I’m a Ryan Fan on Medicare, But He Dropped Some Whoppers at the Convention

As we’ve said here before, we’re fans of Rep. Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform plans with Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR).  Ryan’s the first Gen-Xer on a major party ticket, and he’s just so freakin’ earnest he’s hard not to admire.  He did a nice job of rallying the faithful in his speech to the Republican National Convention.  But man, he dropped some whoppers you just gotta call him out on, because they undermine his credibility as a brave standard-bearer for big ideas, especially on Medicare.

Ryan made his reputation in large part by advancing an unpopular plan to dramatically cut and restructure Medicare two years ago. While he didn’t mention his own plan once on Wednesday, he included it in his last two budgets, both of which preserved the Affordable Care Act’s cuts to Medicare — taken mostly from health plans and and hospitals.  Instead, Ryan once again accused President Obama of being the true threat to Medicare.

“You see, even with all the hidden taxes to pay for the health care takeover, even with new taxes on nearly a million small businesses, the planners in Washington still didn’t have enough money. They needed more. They needed hundreds of billions more. So, they just took it all away from Medicare. Seven hundred and sixteen billion dollars, funneled out of Medicare by President Obama. An obligation we have to our parents and grandparents is being sacrificed, all to pay for a new entitlement we didn’t even ask for. The greatest threat to Medicare is Obamacare, and we’re going to stop it.”

Obama did use those Medicare savings — in the form of targeted cuts in payments to providers, not in benefits to seniors — to pay for the health care law. Ryan’s budget calls for using them to finance tax cuts for wealthy Americans, and deficit reduction. But by now calling to restore that spending commitment to Medicare, Ryan and Romney would accelerate Medicare’s insolvency by several years.

Ryan also criticized the president as failing to act on the recommendations of the bipartisan debt commission that  Obama had created. “They came back with an urgent report,” Ryan said in his speech. “He thanked them, sent them on their way, and then did exactly nothing.”  He was referring to the Simpson-Bowles commission — which Ryan served on, but whose plan he ultimately opposed, saying it would raise taxes and not cut enough from health programs. Ryan’s opposition put Simpson-Bowles in the ground, since it soured other House Republicans on the proposal.

And in an extended critique of the president’s stimulus plan, Ryan said: “What did taxpayers get out of the Obama stimulus? More debt.” He didn’t mention that a third of the stimulus was in the form of tax cuts, and that he sought stimulus funding for his own district.

Near the end of his speech, Ryan claimed the campaign’s top priority is protecting the poor. “We have responsibilities, one to another — we do not each face the world alone,” he said. “And the greatest of all responsibilities is that of the strong to protect the weak.”  But just under two-thirds of the cuts in Ryan’s budget target programs that benefit low-income people, while calling for large tax breaks for the wealthy.

I know it’s delusional to think we’d get straight talk in an election year.  I just hate to see an effective advocate for Medicare reform like Ryan diminish himself for applause lines no one will remember in 30 days — when the big fight on Medicare is coming in 2013.  The country needs this guy to keep his facts straight and distortions narrow.