A lot of you have been writing in that you’ve contacted members of the House and Senate and they simply refuse to tell you how their bosses will vote on Paul Ryan’s Medicare Phaseout plan. They’ve never heard of it; there’s no bill; the boss doesn’t have a position yet. Yada yada yada. Here’s something that will help. There is a plan. In fact, there’s a bill. And virtually every member of the House at least has voted on it. The Ryan Medicare Phaseout proposal is part of the Ryan budget which has been voted on in the House every year since 2011.
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Jon Cohn, one of the best, probably the best health care policy journalist out there, flags that Trump has flipped on phasing out Medicare. As Jon notes here, back in the spring Trump said he wouldn’t touch Medicare or Social Security. But his new transition website says he’ll support the Ryan Phaseout plan.
Lot goin’ on. So in case you missed the latest episode of my new podcast yesterday, check it out. Josh Green and I talk over information from inside the Clinton and Trump data operations to try to figure out why election day turned out the way it did. Listen here.
Just the prospect of Kris Kobach as attorney general should shake loose any remaining sense that the Trump presidency might differ from the Trump campaign.
A bunch of our readers have been trying to find out where their representatives and senators stand on Paul Ryan’s plan to phase out Medicare and replace it with private insurance and vouchers. Ryan says he wants to push this through in a single bill that also repeals Obamacare. Kellyanne Conway says Ryan may try to move forward with the legislation on inauguration day. That seems dubious. But whenever it happens, Ryan has made clear he wants to do it quickly, like in the first month or two after Trump is sworn in. But virtually all the Reps and Senators are refusing to say where they stand. Sometimes there’s game playing and dodges, others times staffers refuse to say what the Rep and Senators position is. So just as an example. TPM Reader BW just called the office of Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT) and was told “There is currently no plan to phase out Medicare. Therefore Zinke does not support any plan to phase out Medicare.”
Here are two paragraphs from a piece just out from The Washington Post you really need to read right now.
From a TPM Reader PH trying to find out what their Rep’s position is on Paul Ryan’s Medicare Phaseout plan.
Just called my Rep., Pete Roskam’s (R-IL06) DC office. The young guy I spoke to asked me unprompted if I was calling about Steve Bannon. He sounded as if he’s taken a lot of calls today.
I’ve been doing running updates about this on Twitter. But I wanted to mention that Hillary Clinton’s popular vote lead has just topped 1 million votes and it will likely go substantially higher. As I write, the exact number is 1,002,296.
I follow the vote spreadsheet put together by David Wasserman of The Cook Political Report and 538.
We’ve discussed a number of times since Black Tuesday that the idea of a unified Republican government is in many ways quite misleading. I’m not being Pollyannaish. This does not mean it’s good news for people who are progressives and/or Democrats. But the ‘unified’ part of that phrase makes no sense.
The House is back in business for the first time since the election. As Lauren Fox reports, everyone donning “The Make America Great Again” hats and singing the praises of Donald J. Trump couldn’t mask the cognitive dissonance that until a week ago it was every member for himself to survive having Trump as the party’s nominee.
One member captured it well: