Many spending hawks in Washington had hoped
that Mitt Romney’s selection of leading deficit warrior Paul Ryan as his
running mate would open a more candid and sober debate about cutting federal
spending.
But the tone of the campaign rhetoric on
Medicare — with each party accusing the other of working to destroy the program
— has raised concern among longtime deficit-reduction advocates that neither
party is preparing the public for what they see as the demographic imperative
of curbing Medicare spending.
On Wednesday, Romney accused President
Obama of siphoning Medicare dollars to fund his 2010 health-care law, and he
promised to restore that money if elected.
Obama countered that he has strengthened
the Medicare program and that his Republican challenger would end it.
The back-and-forth worried Robert Bixby,
executive director of the Concord Coalition, a nonpartisan group that seeks an
end to deficit spending. He said both candidates are undermining efforts to
convince the public of the long-term need for Medicare reductions.
“I don’t think it’s off to a very good start, if what we’re looking
for is a good, substantive debate on deficit reduction,” he said of the Ryan
phase of the campaign. “There are good, legitimate debates we could have about
the best way to control Medicare spending. But it quickly descends into charges
of robbery and murder.”
Budget experts expect Medicare spending to
balloon in the coming decades, as 10,000 baby boomers will turn 65 and become
eligible for benefits each day for the next 20 years. The program’s rapid
growth is a leading driver behind the growth of the federal deficit.
A complex debate has been underway about
how to provide seniors the care they need at a cost the government can afford.
But several deficit experts said they worry
that the escalating campaign rhetoric about which side is seeking Medicare cuts
will damage both parties’ ability to come up with a compromise to reduce costs.
“Everyone knows that Medicare in its current state is unsustainable.
There’s not a serious person out there who argues otherwise,” said Steve Bell,
economic policy director at the Bipartisan Policy Center. “And we are now
starting to have an emotional, distorted, propagandistic debate about it.”
Cost-cutting measures
The Democrats’ health-care law aims to curb
Medicare spending by reducing payments to hospitals and other providers — not
beneficiaries — in part as a trade for reducing hospitals’ costs by cutting
millions from the ranks of the uninsured.
In the spending plan he authored as
chairman of the House Budget Committee, Ryan proposed to end the health-care
law. But he assumed the same cost reductions in Medicare spending as a way to
reduce the deficit.
On Wednesday, Romney promised that if
elected, he would restore the money to the program as a way to bolster it for
current retirees.
“My commitment is, if I become president, I’m going to restore that
$716 billion to the Medicare trust fund so that current seniors can know that
trust fund is not being raided,” Romney said on CBS News’s “This Morning.”
“And we’re going to make sure and get Medicare on track to be solvent
long-term, on a permanent basis.”
Those comments came after Republican
National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the
Press” that if anyone has “blood on their hands” in the Medicare debate, it is
Obama. “He’s the one that’s destroying Medicare,” he said.
Bixby said Ryan’s budget position is
“defensible,” plowing cuts from Medicare into deficit reduction.
But speaking on conservative radio host
Sean Hannity’s show on Wednesday, the Wisconsin congressman joined the chorus
in pledging to fight the cuts.
“We’re going to have this debate, and we’re going to win this
debate,” Ryan said. “It’s the president who took $716 billion . . . from the
Medicare program to spend on Obamacare. That’s cuts to current seniors that
will lead to less services for current seniors. We don’t do that. We actually
say end the raid and restore that, so that those seniors get the benefits today
that they organize their lives around.”
Bixby said Romney has muddied efforts to
curb red ink with his promise to restore the money. “I’m trying to figure out
how you reduce Medicare spending without reducing Medicare spending,” he said.
Many Republicans think cutting payments to
providers will succeed only in making it unaffordable for doctors to treat
Medicare patients, resulting in fewer medical outlets willing to accept the
federal health insurance.
In a statement, Romney campaign spokesman
Andrea Saul said that “twisting the screws on providers won’t hold down costs,
it just jeopardizes seniors’ access to care and threatens their benefits.”
Instead of relying on “on administrative
price controls,” she said, Romney will “introduce choice and competition in the
system.”
Attack, counterattack
Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a former director of
the Congressional Budget Office and adviser to 2008 Republican presidential
nominee John McCain, said Romney and Ryan must make a compelling case for the
need to reduce Medicare spending for future seniors. But first, he said, they
must neutralize the Democratic attacks on Ryan’s plan as one that will throw
seniors off Medicare rolls.
Obama pressed that assault Wednesday in a
speech in Dubuque, Iowa. His own reforms, he said, will strengthen Medicare by
reducing “wasteful spending”; benefits for seniors are not cut “by a dime.”
However, he said, a proposal in Ryan’s budget plan — which would offer future
retirees a capped payment to purchase private insurance — “ends Medicare as we
know it.”
The Bipartisan Policy Center’s Bell, a
former staff director for the Senate Budget Committee under Sen. Pete V.
Domenici (R-N.M.), said he fears that Obama will win by demonizing efforts to
curb Medicare growth, making it harder to find common ground on the issue in a
second term.
“My sense is that this is going to be a referendum, all right. But
for people like me, who are really concerned about debt trends, the outcome
will be a step backwards,” he said.
Adam Fletcher, a spokesman for the Obama
campaign, said that the health-care law added eight years to the solvency of
Medicare and that further cuts proposed by Obama in this year’s budget would
add two more.
“The president has done a lot more than just talk about making
Medicare more sustainable,” he said.
Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.), who has been
warning of the dangers of a rising tide of debt for years, said the modern
political process makes it nearly impossible for politicians to have a rational
policy debate in the heated final weeks of a national campaign.
“We’re trying to solve some of the most complex policy dilemmas in
history with an increasingly ADD nation,” he said. “It’s an in¬cred¬ibly tough
challenge.”
But he said both parties should strive for
a do-no-harm approach, in which they don’t allow their rhetoric to be so strident
that they cannot make tough choices after the election.
Cooper said the current campaign is “not
just worrying” him on the do-no-harm measure.
“It’s terrifying me,” he said.
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