Dems Want To Make Price Nomination A Proxy War For GOP’s Medicare Plans

UNITED STATES - NOVEMBER 18: Incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., speaks with Roll Call in his Capitol Hill office on Friday, Nov. 18, 2016. (Photo By Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call) (CQ Roll Call via AP Images)
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Incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) said he welcomed a fight with Republicans over their attempts to privatize Medicare and signaled Democrats’ plans to make it a major issue in confirmation hearings for Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for secretary of health and human services.

“Between this nomination, an avowed Medicare opponent, and Republicans here in Washington threatening to privatize Medicare, it’s clear that Washington Republicans are plotting a war on seniors next year,” Schumer said at a press conference Tuesday on Capitol Hill. “Every senior in America should hear this loudly and clearly: Democrats will not let them win that fight.”

In the past Price has supported plans to privatize Medicare, or, in Republican terms, convert it to a “premium support” system. He also said earlier this month that he wanted to see GOP lawmakers overhaul Medicare through the 2018 budget reconciliation process in the next six to eight months.

Schumer said Tuesday that Democrats would stand united against any attempts to “privatize, voucherize or any other -ize you can think of when it comes to Medicare.”

“So to Republicans considering going down this path, my advice to you is simple: turn back,” he said.

The New York Democrat said that he had urged his caucus to engage in “thorough, thorough vetting,” and ask “very, very careful and strong questions” during Price’s confirmation process.

“And my guess is that the American people will urge Democrats and Republicans not to put in a nominee who has these views. Now maybe he’ll change his views. Maybe he’ll modify his views,” Schumer said. “But he is going to get a lot of very strong and very thorough questions about the kinds things that he will propose.”

Due to changes to the filibuster rules Democrats had made when they were in control of the Senate, Republicans only need a simple majority vote to confirm Price to the post. Schumer expressed some measured optimism that the issue of Medicare could bring enough Republicans over to the Democrats’ side and block the nomination.

“I think there’s a chance that his nomination will fail,” Schumer said. “This is the kind of issue where Democrats have been completely united against privatizing Medicare, and a lot of Republicans have been dancing on the head of a pin.”

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Notable Replies

  1. Hey GOP:

    Payback time.

  2. OK, so-called moderate Republicans in the Senate, this is your chance to prove it. Susan Collins, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, I’m looking at you.

  3. So where are the nation-wide tv commercials from our PACs etc.? Effete, intellectual Senate-floor battles aren’t what works. Full-scale, no-holds-barred demagoguery works. Learn to message, fools.

    Lemme fucking help you get started:

    I could pull them out of my ass like a string of beads all day long if I wanted. Now, shit or get off the pot.

    Edit: I suppose I could also have gone with…“RyanCare’s Voucher Smorgasbord: Pick Your Plan…” Anyhoo…the fucking problem is that the American people aren’t going to wake up unless the Dems make them, and yet here we find ourselves having to first wake up the Dems? What a fucking joke.

  4. Way to go, but let’s also remember something: Medicare is part of Social Security. The attack on Medicare is an attack on Social Security! Still the third-rail of American politics? I hope so.

  5. GOP=DOA

    Never count on them.

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