Congress is back this week after the Easter recess. Lots of GOP members got an earful at constituent town halls during the break over their plan to privatize Medicare. But not GOP Freshman Jon Runyan (NJ-3), who voted for the Republican budget. He held no town halls in his senior-heavy district and spent part of the break out of the country.
The GOP, led by Rep. Paul Ryan (WI-1), passed a budget April 15 that proposes transforming fee-for-service Medicare into a voucher (or, in GOP parlance, "premium support payment") program by 2022. Runyan lauded the budget "a bold vision of spending cuts that seeks to aggressively tackle the debt crisis" But the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office concluded that plan "would actually spark a dramatic increase in how much the nation spends on health care for the elderly" and that "seniors would end up paying almost twice as much out of their own pockets" for Medicare services.
And, in the "Up is Down" department, Runyan's vote to end Medicare as we know it earned him praise, and a media buy, from a conservative PAC for ... saving the program.
Also, you may have noticed gasoline prices rising towards, even topping $4 a gallon. Lots of smoke expected on this issue, but no fire.
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