Thread: Romney ad says Obama took from Medicare 'to pay for ObamaCare'

Romney ad says Obama took from Medicare 'to pay for ObamaCare'
By Justin Sink - 08/14/12 03:04 PM ET

Mitt Romney's campaign released a new television ad Tuesday blasting President Obama on Medicare, the latest in a string of offensive maneuvers intended to inoculate the Republican ticket on the issue after the addition of Paul Ryan as the vice presidential nominee.

Ryan's recent budget proposal would shift Medicare funding to a voucher-like program, a move that financial analysts and Democrats argue would increase costs for seniors. And while the Obama campaign has been slamming Ryan for that proposal, Romney's team has instead focused on $700 billion in Medicare cuts that were part of the president's signature healthcare law.

In the ad released Tuesday, a narrator slams the cuts, telling viewers that the president cut from Medicare "to pay for 'ObamaCare.' "

"So now the money you paid for your guaranteed healthcare is going to a massive new government program that’s not for you," the narrator said. "The Romney-Ryan plan protects Medicare benefits for today’s seniors and strengthens the plan for the next generation."

The Obama campaign has pointed out that the $700 billion came from eliminating subsidies to insurance companies and cutting waste and fraud — neither of which would affect heath services or benefits for seniors. Independent fact-checking groups like Politifact have labeled the Romney charges as "false," and in a statement Tuesday, Obama's campaign called the ad "dishonest and hypocritical."

"The savings his ad attacks do not cut a single guaranteed Medicare benefit, and Mitt Romney embraced the very same savings when he promised he’d sign Paul Ryan’s budget," Obama spokeswoman Lis Smith said. "Because the President is eliminating subsidies to insurance companies and cutting waste and fraud, we’ve extended the life of Medicare by eight years. The truth is that the Romney-Ryan budget would end Medicare as we know it: people with Medicare would be left with nothing but a voucher in place of the guaranteed benefits they rely on today. And they do it all to pay for massive tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires – the very same top-down economic scheme that crashed our economy and devastated the middle class in the first place.”

And, ironically, Paul Ryan's House budget included the same reforms that Republicans have criticized.

Nevertheless, Romney's campaign is hoping that their best defense on Ryan's voucher proposal is playing offense. In addition to releasing the ad Tuesday, both Romney and Ryan hit the president on Medicare while stumping during the day.

“The president’s idea for Medicare was to cut it by $700 billion. That’s not the right answer. We need to make sure we can preserve and protect Medicare,” Romney said Tuesday in Ohio.




Romney ad says Obama took from Medicare 'to pay for ObamaCare' - The Hill's Video

Paul Ryan's Plan to Save Medicare From Insolvency

Donald Lambro


Aug 15, 2012

Paul Ryan's Plan to Save Medicare From Insolvency

No domestic issue, other than jobs and the economy, fuels more worry from America's voters than the $5 trillion plus debt President Obama has run up over the past four years.

No president has spent as much as Obama has, or has had higher budget deficits, or has wasted more of our tax dollars. He's put America on a perilous fiscal course that threatens to impoverish our economy and engulf all of us in ruinous debt for generations to come.

That's why Mitt Romney, in deciding who would be the best vice presidential running mate, chose Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, the penny-pinching chairman of the House Budget Committee, who has made America's economic health the central cause of his political career.

With that one singular decision, Romney has placed Obama's irresponsible and out-of-control spending binge at the center of the coming campaign debate.

In a government that hungers for leadership, Ryan has for past four years been decrying the unsustainable fiscal course we are on -- now teetering on the edge of a black hole of annual trillion dollar budget deficits and crushing debts that are now larger than our entire economy.

Impressed with Ryan's leadership abilities, Republicans bypassed more senior members and put him in charge of the powerful budget panel that is responsible for shaping the nation's chief financial document.

Romney could have named safer running mates from a list of governors, but in picking Ryan, he chose a man who knows how to work across the aisle without abandoning his party's principles or his country's.

Obama thinks he will be able to demonize Ryan because of his plan to reform Medicare by making its cost structure sustainable for generations to come.

"His plan... would end Medicare as we know it by turning it into a voucher system, shifting thousands of dollars in healthcare costs to seniors," Obama said in a statement Saturday.

Like a lot of attacks Obama has leveled at Romney, this one is untrue, but you can expect the attacks to get even more vicious in the weeks to come. The Washington Post cites one Democratic ad that depicts Ryan "as physically pushing a senior citizen in a wheelchair off a cliff."

In fact, Ryan has been collaborating on his plan with a lifelong liberal Democrat from Oregon, Sen. Ron Wyden. Their plan would turn Medicare into a premium-support system for financing Medicare. You won't hear Obama mentioning Wyden's role in the GOP plan.





Paul Ryan's Plan to Save Medicare From Insolvency - Donald Lambro - Page 1

Video at link below



Ryan goes on offense over Medicare, accuses Obama of treating program like 'piggy bank'

Published August 15, 2012

FoxNews.com

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Paul Ryan went on offense Tuesday in response to criticism over his Medicare plan, using an interview with Fox News coupled with a new TV ad to claim President Obama’s health care plan treats the treasured entitlement like a “piggy bank,” while the “Romney-Ryan” plan preserves it.

Ryan, in his first one-on-one interview since being named Saturday as Mitt Romney’s running mate, told Fox News on Tuesday he thinks Medicare can be a winning issue for their campaign.

"We're the ones who are offering a plan to save Medicare, to protect Medicare, to strengthen Medicare," Ryan said. "We're the ones who are not raiding Medicare to pay for ObamaCare. … We're the ones continuing the guarantee of Medicare for people in or near retirement."

He added: “President Obama is actually damaging Medicare for current seniors. It's irrefutable and that's why I think this is a debate we want to have, and that's the debate we're going to win.”

The comments signal Ryan and Romney are prepared to dig in and fight back, as Democrats lob charges that Ryan stands for “ending Medicare as we know it.”

The Obama campaign used that line Monday in a Web video timed for Romney’s arrival in Florida, with its large senior population. The video pointed to Ryan’s budget proposals, which include significant changes to Medicare.

The Romney campaign retorted with an ad of its own Tuesday. The ad says: “You paid in to Medicare for years … now when you need it, Obama has cut $716 billion from Medicare. Why? To pay for ObamaCare.”

Ryan told Fox News the campaign is trying to show the “clear contrast” between what Republicans propose and what Obama’s health care law does. Ryan wants to make changes to Medicare for those retiring a decade from now but leave benefits for current retirees and those retiring soon in place.

“They turned Medicare into a piggy bank to finance ObamaCare,” Ryan said. “And we want to point that out. And we want to … restore those cuts to prevent that raid. … And so we propose no changes to anybody in or near retirement so that the guarantee of Medicare is for them. That's a clear contrast with President Obama's plan.”

The Obama campaign is disputing that argument. Obama campaign spokeswoman Lis Smith described the new Romney-Ryan ad on the subject as “dishonest and hypocritical,” considering Ryan’s own proposals for Medicare.

“The savings his ad attacks do not cut a single guaranteed Medicare benefit, and Mitt Romney embraced the very same savings when he promised he’d sign Paul Ryan’s budget,” Smith said. “Because the president is eliminating subsidies to insurance companies and cutting waste and fraud, we’ve extended the life of Medicare by eight years. The truth is that the Romney-Ryan budget would end Medicare as we know it: people with Medicare would be left with nothing but a voucher in place of the guaranteed benefits they rely on today.”

Both sides are being selective in how they describe each other’s plans.

The Ryan proposal, submitted again in the House earlier this year, would a decade from now give seniors government payments to purchase private plans or stay within the current system. Ryan says this is to preserve Medicare, not “end” it, as Obama’s campaign claims.

But while Ryan slams the health care overhaul for cutting Medicare, even he acknowledged that his own plan achieves “savings” for Medicare in the long run. Though he doesn’t use the word “cuts,” the plan would slow the rate of benefit growth for seniors according to the Congressional Budget Office.

And the ObamaCare cuts he referenced would likely come in the form of lower payments to providers. A Romney campaign aide, though, said “that’s a distinction without a difference” since the “provider passes that reduction along to” patients.

In his interview with Fox News, Ryan also hammered Obama for what he called his “utter failure when it comes to creating jobs.” Amplifying the Romney campaign message, he said Obama’s heavy borrowing is dragging down economic growth – he also claimed the “hope and change campaign of '08 has become the blame and attack campaign of 2012.”

Ryan offered new insight as well on how Romney and Ryan came to bond in the months before he was announced as running mate.

He recalled when he was campaigning with Romney earlier this year ahead of the Wisconsin primary.

“We spent about five days on the road, five working hour or so days,” he said. “And in between all of those stops, driving from, you know, Appleton to Green Bay to Janesville to Milwaukee, we got to know each other. We conversed on policy issues, on where to take the country. And sooner or later, we basically started sharing the microphones at these town hall meetings and we just kind of developed a chemistry with one another and a mutual understanding with each other.”

Ryan said he doesn’t know whether he had a “special place” but it was “very clear we thought the same on these issues.”

“When he asked me to join the ticket, he basically said to me, 'You share my values and you have the kind of experience that could be a complement to my experience to getting this country back on track, to creating jobs, to getting people back to work, to saving this country from a debt crisis,'" Ryan said.

Ryan also discussed his affection for novelist Ayn Rand, saying “Atlas Shrugged” triggered his interest in economics. He said he doesn’t share her overall philosophy but said her books “showed how the pitfalls of socialism can hurt the economy.”

Obama, meanwhile, took on Ryan for the second straight day Tuesday, using a stop in Oskaloosa, Iowa, to criticize Ryan’s and Romney’s tax plan.

“You may have heard that Governor Romney just chose his running mate, Congressman Ryan. He's a good man. He's a family man. He's the ideological leader of the Republicans in Congress,” Obama said. “And he's an articulate spokesperson for Governor Romney's views. The problem is, those views are wrong.”



Read more: Ryan goes on offense over Medicare, accuses Obama of treating program like 'piggy bank' | Fox News

Will Medicare become a defining issue in the 2012 race?

Aug 15, 2012


Will Medicare become a defining issue in the 2012 race?

i posted this on my facebook page...with the heading "Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies Mr. Obama"
The PJ Tatler » Flashback: Obama Admits Gutting Medicare to Fund ObamaCare

He talked about gutting Medicare in 2009

I brought over the video cavmom...



Flashback: Obama Admits Gutting Medicare to Fund ObamaCare

And pledges to veto anything that would restore Medicare’s funding. This interview is from November 2009, before ObamaCare had passed. The president was already gearing up to defend his cuts to Medicare. Lately he has been accusing Paul Ryan of cutting Medicare. The president, if he was honest, would add “Beat ya to it!”




The PJ Tatler » Flashback: Obama Admits Gutting Medicare to Fund ObamaCare

The biggest objection that Democrats use to demonize the concept of privatization of either Social Security or Medicare is that it is "risky" or you could "lose your investment". Well how risky is the US government these days? We already know Medicare is on the verge of bankruptcy, and that the program will be unsustainable within a few years, and Social Security is not far behind.

This is because LBJ and the toads that voted in Medicare knew at the time that Medicare taxes alone would not fund the program. So they moved social security taxes from the special fund it was in (the fabled lock box) to the general fund in order to hide that actual deficits being accumulated. It worked then because there were far more people paying in than taking out, the concept of COLA had not yet been added on, and of course no one kept accurate accounting records as to how much social security and Medicare tax money, when there were surpluses, was diverted to pork barrel and other vote getting programs. Even Clinton's highly touted balanced budget was a lie because if you backed the social security and medicare taxes out of it, he ran a deficit as well. It ought to be obvious that if you are paying out more than you are taking in you will either have to cancel the programs or pile up more and more debt until total bankruptcy is reached.

If our government officials do not have the courage to start privatizing now, the least they could do is reinstate a real lock box for social security and medicare taxes that allows with drawing funds only for direct payments to eligible recipients. Period.

Dem Chair Gets Torched On Medicare Lies




Let me say this right up front: Congratulations to Wolf Blitzer for being a relentless, responsible journalist. If you value the truth, this interview is a pleasure to watch. If you have even an ounce of human compassion for the in-over-her-head target of Blitzer’s inquisition, it’s positively brutal:



Poor Debbie. She’s totally out-gunned and has nowhere to hide. Her talking points are pitifully hollow and cannot withstand even basic questioning. She stubbornly rejects the (correct) premise that the Romney/Ryan Medicare reform plan exempts everyone over the age of 54, and plays fast and loose with numbers — conflating 55 and 65 on several occasions. When she is brow-beaten into finally acknowledging — if not admitting — the truth around the 3:45 mark, she quickly realizes her “mistake” and reverts back into denialism. When Blitzer asks her to specify exactly how current or soon-to-be seniors would be impacted by the GOP plan, she cannot. Because they’re not. The Left is intellectually bankrupt on the very subject they claim will allow them to crush Mitt Romney in November. They despise the bipartisan solution Republicans have offered, but they have no alternative of their own. Dear Democrats, Medicare is slated to go bankrupt in 2024. You say it’s wrong for future seniors to be denied Medicare as it currently exists. Okay, what’s your plan, guys? We know that your actions have already cut Medicare by $700 Billion to pay for part of Obamacare. We also know that Obamacare establishes a government panel to ration care for the elderly. And yet the 2024 deadline is still coming. Again, what’s your plan, Democrats? Mr. President? Anyone? I confronted Wasserman Schutlz on this very question last summer, and she gave an incoherent and inaccurate response. Also, here’s video of Paul Ryan destroying DWS’ talking point about seniors (read: future seniors) having to pay $6,000 more per year for healthcare. A debt crisis is on the near horizon. Entitlement programs are going under. Twenty-three million Americans are unemployed, underemployed or have given up home. GDP growth is slowing. The president and his allies have no plans, so they’re forced to invent smears and argue against positions that their opponents don’t hold.


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Dem Chair Gets Torched On Medicare Lies*|*Front Porch Politics