No principles and no shame

by folkbum

A significant part of Republican opposition to health insurance reform bills like HR 3200 is that they rely on savings from eliminating inefficiencies and waste in Medicare to provide some of the needed funding.

The Republican response to this is that it means rationing and early death for seniors: Democrats are going to cut Medicare, they say--"inefficiency" and "waste" being fictional or negligible, apparently--thereby making some procedures off-limits and leaving our elders to die in the streets.

Just to be clear: This is the same Republican Party whose platform in 2008, adopted just over a year ago a few miles up the road in St. Paul, reads, "we should [. . .] eliminate waste and inefficiency" right there under the heading "Medicare." (What, did the waste and inefficiency just disappear?)

This is the same Republican Party whose current chair told Tim Russert that Medicare was "absolutely, absolutely" on the table for cuts when he ran for Senate just two years ago.

And this is the same Republican Party that shut down the federal government in 1995 in part because Democrats would not agree to (wait for it) cut Medicare spending.

No principles. No shame.