The same day as Kathy Hochul's stunning upset win in a "reliably conservative" district in NY, largely because of the Ryan budget's position on Medicare, a congressman in Georgia was having trouble in a town hall meeting about the same thing.
Rep. Rob Woodall had been pushing the Ryan plan to covert Medicare to a voucher program for seniors to buy private insurance. A constituent then confronted him with the fact many employees of private companies lose their health care coverage when they retire. "The private corporation that I retired from does not give medical benefits to retirees."
Woodall's reply: "Hear yourself, ma'am. Hear yourself. . . You want the government to take care of you, because your employer decided not to take care of you. My question is, 'When do I decide I'm going to take care of me?'"
The Tea Party anti-government types in the crowd cheered.
But the majority of seniors are not amused. And they vote.
Score another one for the Dems.
Ralph
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It's not just phasing out Medicare -- it's the Repubs claiming that it's necessary in order to cut spending -- while insisting on even more tax breaks for big business and oil.
ReplyDeleteThe chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has identified 97 possible vulnerable Repubs in the House, including Paul Ryan. Re yesterday's win in NY, he said:
ReplyDelete"There are 97 Republican members of Congress who are probably losing a lot of sleep tonight."
And Paul Ryan's reaction? He said it shows that "having the ability to scare seniors is powerful."
Right, they should know. They've been trading on scaring seniors (among others) for years. The difference is that what the Dems point out to seniors about the Repub plan is absolutely true, as confirmed by the Congression Budget Office, even though the Repubs deny it.
Stunning hypocrisy: days after Woodall made the hard-nosed comment to the woman constituent, someone asked him why he continued to accept his government-sponsored health care plan.
ReplyDeleteHe replied: "because it's free."
That is stunning in its blatant hypocrisy.