Last year, after the House of Representatives passed Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) budget plan, Democrats accused the Republicans of voting to kill Medicare. That claim was then named Lie of the Year by Politifact. It was a semantic disagreement that was mainly based on different value systems. For Democrats, Medicare’s main attraction is that it is a guaranteed benefit and that it is a single-payer system. If it could actually pass, most Democrats would line up in favor of giving Medicare to everyone, not just our seniors. Republicans tend to look at Medicare more as a wealth redistribution scheme and as a heavy financial burden. For Democrats, if you voucherize Medicare, you wipe out what makes it uniquely valuable. For Republicans, you’re still subsidizing health care for people who can’t afford it. For Democrats, a Medicare that isn’t guaranteed isn’t Medicare. For Republicans, a privatized Medicare is nothing more than a tweak.
Given this difference of worldview, I think it was grossly unfair for Politifact to call the Democrats’ claim the Lie of the Year. In every way that the issue matters to Democrats, their statement was true. If you just change the language a little and say that the Republicans voted “to kill Medicare as we know it,” it becomes a less contentious assertion. And that’s what the White House is going with now. After the Republicans approved Paul Ryan’s budget plan yesterday, which still includes a slightly modified Medicare privatization scheme, the president’s press secretary released a statement that began:
House Republicans today banded together to shower millionaires and billionaires with a massive tax cut paid for by ending Medicare as we know it and making extremely deep cuts to critical programs needed to create jobs and strengthen the middle class. The Ryan Republican budget would give every millionaire an average tax cut of at least $150,000, while preserving taxpayer giveaways to oil companies and breaks for Wall Street hedge fund managers.
Now, I expect the Republicans to claim that the White House is lying, but it won’t be that easy when Republican columnists are conceding the point. Here’s former Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson, writing in the Washington Post:
By the 2030s, federal health-care commitments, along with interest on the debt, will consume just about all government revenue. Federal health spending is expected to grow from 5.6 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) to nearly 20 percent — about the modern average for the whole federal government. Maintaining “Medicare as we know it” and other unreformed health entitlements will make every other function of government as we know it impossible.
In other words, Paul Ryan’s proposal eliminates Medicare as we know it, but it does so out of necessity. Gerson’s overall argument is misleading and disingenuous, but his argument on killing Medicare is clear. He admits it will be killed “as we know it.”
The Republicans’ job, then, will be to convince us that this is necessary:
Americans are not suddenly enthusiastic about Medicare reform. But Ryan has made a sophisticated case for its necessity. His proposals have been generally embraced by congressional Republicans and the GOP’s likely presidential candidate. If Mitt Romney manages to win, the presentation of Ryan’s budget in 2013 would kick off a momentous national debate on the size and role of government…
…Ryan is all Wisconsin cheerful earnestness — the Boy Scout earning his federal budget badge. But this manner masks considerable ideological ambition. “We knew we were defining the movement,” he tells me. By setting out the case against unsustainable entitlement commitments, Ryan forced his GOP colleagues to pick a side, often against their will. The whole Republican Party will now defend and advance Ryan’s budget views — or suffer from their repudiation.
A third possibility exists. The Republican Party may defend and advance Ryan’s budget views and suffer from their repudiation. That’s what happened when, after he “won” a second term, President Bush sought to kill Social Security “as we know it.”
Overall, I think the Republicans have their work cut out for them. To begin with, they’re trying to pull off a giant snow-job. It’s hard to argue that it is absolutely necessary to kill Medicare as we know it when you’re increasing the defense budget and slashing taxes. As Steve Benen points out, Ryan is not only ignoring the Pentagon’s proposal to cut a half trillion out of their budget over the next decade, he’s calling the generals a bunch of liars who don’t really mean what they say. When has that kind of approach ever succeeded politically? Remember General Betray-Us?
Here’s the rest of the administration’s statement on the Ryan budget:
Today’s vote stands as another example of the Republican establishment grasping onto the same failed economic policies that stacked the deck against the middle class and created the worst financial crisis in decades. If the Ryan Republican budget is made a reality and the radical discretionary cuts fall across the board, by 2014, more than nine million students would see their Pell Grants fall by as much as $1100, and about 900,000 would lose their grants altogether. Clean energy programs would be cut nearly 20 percent, Head Start would offer 200,000 fewer slots per year, and critical medical research and science programs would see drastic cuts.
The President has put forward a balanced plan that would reduce our deficit by over $4 trillion by asking the wealthiest to pay their fair share, enacting responsible spending cuts and achieving significant health savings while still investing in the programs we need to grow our economy and bring economic security back to the middle class and seniors. Any serious attempt at tackling our deficits must be balanced, fair and demand shared responsibility. The Ryan Republican budget clearly fails that test.
Maybe the most important thing to remember is this:
“We knew we were defining the movement,” [Ryan] told me.
Now it is up to us to define their movement.