Ryan Plan

BLACKSBURG, Va. - Joe Biden isn't going to change his brand, even a day after his comments spurred a Category 3 storm of outrage. “I know I am sometimes criticized for saying exactly what I mean. And it's not going to change,” the vice president told a crowd of supporters at the end of a campaign speech here Wednesday afternoon. Biden was somewhat subdued at the outset of a roughly half-hour speech on the campus of Virginia Tech, paying closer attention, it seemed, to the TelePrompTer screens in front of him to more carefully keep to the script.

One criticism of the Medicare overhaul that House Budget Committee Chairman Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) has championed is that it would shift more and more of the program's costs onto seniors. In the latest version of his plan, Ryan acknowledges that capping the growth of the program could, in fact, make health insurance more expensive for some retirees. But that's part of the point of the change, which would concentrate Medicare spending on the poorest and sickest seniors. This page has argued that Ryan's overhaul goes too far, threatening Medicare's fundamental promise of affordable health insurance for all seniors.

It certainly hasn't taken long for the blue-eyed, smiling visage to be scrubbed off Paul Ryan's putative policy masterwork, a federal budget proposal that supposedly would cut the government deficit to a shadow of its former self, as if by magic. Within hours of the Wisconsin congressman's anointing as Mitt Romney's vice-presidential running mate, the budget plan's salient features were being widely publicized: It would deliver a handsome tax cut to the richest Americans while eviscerating the programs and services the rest of the country depends on. These include healthcare services, banking and clean water regulations, road repair and education assistance.

WASHINGTON - The austere federal budget plan drafted by Rep. Paul D. Ryan and embraced by Republicans as a sweeping reimagining of government has hit a roadblock on the way to the so-called fiscal cliff. The proposal had catapulted the 42-year-old Wisconsin Republican into a role as the party's intellectual leader on Capitol Hill and led GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney to choose him as his running mate. But on Monday, when House Republicans sent the White House their counteroffer on how to avert year-end tax increases and spending cuts, the Ryan budget was shunted aside.

Amid all the chatter about whether Paul D. Ryan's proposed changes would, as Democrats say, "end Medicare as we know it," one group has been largely overlooked: disabled people. The vast majority of Medicare's roughly 48 million beneficiaries are seniors over the age of 65. But about 8 million are disabled people of all ages. The federal program was expanded in 1972 to include those with permanent disabilities. Many seniors are rightly concerned that Ryan, the conservative congressman tapped by Mitt Romney as his vice presidential running mate, has proposed a plan that could result in higher out-of-pocket expenses for Medicare coverage.

Kathy Hochul, the Democrat within reach of a stunner in the special U.S. House election here Tuesday, is not yet two minutes into her pitch at a candidates' forum when she brings up her opposition to Wisconsin Republican Rep. Paul Ryan's plan to overhaul Medicare. Hochul, the Erie County clerk, mentions Ryan again a minute later and then two minutes later. At nine minutes, a reporter asks about Medicare, and the 52-year-old attorney offers a broad smile. "I'm glad you asked that question," she said.

Americans who don't count themselves confused by the current debate over Medicare must be in the minority. Mitt Romney and Republican running mate Rep. Paul D. Ryan accused President Obama of hurting seniors by cutting $716 billion from the federal health program. The president retorts that the Republicans would "end Medicare as we know it. " The truth is that both sides have plans that dramatically change the nearly half-century-old program. Seniors and seniors-to-be, as well as the disabled, are understandably anxious.

Re "A budget to reshape the nation," Aug. 14 Does anyone remember why Medicare was created? In the "good old days" before Medicare, older people could not buy health insurance after they retired. Insurance companies would not sell to them, as most people have a preexisting condition by the time they reach 65. The elderly are bad for profits. A voucher system will not change this fact. Medicare is the most effective and efficient insurance we have. Let's not mess with success.

DUBUQUE, Iowa -- President Obama defended his Medicare reforms Wednesday as improvements that didn't affect benefits for seniors “by a dime.” Countering a new critique from Republican Mitt Romney, Obama told a crowd here that his reforms have strengthened Medicare by cutting costs and saving money in prescription drugs for seniors. “My plan has already extended Medicare by more than a decade,” Obama said. “Their plan would end Medicare as we know it.” Thus, with that noontime speech at a local amphitheater, Obama joined Romney in the current game of shorthanding and oversimplifying each other's positions on Medicare, in an intense race to define the terms of this most critical election issue.

Sensing a political opportunity, it appears Democratic operatives are going to keep pounding the Medicare drum as long as the beat keeps resonating. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the House campaign arm of the party, is hitting the districts of 25 Republican House members with robotic calls warning about the perils of Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget, approved by the House earlier this month. The committee has also released a video that highlights campaign pledges made by some new conservative members of the House such as Rep. Dan Benishek of Michigan and Rep. Joe Heck of Nevada to leave Medicare alone.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has a response to Mitt Romney's claim that he will “reach across the aisle” to work with Democrats in Congress, if he becomes president: Don't bet on it. “Mitt Romney's fantasy that Senate Democrats will work with him to pass his 'severely conservative' agenda is laughable,” the Nevada Democrat said in a statement Friday morning. He went on to list a series of Republican-backed measures he said Democrats would never support.

TAMPA, Fla. -- Call it the battle of budgets, brains and beer. Before Paul Ryan takes the stage at the Republican convention, and Americans are introduced to the architect of the GOP's austerity budget, his Democratic counterpart in the House offered another view Wednesday of Mitt Romney's vice presidential running mate. Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland is among his party's best budget minds -- its answer to the brainy, wonkish Ryan, and just as affable as he wades through the weeds on deficits, debts and Medicare acutarials.

Amid all the chatter about whether Paul D. Ryan's proposed changes would, as Democrats say, "end Medicare as we know it," one group has been largely overlooked: disabled people. The vast majority of Medicare's roughly 48 million beneficiaries are seniors over the age of 65. But about 8 million are disabled people of all ages. The federal program was expanded in 1972 to include those with permanent disabilities. Many seniors are rightly concerned that Ryan, the conservative congressman tapped by Mitt Romney as his vice presidential running mate, has proposed a plan that could result in higher out-of-pocket expenses for Medicare coverage.

THE VILLAGES, Fla. - In Florida, the jobs picture is worse than the national average. Foreclosures still weigh down home sales, and gasoline prices are back on the rise. But since Paul Ryan joined Mitt Romney's ticket, the campaign debate has turned abruptly away from President Obama's record on jobs and the economy and toward Ryan's proposals for overhauling Medicare, an issue that historically favors Democrats and is generating more than casual interest in senior-heavy Florida.

After watching the verbal contortions Mitt Romney has put himself through in the last week when speaking about Paul Ryan's budget plan, it has become impossible to take seriously anything he has to say.  The soon-to-be presidential nominee of the Republican Party has praised Ryan's plan as a commendable product of the “intellectual leader” of Congress. But, after naming Ryan as his running mate and being hit by a torrent of questions about the harsh particulars of Ryan's budget, Romney and his surrogates quickly put distance between his own budget plan and that of his new political partner.

Re "A budget to reshape the nation," Aug. 14 Does anyone remember why Medicare was created? In the "good old days" before Medicare, older people could not buy health insurance after they retired. Insurance companies would not sell to them, as most people have a preexisting condition by the time they reach 65. The elderly are bad for profits. A voucher system will not change this fact. Medicare is the most effective and efficient insurance we have. Let's not mess with success.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has a response to Mitt Romney's claim that he will “reach across the aisle” to work with Democrats in Congress, if he becomes president: Don't bet on it. “Mitt Romney's fantasy that Senate Democrats will work with him to pass his 'severely conservative' agenda is laughable,” the Nevada Democrat said in a statement Friday morning. He went on to list a series of Republican-backed measures he said Democrats would never support.

A testy White House meeting between President Obama and House Republican leaders Wednesday failed to lower the partisan pitch in the capital, much less make progress toward a deal on the federal debt ceiling. Instead, the two sides traded complaints, accusing each other of partisanship and posturing. Republicans demanded that the administration produce a budget-cutting plan, which the White House said it had already done. Rep. Paul D. Ryan, architect of a Medicare overhaul aimed at slashing the cost of the popular entitlement program by reducing the government's open-ended commitment to seniors, accused Obama of "mis-describing" his plan and implored the president to ease up on the "demagoguery.

Americans who don't count themselves confused by the current debate over Medicare must be in the minority. Mitt Romney and Republican running mate Rep. Paul D. Ryan accused President Obama of hurting seniors by cutting $716 billion from the federal health program. The president retorts that the Republicans would "end Medicare as we know it. " The truth is that both sides have plans that dramatically change the nearly half-century-old program. Seniors and seniors-to-be, as well as the disabled, are understandably anxious.

DUBUQUE, Iowa -- President Obama defended his Medicare reforms Wednesday as improvements that didn't affect benefits for seniors “by a dime.” Countering a new critique from Republican Mitt Romney, Obama told a crowd here that his reforms have strengthened Medicare by cutting costs and saving money in prescription drugs for seniors. “My plan has already extended Medicare by more than a decade,” Obama said. “Their plan would end Medicare as we know it.” Thus, with that noontime speech at a local amphitheater, Obama joined Romney in the current game of shorthanding and oversimplifying each other's positions on Medicare, in an intense race to define the terms of this most critical election issue.