medicare

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee is up with a new ad in New Hampshire’s 2nd District for Dem Carol Shea-Porter that provides a good example of how progressives should message around Medicare and the safety net in general.

Former Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell (D) has a reputation of being a champion for the middle class. But since he left his position as governor, he’s decided to sell himself out to various shady causes that are willing to pay big for his advocacy. For example, he became a paid speaker for the MEK, an Iranian cult group that waged a sophisticated campaign to get de-listed from the U.S. Terrorism group list, despite its past violence against Americans and others.

His latest sellout involves Social Security and Medicare. He has joined the “Fix The Debt” campaign, a $30 million effort designed to implement the Simpson Bowles plan to cut Social Security and Medicare benefits while lowering corporate taxes.

Here’s what he said on NPR today about how he wants to cut Social Security and Medicare:

RENDELL: But what the president should’ve said I think and what I hope he says before the campaigns over is look the mostAi??importantAi??thing we’ve gotta do is fix the debt…and I intend to do that. Look at entitlement programs, because look, when Social Security and Medicare were passed, people were living average life expectancy of 67, 68, now it’s 79 and a half years, and they weren’t meant to cover that much time, so we’ve got to restructure.

First of all, Social Security is completely unrelated to the debt. The program funds itself and is fully funded going out to 2037. After that, if we simply raise the payroll tax cap, it will be funded far out into the future. By conflating Social Security with the debt issue, Rendell is being simply dishonest.

Second of all, the numbers he’s citing about life expectancy are misleading. It’s true that there have been strong gains in life expectancy for some …

What we really need.

Florida’s a crucial swing state that presidential candidates go out of their way to woo. So expect political shockwaves from Ai??new studyAi??by the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation that shows that Florida’s seniors would be devastated by Paul Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare.

The study finds that Florida’s seniors would actually be hit the worst out of seniors in any state by the increase in costs associated with Ryan’s plan. Kaiser estimates that 77 percent of seniors would have to pay $200 or more per month in order to afford health care if Ryan’s Medicare voucher scheme were to be enacted. The study also estimates that 89 percent of Floridans would be subject to at least $50 more in premiums each month.

Help us hold Paul Ryan accountable. Click here to chip in a few dollars for his Democratic opponent Rob Zerban.

Ryan is flat out lying about Social Security and Medicare. (Photo credit: Flickr user monkeyz_uncle)

Last night, during the vice presidential debate with Joe Biden, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan lied to the American people. He said, “Medicare and Social Security are going bankrupt. These are indisputable facts.”

Watch it:

This statement was a bald-faced lie. Neither program is going bankrupt any time soon. Here’s our quick explainer why:

Social Security: It’s currently projected to beAi??fully solventAi??until the year 2037. After that, it is expected to be able to pay out 75 percent of benefits until 2084, which basically equals full benefits, once inflation isAi??accounted for. There is no threat of the program running out of money any time soon.Ai??Ai??We could make it solvent far into the future if we simply raised the payroll tax cap — meaning that income above $106,000 would be taxed just like income below that amount is. Lifting the cap would require the wealthy to pay a tiny bit more so that the program would be safe and secure. Even a majority of self-identified Tea Partiers find this to be a good idea versus cutting Social Security by raising the retirement age.
Medicare: According to the Medicare Trustees’ annual report that was released in April 2012, “the Hospital Insurance (Part A) Trust Fund has sufficient reserves to pay out the full amount of Medicare Part A benefits until 2024 ai??i?? the same projection made in last year’s report.Ai?? Should nothing else change, and the Trust Fund reserves be depleted in 2024, the Trust Fund would still receive sufficient income from the payroll taxes and other revenue through which it is funded to pay 87% of anticipated Part A expenses.” And all of …

In response to Tommy Thompson’s promise to end Medicare and Medicaid as we know them, the Progressive Change Campaign Committee (PCCC) has gotten involved in the U.S. Senate race backing Democratic candidate Tammy Baldwin. The PCCC, which has nearly 27,500 members in Wisconsin, was very active in the 2011 recall elections here in Wisconsin as one of the leading groups running TV ads and mobilizing voters in the state.

Paul Ryan isn’t a budget hawk, he’s just saving spending on Corporate America and cutting programs for the rest of us. (Photo credit: Flickr user monkeyz_uncle)

Among Beltway media, Republican vice presidential nominee Paul Ryan’s budget plan — which privatizes Medicare, slashes Medicaid, and guts the safety net — was viewed as “courageous.” Ryan himself has been praised as being “well-known for his fiscal conservatism” and as a “budget hawk.”

But all of this presupposes that Paul Ryan and the national Republican Party he has come to represent is most concerned with reining in the budget deficit. A closer look at Ryan’s budget proposal finds that while attacking Medicare and other social insurance programs, it actually preserves spending and other deficit-busting measures for some of Ryan and the GOP’s biggest corporate donors. Here’s are some examples:

– Big Insurers: Privatizing Medicare means handing it over to the insurance industry, which would create a windfall of billions of dollars previously used to finance an American-owned public program to instead line the pockets of executives at companies like Aetna and UnitedHealth Group. The insurance industry is Ryan’s second-largest career donor, having given him $815,328, slightly edging out the banking industry. Positioning themselves against health reform, health insurers like Blue Cross/Blue Shield haveAi??funneled aAi??larger portion of their dollars to Republicans over the past two cycles.

– The Drug Industry:Ai??One very easy way to quickly cut the deficit without spending a dime would actually be to cut government — that is, a massive government embargo on cheap Canadian drugs. The U.S. government, at the behest of American pharmaceutical companies, currently bars Americans from freely purchasing re-imported Canadian drugs. These drugs range from 20-80 percent cheaper. Re-importing drugs would save …

Ayn Rand devotee Paul Ryan is often praised as being a mainstream and serious leader.

But the centerpiece of Ryan’s ideology — his budget plan that hands over seniors’ health care to insurance companies that we’ve dubbed “Medicare for None” — is anything but moderate.

A July 2011 CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll found that just 35 percent of American adults supported Ryan’s plan (even 54 percent of self-described conservative voters disapproved).

Let’s put that into perspective by looking at some progressive policies that have much more support. Take, for example, marijuana legalization. Although the issue is often portrayed as fringe in the mainstream media, an October 2011 poll found that half of Americans support legalizing the use of marijuana. You’d have to go back to 2003 to find the cause to be as unpopular as Ryan’s budget plan is today.

Here are a few other progressive policies that are much more popular than Ryan’s proposal:

Ai??Medicare for All:Ai??Ryan wants to end Medicare as we know it by eliminating itsAi??guaranteedAi??benefit and handing it over to the insurance companies. But Americans actually really like this single-payer health care system for theAi??elderly and want to expand it to everyone. In 2007, the Associated Press and Yahoo asked Americans if we should “adopt a universal health insurance program in which everyone is covered under a program like Medicare that is run by the government and financed by taxpayers.” 65 percent of Americans agreed that we should. Majorities of Americans have continued to support the idea since then.
Marriage Equality:Ai??Romney and Ryan oppose marriage equality, but Americans back it. A June 2012 CNN/Opinion Research Corporation poll found that 54 percent of Americans want the government to recognize gay and lesbian marriages as valid.
Public …

Adam Green, the co-founder of the liberal group Progressive Change Campaign Committee, released a statement Saturday, saying: “Paul Ryan is a right-wing extremist who wants to end Medicare. This is a major unforced error by Mitt Romney. National exposure of Paul Ryan’s extreme plan to end Medicare will make him more vulnerable back home in Wisconsin.” The group says it will begin running online ads nationally, including targeting millions of people in swing states such as Florida and Wisconsin.

In addition to the Medicare debate, liberal groups lashed out against Ryan as hostile to women for voting to end funding of Planned Parenthood and veterans for backing cuts to the Department of Veterans of Affairs. Adam Green, co-founder of the liberal Progressive Change Campaign Committee, called the pick a “major unforced error.” “It gives President Obama and Democrats a chance to draw a clear contrast in 2012 by promising not to cut one penny from Medicare or Social Security benefits,” Green said. “If Democrats win in a landslide, this was the game-changer.”

The Progressive Change Campaign Committee shows what that process looks like in a new video posted Wednesday. The clip shows progressive candidates nationwide attacking the Ryan Budget and using it to build support with seniors.

Progressive groups are speaking out against the debt ceiling deal currently being hashed out in Washington. The response from two of the nation’s largest organizations goes essentially like this: Really?!?

The liberal advocacy group Progressive Change Campaign Committee delivered 200,000 pledges to President Obama’s campaign headquarters Friday, demanding he hold their line in debt ceiling negotiations or lose their support.

About a dozen people representing the Progressive Change Campaign Committee delivered what they said were 200,000 pledges from people who will refuse to donate or volunteer for Obama’s re-election campaign if he cuts the entitlement programs.

“It’s not a question of who they’re going to support for president, they’re going to vote for Barack Obama. It’s a question of where their time and money is going to go,” spokesman T. Neil Sroka said.

With entitlement programs potentially on the chopping block during the current debt ceiling negotiations, a prominent liberal group is threatening to pull its support for President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign if Medicaid, Medicare or Social Security benefits are cut.

In Chicago, members of the Progressive Change Campaign Committee delivered 200,000 petitions to Obama’s Prudential Building headquarters, threatening to cut off donations and volunteer hours if Obama puts Medicare and Social Security on the table. Ann Marie Habershaw, the COO of the Obama Campaign, met the small group in the Prudential Building lobby to receive the petitions.

A group of liberal Democrats who fundraised and volunteered for Barack Obama in 2008 plans to protest Friday outside his reelection campaign headquarters in Chicago. Organizers with the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, a liberal PAC, say they will attempt to deliver 200,000 signatures on a pledge to withhold support from the president if he consents to cuts to federal entitlement programs.

Voters last week sent Washington a strong message about fixing the federal budget, according to exclusive numbers from a new poll obtained by TPM: Raise taxes on the wealthy and cut the military budget before you touch the nation’s largest entitlement program, Social Security.