"We have a plan. It's called Medicare"
by digby
With Republicans going far beyond line drawing to a full blown assault, a big Democrat finally digs in. Greg Sargent:
“It is a flag we’ve planted that we will protect and defend. We have a plan. It’s called Medicare.”
That’s from Nancy Pelosi, who called me from Wisconsin, where she’s holding events today defending Medicare in Paul Ryan’s back yard. On the call, Pelosi laid out a message on Medicare she hopes Dems will use for — well, forever...
Pelosi insisted that when all the smoke clears, the Democratic Party will still be standing by Medicare in a way liberals can accept. “The fight of this Congress and beyond will be to preserve Medicare and not have it abolished,” she said. “The three most important issues we should be talking about are Medicare, Medicare, and Medicare.”
Finally -- the Democrats have awakened to the fact that Paul Ryan's plan is the best thing that ever happened to them, a major overreach of the kind that perfectly characterizes the Republicans' greatest weakness: hubris.
Pelosi explained that when she had recently said that everything was on the table, she really meant "no benefits cuts." Ok... But she did seem to feel that the Biden talks around the debt ceiling were going well, or at least weren't leading to the one-sided agreement one has come to expect:
She said all indications from these talks are that in the end, the President won’t agree to anything in the way of serious Medicare benefits cuts. And unlike in the case of negotiations over spending cuts earlier this year — when House Dems were cut out of the talks — she insisted they have a seat “at the table” this time around.
“The reports I get are positive,” Pelosi said of those talks. “I don’t think you’ll see a repetition of what happened before.”
Let's hope not.
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