With the exception of the civil rights acts of the 1960s, no programs are more hallowed in party mythology than Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
“Rather than building bridges, he’s poisoning wells,” said Rep. Paul Ryan, after listening to Barack Obama’s scathing attack on his deficit reduction plan as a shredding of America’s social contract with the elderly and poor.
Ryan is right. Yet, with Obama’s partisan savagery, virtually calling the GOP plan immoral, we have clarity. There will be no grand bipartisan bargain on taxes and spending.
The two parties on Capitol Hill and the president will not be coming together to solve the gravest financial and fiscal crisis America has faced since the Great Depression. Between them today is a high wall and a deep ditch.
The heart of the Ryan plan is to turn Medicaid into block grants to the states, so each can decide for itself how best to use the funds, and to convert Medicare into a program where the U.S. government would provide citizens with the funds and freedom to choose whatever health insurance they wished to buy.
Obama denounced both.