Thread: Gingrich Slams Ryan Plan as 'Right Wing Social Engineering

Gingrich Slams Ryan Plan as 'Right Wing Social Engineering'

Sunday, 15 May 2011 07:31 PM

Surprising many conservatives, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich stirred a lively debate Sunday by slamming Rep. Paul Ryan's plan to reform Medicare on NBC's "Meet the Press."

In what one popular conservative website described as Gingrich "tacking left," the now-declared presidential candidate dismissed a plan popular among many conservatives as "radical change" that he suggested was dangerous for Republicans to embrace heading into an election year.

The House budget chairman's plan is designed to move to a system where seniors receive vouchers to buy private insurance. It has been endorsed by the majority of House Republicans.

But Gingrich said it was "too big a jump. I think what you want to have is a system where people voluntarily migrate to better outcomes, better solutions, better options."

"I'm against Obamacare, which is imposing radical change, and I would be against a conservative imposing radical change," he continued.

"I don't think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering," Gingrich said. "I don't think imposing radical change from the right or the left is a very good way for a free society to operate."

Gingrich has instead called for a system that would preserve the current Medicare program alongside a voluntary, privatized version. But nothing he has said came close to the blast he unleashed on his own party's top priority in Congress.

"There are specific things you can do," Gingrich explained to NBC's David Gregroy. " At the Center for Health Transformation, which I helped found, we published a book called "Stop Paying the Crooks." We thought that was a clear enough, simple enough idea, even for Washington. We--between Medicare and Medicaid, we pay between $70 billion and $120 billion a year to crooks.

And IBM has agreed to help solve it, American Express has agreed to help solve it, Visa's agreed to help solve it. You can't get anybody in this town to look at it. That's, that's almost $1 trillion over a decade. So
there are things you can do to improve Medicare."

Ryan, meanwhile, defended it during an appearance on the CNN program "State of the Union."

"We have got to reform this program for the next generation if we're going to save it for the next generation and that's what we're proposing to do," the Wisconsin Republican said.

Ryan's spokesman Conor Sweeney took issue with Gingrich calling the plan "radical", saying the Ryan budget "remains the only serious proposal put forward on either end on Pennsylvania Avenue that saves Medicare."

"The solutions offered by Chairman Ryan and House Republicans make no changes to Medicare for those in and near retirement, while offering a strengthened, personalized program that future generations can count on when they retire," Sweeney told National Review Online's Robert Costa.

"Far from claims of radicalism, the gradual, common-sense Medicare reforms ensure that no senior will be forced to reorganize their lives because of government's mistakes. The most 'radical' course of action on Medicare is continue to cling to the unsustainable status quo," Sweeney said.

http://www.newsmax.com/InsideCover/ging ... /id/396427

Cut the SSI entitlement for sponsored foreign citizens! I don't know what it takes to get these guys to see it.

Ryan's plan is not "right wing social engineering". It is a plan to correct and control the costs of "left wing social engineering", i.e., Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare. What Ryan proposed for Medicare makes sense, and in fact Gingrich supports the same basic approach of using vouchers. The difference is that Ryan does not make buying insurance mandatory for all, while that is what Gingrich says he wants. I think Newt just wanted some publicity (and he is getting it). Now watch for the weasel-wording as he tries to tell us what he really meant.

What amazes me about this whole issue is that it is not a complicated problem. Fifth graders have the skills (well, when I was one, anyway) to do the math that shows these programs are unsustainable and are also our biggest budget items. Healthcare should be focused on catastrophic coverage, not every shot, sniffle, or stubbed toe. Social Security should be privatized (look at us now.....does anyone really believe that the US government is more reliable at paying the benefits than a private plan would be?).

If this is too big to swallow, then at least take 100 per cent of all social security and medicare taxes and put them where the federal government cannot touch them for any purpose other than to pay benefits to qualified recipients. This whole thing started going south in high gear when LBJ and the Democrats decided that a way to hide the cost of all their programs and make the annual deficits look smaller than they were was to put the these taxes in the general fund. We should not allow any of this money to be included in the general funds.