Offense Defense
by digby
GOP credo: when in doubt, go on offense:
Republicans have already launched an ad against Rep. Jerry McNerney (D-Ca.), a Democrat representing a Northern California swing district, Politico reports. In the television ad, Republicans claim that “McNerney and President Obama’s Medicare plan empowers bureaucrats to interfere with doctors, risking seniors’ access to treatment. Now, Obama’s budget plan lets Medicare go bankrupt: That’d mean big cuts to benefits. Tell McNerney to stop bankrupting Medicare.”
The first sentence of the ad refers to a new Medicare payment advisory panel created by Obama’s Affordable Care Act. The ACA empowers an independent, Senate-approved group of experts to reduce Medicare costs—so long as their actions don’t ration care, increase premiums, or decrease coverage. In terms of keeping wasteful spending and costs down, it’s one of the most important pieces of the federal reform—and one of the most widely misunderstood, reviled by the GOP as the new “death panel.” House Democrats were wary of supporting the panel to begin with, and concerned about its ability to bypass legislators. (Congress can still vote to override the panel’s decisions, but the panel doesn’t need advance approval to act.)
Democratic credo: when in doubt, go on defense
Now a small but growing number of Dems have signed on to a GOP effort to scrap the panel, known as the Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB). So in response to the message that Republicans would end up placing seniors at the mercy of rapacious, private-hungry private insurers, the GOP will contend that faceless, unelected bureaucrats will be trimming Medicare instead. Democrats, of course, could argue that they’re just trying to set fairer ground rules for the health-care market, which has victimized consumers through sky-high costs and unjust practices. But some Dems’ willingness to sign on to the bill that would repeal IPAB shows that they may not be entirely confident in that argument.
The Democrats once had decades and decades of credibility to rely upon when it came to protecting the safety net and seniors in particular. The Republicans would launch an attack from time to time and every time the Dems would roll it back. The GOP trying something like this would be the equivalent of the Dems accusing the Republicans on not caring enough about religion or being pacifists who are unwilling to fight America’s enemies. It just doesn’t scan and people know it.
However, the Democrats seem intent upon changing all that — or at least helping the Republicans muddy the waters enough to confuse people about which side they are on. It couldn’t be dumber.
This should be a slam dunk for the Democrats but only if they take an exceedingly hard line and don’t waver. If they start capitulating and wavering, they’ll lose the most valuable political advantage they’ve built up over 60 years. Dems should just say “we created social security and Medicare, we protected it when the Republicans tried to end them over and over again, and you can trust us to keep them strong now.” Seniors are old enough to remember that history.
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