Political opportunism is to be expected, but they're abusing the privilege: Even longtime Washington insiders say they are struck by the brazenness with which Rebuplicans and Democrats are changing their rhetoric to woo senior voters.
Just a little over a year ago, Rep. John Boehner (R-Ohio) took to the House floor to warn America of the perils facing seniors if Democrats' healthcare reform bill wasn't stopped.
“Can you go home and tell your senior citizens that these cuts in Medicare will not limit their access to doctors or further weaken the program instead of strengthening it? No, you cannot,” the then-minority leader asked his colleagues last March.
Fast forward 13 months, and Boehner - now Speaker - is singing a different tune.
Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) proposal to replace Medicare with subsidies to buy private insurance, Boehner told ABC News the blueprint “transforms Medicare into a plan that's very similar to the president's own healthcare bill.”
If Boehner can be accused of shifting his rhetoric, so too have some Democrats.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius echoed GOP complaints about the Obama healthcare law when she said Americans would “die sooner” under the Ryan plan.
Included are nine pages of quotes reflecting what they all said then and what they say now. It's downright dizzying. I've been watching politics for a long time, and I don't know if it's really gotten worse or it's just that my tolerance has reached the limit, but politics certainly seem more cynical and opportunistic than ever. The default position today should be: Just assume they're all lying and start from there.
Comments
Voters or in this case non voters get what they did not vote for. I have clippings from newspapers in the 70's when Social Security was on the verge of Bankruptcy. 1976 and the result was raising the payroll base and tax. The only ones who were concerned about Social Security were seniors. The young who pay the tax did not vote. In 1983 just seven years after the 1976 fix, Legislation was passed increasing the base, tax, retirement age and taxing 85% of SS benefits above an specified AGI. Amazing once again, that the smallest potential voting block one out over the largest potential voting block who failed to speak up.
Now it is 2011 and the same errors of past generations are being repeated. SOCIAL SECURITY IS NOT GOING BROKE, IT IS BROKE!!! MEDICARE IS NOT GOING BROKE, IT IS BROKE!!!
I listen to the news and not one reporter actually knows much about Social Security or Medicare. They report the problem to be "increase life expectancy", "decreased worker to beneficiaries" and more. For decades information on life expectancy has been collected, analyzed and reported, yet the media is still get it wrong. It is not that the worker to beneficiary ratio is declining unexpectedly, but rather it is the immature SS-OASI program between 1940 and 1965 when there was never a full compliment of cohorts as beneficiaries. It takes time to fill all those age brackets over age 65.
The problem is simple, it was designed to fail. Politicians and SS new the problems we now face and they have done nothing about it.
The republicans need to educate the population on the problem. It is not new, just swept under the rug for 74 years by both parties.
YOUNG PEOPLE, THOSE POTENTIAL VOTERS UNDER AGE 46 OUTNUMBER ALL THOSE OVER 46. There is no reason to kick this can down the road any longer. All that is needed is a person to speak up. After running four campaigns I have not given up. My web site now gets four times the number of hits it did during peak campaigns. Many of the links are number one on Google "Worker to retiree ratio"," retirement formulas", "life expectancy" and more.
I still believe that truth if present to the people will create such an out cry that the victims of these programs will begin to vote in numbers never seen before. It just baffles me that the republicans do not simply use the facts to their advantage.
Paul Ryan needs to stick to the facts and stop kicking the can down the road.