Republicans Flip Flop on Medicare

"The austerity crisis talks have hit a peculiar impasse. The problem isn't, as most analysts expected, taxes, where Republicans seem increasingly resigned to new revenue. It's Medicare. And the particular Medicare problem isn't that Democrats are refusing the GOP's proposed Medicare cuts. It's that Republicans are refusing to name their Medicare cuts.

Politico quotes a "top Democratic official" who paints the picture simply: "Rob Nabors [the White House negotiator], has been saying: 'This is what we want on revenues on the down payment. What's your guys' ask on the entitlement side?' And they keep looking back at us and saying: 'We want you to come up with that and pitch us.' That's not going to happen."

That's partly politics. If nothing else, Republicans are respectful of Medicare's political potency. Recall that a core Republican message in both the 2010 and 2012 elections was that Democrats, through Obamacare, were cutting Medicare too much. Republicans, already concerned about their brand, don't want to rebrand themselves as the party of Medicare cuts."*

Before the 2012 election season, Mitt Romney and Republicans denounced Obama, saying he would cut Medicare by too much! Now, during fiscal cliff negotiations, the GOP has changed its tune, saying Medicare MUST be cut down. Which is it, and why? Cenk Uygur, John Iadarola (Host, TYT University), and Mark Thompson (TV Host) break it down.

*Read more from Ezra Klein/ Washington Post:

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Republicans Flip Flop on Medicare

16 thoughts on “Republicans Flip Flop on Medicare

  1. Great. To do that, you don’t even need new tax rates: “What we’ve said was,
    give us $1.2 Trillion in additional revenues. Which could be accomplished
    without hiking taxes–uh–tax rates, but could simply be accomplished by
    eliminating loopholes, eliminating some deductions, and–uh–engaging in a
    tax reform process that could have lowered rates generally while broadening
    the base.” President Obama – 2011

  2. In addition, that 1.2 trillion you boast of would be over 10 years. Now,
    since we are spending more than a trillion a year in debt, where do you
    propose we get the other 10 trillion in the next 10 years?

  3. Manufacturing was already in decline all across the West before Thatcher
    and Reagan, well back into the 70s. The post war 50s and 60s boom couldn’t
    last forever, and the rest of the world had been quickly developing and
    posing competition. So booms aren’t measured by how much wealth they
    generate? And don’t mix up booms with bubbles. Also, you have it backwards.
    Middle class incomes are only shown to go down during the Reagan years by
    NOT adjusting for inflation.

  4. No there’s not enough money in tax breaks but they should be cut too. and
    actually higher taxes actually stimulate growth like in the Clinton era
    rich people had to create more jobs to make more money. not like now were
    they can sit back and just let the money roll in.

  5. It’s easy to say that the FED is behind inflation, but you don’t take into
    consideration that the FED doesn’t print off more money unless the
    government needs more money printed off. The FED is borrowed from to
    fulfill SSI and SDI every year, if you can’t see that, you’re lost.

  6. That’s just silly. The way the “rich” create wealth and “avoid” taxes is
    capital gains. Capital gains comes from investments. Investments create
    jobs. The Clinton era was built on Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, The Internet
    Bubble, Credit Default Swaps, Sub-Prime Loans, and all the other false
    gains that crashed our economy. 

  7. Why don’t we undo everything that was added since Bush took office? That
    means bringing pork-barrel Defense spending back to 297 billion, instead of
    the 700++ billion it is now. And there’s a reason why the 2 Bush tax cuts
    were temporary, they’re bankrupting us. Most of those tax cuts went to the
    top. Then there’s The Double Irish & Dutch Sandwich corp. tax loopholes,
    that’s 60+ billion a year. Another 30+ billion a year in give-aways &
    subsidies for the rich. Read GOP senator Coburn’s report.

  8. What Bush did was return taxation to reasonable levels. Now we need to
    return spending to reasonable levels. The Democrats had complete control
    for 2 years under Obama and they did neither loop hole closing or spending
    reductions.

  9. There is no reasonable level of taxation when yur spending close to a
    trillion a year on Defense & fighting 2 wars. Did you know that we spend 6
    times more on Defense than the worlds next biggest Defense spender? We’re
    still fighting WWll. And the Dem’s didn’t have complete control under Obama
    for 2 years. The Dem’s only had a filibuster proof senate for like 6
    months. The GOP contested the the election of Al Franken, & he wasn’t sworn
    in till like June of 09. And Scott Brown started Jan. 2010.

  10. Exactly. We need to reduce spending, of all kinds, but ESPECIALLY wasteful
    liberal spending, and keep taxes low. We need them especially low on
    investments. If the Democrats could pass Obamacare, they could have gotten
    spending under control. They didn’t. They aren’t even pretending they want
    to. 

  11. Corporate taxes are just hidden taxes on the consumer. If they wanted them
    higher, if they wanted to close loopholes, they could have done it. They
    didn’t. This discussion really means nothing. Spending will go up even more
    under Obama and the US is financially doomed. You can raise taxes on the
    consumer and the wealthy and investments and close loop holes and it will
    mean nothing. You MUST cut spending and start paying the debt and we won’t.

  12. I want to see entitlement reform for the rich! Cut all the money that is
    going to big business and oil companies. I’d like to see what all the
    soulless zombie Rethuglican sheeple would have to say about that! They’d
    crap their pants sooo fast, heads would spin off their necks.

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