Mitt Romney told a group of seniors on Monday night that “we will never go after Medicare or Social Security. We will protect those programs.” Barely a month ago, Romney became a strong backer of the Paul Ryan budget which would essentially end Medicare by privatizing it into a corporate insurance company voucher program.
Mitt Romney is trying to “change his tune,” DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz said on Tuesday. “We had always assumed he’d be here saying anything to voters in the Sunshine State to get elected.”
Tuesday, Democrats highlighted policies Romney has supported in order to argue that his promise to protect the two entitlement programs is “patently dishonest.” In addition to his support for Paul Ryan, his own plan creates a voucher Medicare system, which in their phrase leaves traditional Medicare to “wither on the vine.” And beyond Medicare, Romney’s support for a Cut, Cap, and Balance approach to the budget would result in drastic cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
Romney has been careful in his campaign comments to leave the door open for the Ryan plan, or a similar reform effort, by hinting that in order to “protect” Medicare it might be necessary to reform it.
“So if I’m president, I will protect Medicare and Social Security for those that are currently retired or near retirement,” Romney assured the seniors he spoke to, adding, “and I’ll make sure we keep those programs solvent for the next generations coming along.”
Romney and Ryan propose to privatize Medicare by converting it into a corporate insurance voucher program for everyone younger than 5o years of age.
How committed to ending Medicare is the Republican Party? Committed enough to resurrect in 2012 Republican Rep. Paul Ryan's Medicare voucher plan of 2011, the plan that enraged seniors and helped Democrats win a special election in the House.
The Republican Party endorsed Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) sharply conservative 2011 budget bill when all but four Republicans in the U.S. House voted for and passed the bill before the 2011 Easter recess.
Breaking a promise Republicans made during the 2010 mid-term election to "protect Social Security and Medicare" Ryan's budget bill deeply cuts Medicare funding and replaces with a private insurance premium voucher program.
Ryan's Republican budget eliminates Medicare, as it exists today, and guts Medicaid as well as the rest of the government. The budget also gives additional huge tax cuts to millionaires and billionaires plus further big corporate taxpayer handouts to pharma, insurance and petrochemical industries. The Republican budget explodes deficit spend in the near term and doesn't actually balance revenues and spending until the year 2040.
Collin County's Republican Congressional representatives Sam Johnson, Tx-3rd and Ralph Hall, Tx-4th voted for Ryan's bill.
