In the wake of Monday's Tea Party Republican presidential debate, all eyes have been on Social Security. But while politicians and pundits parsed the candidates' assertions that America's retirement program for the elderly is a "Ponzi scheme" (Rick Perry), akin to a criminal enterprise (Mitt Romney) and a "tremendous fraud" (Michele Bachmann), the real story of the GOP strategy for 2012 remains largely untold. As their policies and pronouncements on Medicare and Social Security make clear, in 2012 Republicans will pit today's beneficiaries - the same voting block that propelled the GOP to its House majority - against everyone else.
House Majority Leader Eric Cantor gave the game away in August when he announced Americans must "get the fiscal house in order" and "come to grips with the fact that promises have been made that frankly are not going to be kept for many."
But the" many" won't include Americans over or nearing 65 years of age. After all, they were the only age group to support John McCain in 2008. For the 2010 midterms that swept Republicans to victory nationwide, seniors boosted their share of the turnout to 21 percent from 16 percent two years earlier and backed the GOP by a staggering 21 point margin.

Which is why after terrifying today's elderly about supposed Democratic cuts to Medicare, Republicans are making sure the gray haired know which side the GOP supports in America's 21st century generation gap.
That is abundantly clear in the discussions about Social Security. While the retirement security system is nowhere near "out of money" and proposals like Bernie Sanders' would fund the program for another 75 years, Rick Perry baselessly claimed that:

"It is a Ponzi scheme to tell our kids that are 25 or 30 years old today, you're paying into a program that's going to be there. Anybody that's for the status quo with Social Security today is involved with a monstrous lie to our kids, and it's not right."

And while the Texas Governor has yet to detail his plan to address that "monstrous lie," Perry's top campaign advisor Dave Carney laid out its contours:

"We will have a real longer discussion about this," Carney began, before outlining the first phase, "protecting those that are on Social Security, and those who are about to be in Social Security."
"And then there's younger people ... who are paying into the system, but there needs to be some reforms there," Carney continued. "And then [for] younger people who are just getting into the system, you need to have a whole series of options."
"The system is broken, and you have to fix it," Carney said.

If that formula sounds familiar, it should. After all, it was the same premise behind George W. Bush's wildly unpopular Social Security privatization scheme. Despite that plan's overwhelming rejection by the American public in 2005 and grave risks exposed by financial collapse in 2008, Republicans like Mitt Romney are once again singing the praises of private retirement accounts.
But that recipe - protect the benefits for Americans over age 55 while leaving the rest to fend for themselves in the private market - is also at the heart of the Medicare rationing scheme supported by 98% of Congressional Republicans.

When Congressman Paul Ryan first unveiled his Roadmap for America's Future in early 2010, privatization of Social Security and Medicare for Americans was a central feature. But while the Social Security component was dropped in the 2011 Ryan budget which garnered the votes of 235 House Republicans and 40 GOP Senators, converting the guaranteed Medicare insurance program for 46 million American seniors into a voucher system for those under 55 was a centerpiece. (Keeping the same $500 billion in cuts to the Medicare Advantage program contained in the Affordable Care Act is another.) And that, as Ezra Klein of the Washington Post explained, would mean the inevitability of rationing:

The proposal would shift risk from the federal government to seniors themselves. The money seniors would get to buy their own policies would grow more slowly than their health-care costs, and more slowly than their expected Medicare benefits, which means that they'd need to either cut back on how comprehensive their insurance is or how much health-care they purchase. Exacerbating the situation -- and this is important -- Medicare currently pays providers less and works more efficiently than private insurers, so seniors trying to purchase a plan equivalent to Medicare would pay more for it on the private market.
It's hard, given the constraints of our current debate, to call something "rationing" without being accused of slurring it. But this is rationing, and that's not a slur. This is the government capping its payments and moderating their growth in such a way that many seniors will not get the care they need.

But you don't have to take Ezra Klein's word for it. Just ask the Congressional Budget Office.
"Draconian" doesn't begin to explain the impact of the Ryan plan on future Medicare recipients. By leaving beneficiaries at the whim of private insurers whose policies cost more and are padded by substantially higher overhead, and by capping the value of their vouchers, Ryan's budget proposal would produce dire consequences. As the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) concluded in April, "A typical beneficiary would spend more for health care under the proposal." Make that, as Director Douglas Elmendorf explained, a lot more.

Under the [Ryan] proposal, most elderly people who would be entitled to premium support payments would pay more for their health care than they would pay under the current Medicare system. For a typical 65-year-old with average health spending enrolled in a plan with benefits similar to those currently provided by Medicare, CBO estimated the beneficiary's spending on premiums and out-of-pocket expenditures as a share of a benchmark amount: what total health care spending would be if a private insurer covered the beneficiary. By 2030, the beneficiary's share would be 68 percent of that benchmark under the proposal, 25 percent under the extended-baseline scenario, and 30 percent under the alternative fiscal scenario.

It's no wonder President Obama responded by promising, "I will not allow Medicare to become a voucher program that leaves seniors at the mercy of the insurance industry, with a shrinking benefit to pay for rising costs."
Which is Paul Ryan and his GOP allies can't describe it that way. While Ryan himself pledged in April, "We're promising no changes for people 55 and above," Michele Bachmann proclaimed that "the Ryan budget can be called the 55 and under plan because the goal is to secure and save Medicare." And while Paul Ryan complained that President Obama and Congressional Democrats "shamelessly distort and demagogue Medicare," Right-wing wordsmiths like former Reagan speechwriter Peggy Noonan are pushing a new gambit to rescue the party from the blowbacks. Republicans aren't trying to kill Medicare, but save it:

Democrats, on the other hand, should be forced to answer a question. If you oppose the highly specific Ryan plan, fine, but tell us your specific proposal. How will you save Medicare? Will you let it die?

While Republicans want to destroy the program in order to save it, Democrats have their own bumper sticker plan for providing health insurance for the elderly today and tomorrow. As Nancy Pelosi put it, "it's called Medicare."
(The generational implications of the Ryan budget's plan to slash Medicaid by $1 trillion over the next decade and add as many as 44 million more people to the ranks of the uninsured are more complicated. While Medicaid provides benefits to poor children and pregnant women, it also helps pay for the care of 70 percent of nursing home patients.)

As the chart above shows, the twin pillars of our retirement and health care security have been crucial in dramatically lowering poverty among the elderly. Ultimately, Social Security and Medicare are the promises that Americans make to themselves and each other. In 2012, Republicans will campaign on breaking that promise. If they succeed, the debt that Republicans from John McCain to Rick Perry branded "generational theft" will be paid.
Just not by their generation.