Shawn Vestal: McMorris Rodgers’ vow against Social Security and Medicare cuts rings hollow
"The debt is a big, um, a big threat to this country, and we need to take action there," she said last week during a debate with challenger
It was astonishing not that she would believe it, but that she would admit it in that forum -- given the fact that the debt now stands at a post-World War II record thanks to the tax cuts passed by
It's an, um, bigger threat now.
If
"I believe we need to strengthen Medicare," she said at the debate. "I don't believe in cutting Medicare or
Days earlier, her Twitter account was ablaze with a thread defiantly insisting: "I do NOT support cuts to Medicare or
The congresswoman protests too much. Not only is it utterly credible to believe she might vote for such cuts -- which would certainly be, like last year's failed Trumpcare effort, swaddled in claims that the cuts are not cuts -- but she's already voted to do so. More than once.
She did it in 2005, her first year in office, when she voted for the Bush budget. That included cuts to Medicare of
In 2012,
It would have replaced Medicare's guarantee of coverage with a voucher system for private insurance. It would have tied Medicare enrollment growth to the GDP -- a bizarre measure directly reflecting a priority of cuts over care. It would have raised the age of retirement eligibility.
At the time, the
Whether or not such steps are necessary is one question.
Whether they would be cuts, though, is not.
"The plan also would likely lead to the gradual demise of traditional Medicare by making its pool of beneficiaries smaller, older, and sicker -- and increasingly costly to cover," the liberal Center on Budget and Policy Priorities concluded.
That budget did not touch
The economics columnist
"There is a consensus against candor," he wrote way back in 2007, "because there is no constituency for candor."
Failures of candor are the flavor of the season, of course, and not just for
But on this topic, in this race,
She leans hard on the present tense: "There are no proposed cuts to ..." she says -- a way of implying the current legislative situation is the overall party philosophy.
She parses: In 2014, she said she opposed "cuts to
She plays loose with fact-checks: A recent tweetstorm linked to a fact check that concluded Democratic claims that the
Which brings us back to the big threat of the big debt. Asked how she would address this threat, she had no concrete answer. She said the tax cuts would produce more tax revenue -- the eternal faith in the trickle-down -- to ease the deficit.
And then lawmakers will have to "go through the federal budget and set priorities and make some tough decisions."
It's possible, of course, that
It's possible that her past votes do not predict her future. It's possible that all the people on the right who keep letting it slip that tackling entitlement reforms is the next step are just wrong.
It's all possible, I suppose, if you adopt the widest possible view of the possible.
It's an election year, after all.
Anything is possible.
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