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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