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DNC: John McCain's Hypocrisy Highlights Republican Hollowness
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Suddenly, it's 2008 all over again. The DNC has a longer memory than Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) would like.
"John McCain's hypocrisy highlights the hollowness of Republicans labeling savings in Medicare from eliminating waste, fraud and abuse under the reform bills as 'cuts.' By the same definition, McCain wanted to 'cut' Medicare nearly three times as much from Medicare," reads a statement from DNC spokesman Hari Sevugan. "While Democrats are proposing reforms which will strengthen Medicare for the long haul by eliminating wasteful subsidies to the health insurance industry and eliminating over payments to providers and other waste in the system, Senate Republicans continue to lob erroneous and - in this case - hypocritical attacks on legislation that will improve the quality of life for millions of Americans."
As I noted earlier today, Democrats are jumping all over McCain, whose proposed amendment to the Senate health care bill would strip it of its cuts to Medicare. During the campaign, and in the years before that, though, McCain sought much deeper 'cuts.' According to the Wall Street Journal, McCain intended to pay for his campaign health plan "with major reductions to Medicare and Medicaid...in a move that independent analysts estimate could result in cuts of $1.3 trillion over 10 years to the government programs."
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Walter Mitty
December 1, 2009 12:27 PM
And the Republicans will fire back saying that President Obama's campaign slammed McCain for those thoughts at the time. Of course Obama isn't arguing for any specifics in the bill, this is currently the Senate bill and Obama isn't in the Senate anymore.
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fbacon2
December 1, 2009 4:24 PM in reply to Walter Mitty
McCain's reductions to Medicare and Medicaid went much further, according to the story above, and McCain's plan offered a fig leaf of tax credits for health care while leaving individuals as prey to the open market. Obama was right to criticize McCain's plan then, and the DNC is right to pounce on McCain now.
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conniptionfit
December 1, 2009 12:50 PM
Gee, when do we get to be finished being surprised at Republican hypocrisy ?
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elsiegel
December 1, 2009 1:18 PM
They all want to "protect" Medicare Advantage -- that's where private insurance companies take advantage of Medicare. Orwell lives!
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LFC
December 1, 2009 2:20 PM
McCain has been an opportunistic weasel for his entire political career. Don't expect any backbone out of the man.
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OldenGoldenDecoy
December 1, 2009 3:29 PM in reply to LFC
Uhhhh . . .
McCain was an opportunistic weasel long before his political career began.
You'd know that if you'd served with his elitist ass when in the Navy.
~OGD~
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Jeronimo Dan
December 1, 2009 2:57 PM
McCain has a real problem, when it comes to common sense. He's been great for the past forty years of riding the POW hero horse, but he's pretty well rode that horse to ground, but not before becoming extremely rich. There were over six hundred POW's that when thru the exact same agony as he did, but you never hear of any of them riding that horse for profit.
He demonstrated in his presidential campaign he had lost his bearing and straight thinking, when stating he was closing his campaign down to go back to Washington to straighten this economic mess out. Truth be known he couldn't give back the correct change of a $00.78 purchase, paid with a dollar bill.
I would think that if he'd been let out by himself on his campaign trail, he'd have another title of "MIA", because he'd be hard put to find his way back to Washington DC on his own.
No, if there ever was a politician that needs to be put to pasture, it's McCain.
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jeffgee
December 1, 2009 3:14 PM
Meanwhile, Okie Gooper Tom Coburn says that the Dem's plan will kill old people. They're back to the pull the plug on grammy meme.
Considering how much is spent on medical care on people in the last months of their lives and the impending baby boomers, with all the generation's high expectations and sense of entitlement using Medicare, something's gonna have to give.
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Sambam
December 1, 2009 7:28 PM
The only reason McCain and other GOPers get away with this rank hypocrisy is that they can appear on TV and spout this nonsense unchallenged, secure in the knowledge that the TV anchors they're talking to will be completely unprepared with the facts and absolutely uninterested in providing their viewers with any context.
In any case McCain lost any credibility he had over a year ago when he picked Palin to be his vice president, so who cares ...
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