Wyden blasts Romney for "talking nonsense" and "making things up"
Kari Chisholm
Last December, we learned that Senator Ron Wyden had been working with Congressman Paul Ryan to craft a Medicare reform plan.
Naturally, folks on both the left and the right freaked out. Liberals were worried that Wyden was giving bipartisan cover to Ryan, while conservatives cried foul, saying that Ryan sold them out. (Remember: the so-called Wyden/Ryan plan committed Ryan to protecting Medicare as a public option forever, just eight months after he promised to abolish it.)
And shortly thereafter, the Wyden/Ryan "plan" (which was really just a "conversation starter" policy paper, not fleshed-out legislation) was pretty well abandoned. Ryan went back to trying to pass a budget that put Medicare on a path to dissolution, and Wyden voted against that budget every chance he got.
Predictably, Mitt Romney is now citing the Wyden/Ryan collaboration as proof of Ryan's bipartisan cred.
Here's what Ron Wyden had to say about that:
Governor Romney is talking nonsense. Bipartisanship requires that you not make up the facts.
I did not "co-lead a piece of legislation." I wrote a policy paper on options for Medicare. Several months after the paper came out I spoke and voted against the Medicare provisions in the Ryan budget.
Governor Romney needs to learn you don't protect seniors by makings things up, and his comments sure won't help promote real bipartisanship.
There's lots of coverage, of course: Think Progress, Huffington Post, Slate, the Oregonian, and much more.
And if you want to rewind the tape and actually dig in to what the Wyden/Ryan concept was (rather than what critics feared it might be), check out Wyden's 2400-word column at Huffington Post from March.
 |
More Recent Posts | |
Albert Kaufman |
|
Guest Column |
|
Kari Chisholm |
|
Kari Chisholm |
Final pre-census estimate: Oregon's getting a sixth congressional seat |
Albert Kaufman |
Polluted by Money - How corporate cash corrupted one of the greenest states in America |
Guest Column |
|
Albert Kaufman |
Our Democrat Representatives in Action - What's on your wish list? |
Kari Chisholm |
|
Guest Column |
|
Kari Chisholm |
|
connect with blueoregon
1:10 a.m.
Aug 14, '12
Full disclosure: My firm built Ron Wyden's campaign website. I speak only for myself.
6:17 a.m.
Aug 14, '12
"And shortly thereafter, the Wyden/Ryan 'plan' (which was really just a 'conversation starter' policy paper, not fleshed-out legislation) was pretty well abandoned."
That's just not true, Kari. The major change from the original Ryan Plan to the Wyden/Ryan plan was the provision ensuring that the option to continue to be covered under traditional Medicare will be available to every senior.
That provision hasn't been "abandoned." In fact, it was included in the 2012 Republican budget. It continues to be touted by Ryan, Romney and every Republican who discusses Medicare Reform.
The Obama surrogates keep ignoring this because they'd rather keep running against the original Ryan plan. And its unfortunate that Wyden is taking heat for once again being willing to work across party lines.
On one thing we agree. People SHOULD read Wyden's piece in the Huffington Post that you linked. It explains very well that the Ryan/Wyden proposal is not the bugaboo that useless idiots like Paul Krugman make it out to be.
7:45 a.m.
Aug 14, '12
When Romney and Ryan talk about their proposal, they always - always - take pains to say that Medicare will remain available to "today's seniors".
That's a far cry from committing to Medicare forever.
1:19 p.m.
Aug 14, '12
Not touching Medicare for people 55 and older today was always part of Ryan's plan. The agreement to keep Medicare as an option permanently was the centerpiece of the Ryan/Wyden proposal. That was also included in the 2012 Ryan budget and remains part of the Ryan plan today.
This is in addition to the promise that any change will only apply to people under 55--which means 10 years away from eligibility for Medicre--today.
11:49 p.m.
Aug 14, '12
Jack, it's basically impossible for you to describe what the Romney plan is going forward.
That's not your fault. It's Romney's.
Just today, Team Romney flip-flopped four times - spinning a full 720 degrees - on just one part of the Romney/Ryan plan.
10:09 a.m.
Aug 16, '12
I'm certainly not going to stake my life on any politician's consistency, much less a politician and his team of surrogates, but just this morning I heard Romney on TV once again saying that even people under 55 today will have the option to stay on traditional Medicare or switch to an alternative system "sort of like Medicare Advantage today" that will effectively be a private system.
I don't know why you guys are so reluctant to give Wyden credit for improving the Republican Medicare Plan.
7:12 a.m.
Aug 17, '12
I'm glad you are calling it the Republican Medicare Plan, Jack, because now the entire GOP is branded with the truth that they are the party that kills Medicare as we know it, pushing a privatization/coupon/voucher plan that pushes medical costs on retirees in order to protect more tax breaks for billionaires. Since its inception the GOP has been looking for a way to kill the popular and effective single payer plan we know as Medicare. It is so good that most Americans would like to have it for themselves. But please tell me how you are going to convince middle ago and younger people to pay for the full coverage plan now in effect, while they will get a 50% coupon for junk major medical corporate insurance instead of a Medicare card. As this election proceeds the down ballot GOP candidates are going to be running for cover from the RomneyRyan voucherization plan.
5:42 p.m.
Aug 17, '12
"Since its inception the GOP has been looking for a way to kill the popular and effective single payer plan we know as Medicare."
That is false. All Republicans had to do was sit on their hands in the early 80's and both Medicare and Social Security would be bankrupt. And I don't mean a forecast bankruptcy in the next 10 years, I mean there was a time when they didn't know how they were going to fund the next month's checks.
The 1983 Social Security Amendments were a landmark bipartisan deal that saved both programs. We'd do well not to forget that.
12:10 a.m.
Aug 17, '12
Senator Wyden reached reached across the aisle and tried to do business with someone who wanted President Obama to fail. Instead, had Senator Wyden listened to the Democratic Party of Multnomah County which passed a resolution calling for a Single Payer Health Care System, he would not now be in his defensive position.
8:36 p.m.
Aug 19, '12
Thanks for the plug, Randal! It's also worthy to note that at the very next Central Committee Meeting of the Multnomah Dems, Barbara Smith-Warner of Wyden's office came to offer the Senator's perspective. She did share with us that Sen. Wyden, as he often does, was trying to reach across party lines and the white paper was nothing more than that.
Of course, our membership shared with her that we favored MUCH more progressive policies, and we also fretted about Wyden allowing Paul Ryan political cover. While I don't doubt Sen. Wyden's good intentions, he is more about trying to get things done than politics, and the GOP of 2010-212 is only about gaing political advantage.
Boy, we didn't EVEN imagine how much cover Wyden would be giving Paul Ryan less than a year later...
11:20 a.m.
Aug 14, '12
You calling Paul Krugman a useless idiot is like the pot calling the kettle black.
11:00 p.m.
Aug 14, '12
By "useless idiot," do you mean someone who regularly articulates the moral bankruptcy of today's greedy old white party? If that's the case, then I agree with you completely.
Seriously Jack, the modern Republican Party has become such an ugly, selfish, and destructive pile of steaming caca,....anyone willing to defend and support these people ought to be ashamed of themselves.
10:46 a.m.
Aug 15, '12
I don't always agree with Paul Krugman but calling him a "useless idiot" is childish. The guy has a Nobel Prize, he's the 17th most cited economist in the world, and a number of his academic textbooks are widely used in colleges/universities. I wouldn't be inviting any comparisons between your resume and his if I were in your shoes.
9:24 a.m.
Aug 16, '12
I'd say Krugman started this by calling our senior senator a "useful idiot."
The problem with Krugman is that he doesn't stick to his area of expertise. He uses his credentials to opine on a broad range of topics on which he has no special knowledge.
That's fine. But then he is just one more voice in the fray like everyone else. If he can call people names, we can call him names.
10:04 a.m.
Aug 16, '12
Why are you here?
9:34 a.m.
Aug 14, '12
Wyden is tone deaf when it comes to the political zeitgeist on the left and Medicare. Wyden committed political suicide with his well intentioned proposal. Talk about clueless.
10:36 a.m.
Aug 14, '12
Wyden did give Ryan cover, which is why it's necessary for you to act as his flack over this bad policy Kari, and for him to backpedal this way.
Wyden-Ryan would end "traditional Medicare." Real traditional Medicare was a universal risk pool for seniors. It already has been partly ended by the advent of Bush's Medicare Advantage plans, passed with the support of too many Democrats, but they are required to include a range of defined benefits across all variants.
Wyden-Ryan would change Medicare into a defined contribution plan from the government, in which the government's cash contribution would intentionally grow much slower than medical cost inflation, and intentionally shift the costs onto seniors and their families. It is designed to make me have to eat cat food in my old age (I fall two years on the wrong side of their cutoff, & take it personally).
The "option" to buy a plan that looks sort of like the required benefits under current Medicare in an Exchange is not "preserving traditional Medicare." Wyden and Ryan were lying when they said it was, and you are repeating the lie.
A plan that mimics those benefits, within an Exchange that reduces the administrative advantages of a unified system, raising the administrative costs of the pseudo-traditional plan with the others, will end up costing more in premiums than other plans that lower premiums in trade-off for deductibles, including high deductibles, extensive co-insurance and co-pays, and exclusion of some things currently covered from coverage.
Many elders would not be able to afford the pseudo-traditional plan even if they want it. Others would opt for a different plan based on health risk calculations and stronger financial circumstances for out of pocket costs, leading to adverse selection in the pool who remain in the pseudo-traditional plan and driving its costs up further.
The overall effect would be more seniors going into medical bankruptcy and more seniors being unable to pay hospital and provider bills that would be cost-shifted onto other insurance plans by the providers.
Overall system and social costs would go up, as would costs to individuals and families. Only the federal government would save money. And rationing of care by price and income would be reintroduced into the senior population.
It was a lousy plan, and Wyden should be ashamed of it.
7:48 a.m.
Aug 17, '12
Is Wyden's definition of being "independent" mean getting in bed with Ryan? Wyden claims to be an Obama supporter but his actions remind me of an old saying: "what you do speaks so loudly I cannot hear what you say".