That didn't take long. As the battle over health care reform reached a fever pitch in the fall of 2009, the Republican National Committee rolled out a "Seniors' Bill of Rights." But with the midterms safely won, the GOP has predictably turned its back on its pledge of "no cuts to Medicare to pay for […]

In a telling moment during the run-up to the midterm elections last fall, Congressman Paul Ryan declared of his proposed Roadmap for America's Future, "My plan is not the Republican Party's platform and was never intended to be." Not, it turned out, until after Election Day. Because while 235 House Republicans with Speaker John Boehner's […]

Today, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) confirmed the obvious about Paul Ryan's plan to end Medicare as we know it. The GOP plan to "voucherize" and inevitably ration Medicare would lead to future seniors paying more - much more - for health insurance. Of course, killing the wildly popular program which helped dramatically reduce poverty […]

Last November, the elderly and the rich powered Republicans to victory in the midterm elections. Voters aged 65 and older backed the GOP by a staggering 59% to 38%, while boosting their share of the turnout to 21% from 16% in 2008. Those with family incomes over $200,000 chose Republicans over Democrats by a 30 […]

On Sunday, House Budget Committee chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) previewed his party's 2012 budget proposal due out Tuesday. Needless to say, its target of $4 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade won't be met by simply letting the Bush tax cuts expire. Instead, Ryan as widely expected will propose the "voucherization" and inevitable […]

A year after President Obama signed the Affordable Care Act into law, comically dire Republican predictions of an "Armageddon" which will "ruin our country" and mean "a lot of people are going to die" have not come to pass. Of course, that didn't stop Mitt Romney from marking the anniversary by pretending he never supported […]

Just in the time for this week's one year anniversary of the passage of the Affordable Care Act, a new study by the Commonwealth Fund revealed that the new health care reform law's full implementation can't come soon enough. Since the start of the recession, almost 60% of Americans who lost a job and their […]

For Republicans, a funny thing happened on the way to privatizing Medicare. Hoping to transform the wildly popular, low-overhead government program for 46 million American seniors into a voucher system for purchasing private insurance, Paul Ryan and his GOP allies inadvertently made a strong case for the Affordable Care Act for everyone else. A little […]

Terrified by bogus Republican claims of draconian Democratic cuts to Medicare, elderly voters propelled the GOP to an overwhelming victory last November. Voters 65 and over, the only age group to support John McCain in 2008, boosted their share of the turnout to 21% from 16% two years earlier. Nationwide, Republicans won seniors by a […]

Republicans have seen the future and it's in Mississippi. On the same day Wisconsin Republicans turned to unprecedented and possibly illegal maneuvers to strip public workers of collective bargaining rights, the Michigan legislature blessed emergency powers for Governor Rick Snyder to terminate municipal contracts across the state. And while Idaho joined Tennessee in seeking to […]