(This post was update at 6:35 p.m.)
Yes, we’re back here again already, with at least one Republican claiming this week that Democratic health reform will kill seniors. Sigh.
The target of the GOP attack is the Independent Payment Advisory Board, a controversial group to be appointed by the president and charged with slowing the …
On the campaign trial – especially the presidential campaign trail – nuance rarely breaks through the fog of generalization. Mitt Romney is the frontrunner and a flip-flopper on the issues. Michele Bachmann is the Tea Party …
Maybe Joe Lieberman was feeling left out of the current debt ceiling and budget fight. That might explain why the independent Ssenator from Connecticut has chosen this moment to offer a new plan to reform Medicare. Lieberman laid out his proposal in a recent Washington Post op-ed. The headline, “How Medicare Can Be Saved,” is a stretch …
It’s a little hard to take seriously the Republicans trying to shame Obama and other Democrats out of vilifying Paul Ryan’s plan to overhaul Medicare. GOP lawmakers and candidates for office – although not Ryan primarily …
Hoping to take the sting out of his proposal to radically change Medicare, Paul Ryan released a video Wednesday morning explaining his plan with the help of some visual aids. Ryan is in desperate need of new messaging after a Democrat prevailed in special election to represent New York’s 26th district. The election was largely a …
The blizzard of attack ads, the waves of outside money and the phalanx of national operatives and press descending on New York’s 26th district all attest to the fact that Tuesday’s special election has taken on special meaning. …
Ever since GOP House budget committee chairman Paul Ryan unveiled a plan to, among other things, voucherize Medicare, Democrats have been practically gloating about the opening Ryan created. One by one the 2012 GOP presidential candidates are being asked whether they endorse Ryan’s plan, praised as courageous by many conservatives, in …
Paul Ryan often says that he hopes to invert the notion that Social Security is the third rail of American politics. In Ryan’s ideal world, not tackling entitlement reform and deficit reduction would become the new third rail. I doubt the country has swung that way yet, but it seems that attacking Paul Ryan’s entitlement plan has become …
A once-sleepy special election in Western New York has emerged as a bellwether of how two potent political variables could upend the 2012 campaign calculus.
New York’s 26th district is a conservative redoubt, a sprawling …
Ahh, the children and grandchildren. Politicians love to describe how big-bad Washington is robbing them blind. “Washington is shifting the burden of bad choices today onto the backs of our children and grandchildren,” then Sen. Barack Obama declared in 2006, when he voted against raising the debt ceiling. “Passing on ever-increasing …
Progressives are sounding the alarm ahead of President Obama’s upcoming speech on deficit reduction and entitlement reform. No one knows exactly what argument Obama will make in response to Paul Ryan’s 2012 budget proposal unveiled last week, but Jonathan Cohn foresees an opening negotiating stance too close to the center for his …
Some time in the next few weeks, Paul Ryan, chairman of the House budget committee, is expected to unveil a plan to significantly cut the federal budget for the fiscal year 2012. It will be the centerpiece of a political fight that could eclipse most everything else in Washington.
A linchpin of Ryan’s plan will be a proposal to make …
The New York Times reports today that some members of Congress have offered an early seal of approval to a health care administrator who could succeed Medicare/Medicaid chief Don Berwick. According to the Times, Berwick’s deputy Marliyn Tavenner has emerged as a leading candidate to fill the post before or once Berwick recess appointment …
