On the campaign trail, Mitt Romney has declared that it was wrong for Obama to cut Medicare, and promised never to cut the program himself. Now Rep. Paul Ryan, the chief GOP proponent of Medicare reform in Congress and Romney’s running mate, has thoroughly bought into this argument. Ryan’s GOP convention speech tonight went all in on the defense of Medicare. “Medicare is a promise, and we will honor it,” he said. And the reason to repeal ObamaCare is because of the way it upends the existing entitlement structure. “The greatest threat to Medicare,” according to Rep. Ryan,” is ObamaCare, and we’re going to stop it.”
This was a popular argument amongst a lot of Republicans while ObamaCare was being debated and in the months leading up to the 2010 mid-term election. But Rep. Ryan did not embrace it like some of his colleagues. I’d like to think that’s because he saw it as self-defeating: A fiscally burdensome program that needs reform does not also need to be protected from cuts. Indeed, Ryan included essentially the same cuts in his own budget plan.
But now Ryan is leading the attack on those cuts from his perch as the party’s VP nominee.
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