarthy and I wrote a book together, and in that book we reserved a chapter for a discussion about Social Security, about Medicare, and how we can begin to at least discuss to do that. [...]
GREGORY: How about–and the irony of Paul Ryan being introduced, the budget chairman, and he’s doing the response to the State of the Union, he is the one who’s proposed draconian cuts to Social Security and to Medicare and Republicans don’t stand behind him.
CANTOR: David, that’s not true. I just told you that we put a chapter in our book about it because the direction in which the Roadmap goes is something we need to embrace....
The Ryan roadmap would gut Social Security, raising the retirement age, privatize a substantial chunk of it, turn Medicare into a voucher program in which voucher rates wouldn't increase with inflation, and creating a tax structure that "manages to raise taxes on 90 percent of Americans and still lose $2 trillion in revenue over ten years due to dramatic tax reductions for the wealthiest Americans."
Sanders and Whitehouse applauded the GOP's decision to give the SOTU response to Ryan because of the very clear message that sends to the nation on how radical the Republicans will be. "Let me begin by stating very clearly that I applaud the Republicans for choosing Mr. Ryan," he said. "Up until this point, the GOP leadership has been vague about what fed programs they want to cut. On the other hand, Mr. Ryan has been very clear.... Congressman Ryan introduced a budget plan that would privatize Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Plan; raise the retirement age to 70; and increase taxes on 90 percent of American taxpayers."
Whitehouse focused on how Ryan's plan would explode the income gap, already unprecedented in modern times in America by slashing taxes on capital gains and eliminating the estate tax. "The Ryan plan essentially relives the richest Americans from any responsibility to pay for the support of their country," he said.
Both Senators applauded news reports that Obama would not endorse the catfood commission's recommendations on Social Security in the speech, and encouraged his leadership on protecting Social Security, perhaps a gentle way of encouraging the administration to take the lead on protecting the program. "I look forward to the President showing strong leadership on critical issues," Whitehouse said. “As someone urging him to follow his campaign promises, I was very pleased to hear that the President will not endorse raising the retirement age or reducing Social Security benefits. For tens of millions of seniors and workers that is very welcome news," said Sanders.
Separately, majority leader Harry Reid's spokesman issued a similar statement, emphasizing the GOP vision for America as embodied in the Ryan roadmap.
“In an unsettling development for America’s seniors, ending Social Security and Medicare is now the official position of the Republican Party. Republicans tapped Rep. Ryan, the architect of a plan to end Social Security and Medicare, to deliver their response to the President’s State of the Union, and his plan has been endorsed by the House Majority Leader and the top Republicans on the House and Senate budget committees.”
That's the Republican plan now. That's the plan Obama needs to fight tooth and nail, not leaving any Social Security compromise with Republicans on the table, but protecting it from a radical Republican party bent on eviscerating it.