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The Spectacle Blog
Indiana Gov. Mitch Daniels, who is being touted as a potential 2012 presidential candidate, on Monday criticized fellow Republicans for making attacks on Medicare cuts a centerpiece of their campaign against President Obama’s national health care legislation.
“I do not think it was a proud moment for the Republican Party at all,” Daniels told reporters and bloggers at a Heritage Foundation gathering. “Medicare is going to have to change. I have to say, the granny card has been played so cynically against Republicans so many times, that I can certainly understand the turnabout there. But it is not a grownup attitude. We’re going to have to have some grown up conversations. And to pretend that Medicare can continue in its current form is just not honest.”
He later added that, “I understand why they leap at the short-term temptation to score a point or two, but it’s not really in the national interest.”
Daniels said that he agreed with Paul Ryan’s approach to tackling the entitlement crisis, “at least in the basic outline,” saying that we need to split the programs into an old system and a new system. This way, those who are at or near retirement could remain in the current program they planned their lives around, while younger Americans could be put in a new program that the government can afford.
He said the idea wasn’t even very radical and that it has been done in the private sector, though he conceded that the plan could be “easily distorted” and “easily slimed.”
Despite all of the reasons to be pessimistic that Washington are too “chicken liver” to actually tackle this problem, which he referred to repeatedly as an “emergency,” he said there were also some causes for optimism, noting the millions of Americans who have struggled with credit card debt and mortgage payments.
“I think Americans have a renewed sense of the menace of too much debt,” he said.
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More Blog Posts by Philip Klein
http://spectator.org/blog/2010/06/08/mitch-daniels-criticizes-gop-d
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Derek Leaberry| 6.8.10 @ 2:11PM
Andrew Ferguson's WEEKLY STANDARD article on Mitch Daniels is worth reading. He's as bad as Bush on immigration. He cares even less about social issues than either Bush. And he has a rather bizarre marital history. He should not be nominated by the Republicans for president.
Bruce | 6.8.10 @ 7:53PM
The problem with Medicare as presently formulated is not that it's an "entitlement", but that the process of paying claims is crooked to its core - witness all the ads on TV nightly from new companies established to feast on Medicares lack of investigating claims and paying whatever they are charged by these swine. A wheelchair "with no out of pocket cost to me" trumpets one. Of course we are not told that the company charges Medicare the MRP of the chair plus 20% - and Medicare pays that. Other scams ... I've been on Medicare for almost a year now, and the diabetic meds I used to get from my private plan now have to be ordered via one of these companies. Whereas a 90 day supply of one common drug I take cost me $15 under my previous plan, I pay the shysters $21 OOP, and they charge medicare the full price. And get paid without any questions. As a result, I have been forced to cut back on the meds I take and use to test blood sugar because I simply cannot afford the prices I have to pay through Medicare. Plus there is a $200 yearly deductable before they pay ANYthing.
THAT is the reason Medicare is at the breaking point.
Climber| 6.8.10 @ 9:54PM
Mitch is, above all things, a conservative pragmatist. Absent e revolution, he likely represents the best the electoral system can bring us.
And his"marital history" (he's been married to the same woman who isn't a politico) is irrelevant.
Julia| 4.5.11 @ 11:25AM
I still remember being in the US when this topic with mitch daniels started. I was there on a sprachreisen vergleich trip and found it interessting that people got so angry about what mitch said. However now everything seems to be back on normal again.