Rep. Paul Ryan introducing his not new, not bipartisan plan. (Jose Luis Magaua/Reuters)
The
big sell job House Republicans are trying to do on their budget continues, with a special focus on their Medicare "reform." The
new sell job seems to amount to, "Now with more Ron Wyden!" with the word "bipartisan" included in every statement.
Republicans enter the debate armed with new polling from a conservative firm that surveyed 50 battleground House districts and shared the keys to winning with the House leadership.
First, they should label their effort “bipartisan”—no longer a stretch given that Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) is supporting the latest Ryan Medicare plan. About 46 percent of voters, the poll found, supported a plan to “fix Medicare,” as long as it provides choices and preserves the program.
Those key words have been echoed repeatedly by Republicans defending the plan in the past week.
The only problem (both for the
Washington Post reporter here and for the House Republicans) is that Wyden
isn't supporting the current Ryan plan. He's
stubbornly not backing away from the "white paper" he developed with Ryan, but
this isn't that plan and he doesn't support it.
But a single disgruntled Democrat, still smarting from having many of his ideas ignored in the final health reform bill, does not make a bipartisan plan for Medicare. And slowly starving the program of funding, passing more and more of the costs onto seniors, isn't by any stretch of the imagination "saving" Medicare.
There's nothing new in the House Republicans' political strategy, and there's very little new in Ryan's plan for Medicare.