Sunday, July 10, 2011

Sunday Show Update: White House Chief of Staff Says Medicare Broke within Five Years

In case you weren’t watching, White House Chief of Staff Bill Daley, being interviewed on ABC’s This Week, just said that Medicare would run out of money within five years absent reform.  (A transcript should be available here later today.)

How have Democrats reacted to this development?  It’s been more than 800 days since Senate Democrats passed a budget.  And President Obama himself put forward a deficit “plan” that the non-partisan head of the Congressional Budget Office derided as a mere “speech.”

President Clinton has argued that Democrats can’t say “we shouldn’t do anything” on Medicare reform because otherwise “health care [will] devour the economy.”  And President Obama’s own Chief of Staff just admitted that if the President is re-elected, Medicare will be out of money by the end of his second term absent reform.  Given all this, where’s the President’s Medicare reform plan?