John Boehner (R-OH) Performs Miracle - Talks Out of His Face and Ass
After slamming the Obama administration for "secret deliberations" and going back on his campaign promise to televise the health care debate, House Minority Leader John Boehner (R-OH) criticized the President yesterday for televising the bipartisan health care summit on Feb. 25, asking "is this a political event or is this going to be a real conversation?"John Boehner (R-OH) is just your typical conservative - no principles, no values, no vision, no plan. If he hates government so much why is he collecting a nice salary and subsidized health care courtesy tax payers.
Boehner had been a rather vocal supporter of C-SPAN's request to televise the earlier negotiations, writing to the network in January that "House Republicans strongly endorse your proposal and stand ready to work with you to make it a reality."
Well now, it seems, the idea of televising the health care summit has Boehner a bit squeamish.
Last night, Fox News' Greta Van Susteren asked him what he thinks about the fact that it's going to be televised, and added that "the American people are probably delighted that we're getting this televised."
Boehner responded: "I think that's fine, but you know, is this a political event or is this going to be a real conversation?"
Van Susteren didn't let that slide: "Well, except that we've been hammering them about the transparency. The president said, you know, he was going to put everything on C-SPAN, so we can't criticize him now for when he finally does put it on C-SPAN."
Having It Both Ways on Medicare
One of the truly amazing things about the health care debate is the way Republicans have managed to pose as defenders of Medicare. The death panel thing has been absolutely central to their argument. For example, when I was debating Roger Ailes on This Week, his response to my Massachusetts comparison — that the Senate bill was basically the same as Romneycare — was to start blustering that Mitt Romney didn’t slash Medicare benefits.They were asleep at the wheel on 9-11, cut taxes mostly for the wealthy and ran up historic deficits while destroying the economy and lied to us about WMD and "urgent threats" - so its no big deal to conscienceless conservatives to lie about their plans to destroy Medicare.
It’s all hypocrisy, of course. Remember what the 1995 government shutdown was about: it was Newt Gingrich trying to force Bill Clinton to accept, yes, deep cuts in Medicare. And it’s not just history: Republican plans to balance the budget rely crucially on … deep cuts in Medicare.
Consider the “Roadmap for America’s future” released by Paul Ryan, the ranking Republican on the House budget committee. In the long run, this would convert Medicare to a voucher system and impose sharp cuts in Medicare spending as a percentage of GDP. And even in the next decade, it would involve substantially less Medicare spending than under the Obama administration’s budget. Here’s the head-to-head comparison:
You almost have to admire the audacity: Republicans are denouncing Obama for proposing Medicare cuts, while themselves proposing much deeper Medicare cuts. And they’re getting away with it.
