Paul Ryan suddenly not so gung-ho on immediately privatizing Medicare
The fast-track Medicare "overhaul" House Republicans promised may not be happening so fast after all. Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) was promising a week after the election that privatizing Medicare would be one of the first actions of the new legislative session. Since then Price has been tapped to be Donald Trump's Secretary of Health and Human Services, and the resistance has responded in a unified voice promising the fight of House Speaker Paul Ryan's life. So what does Ryan say now? Maybe, it doesn't have to happen right away.
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) said that plans to overhaul Medicare remain "unresolved" in the lead-up to Donald Trump's inauguration."We haven't addressed that. That's an unresolved issue. I haven't even spoke with the president-elect about that," Ryan told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel in a Monday interview. […]
Ryan suggested he has no plan of dropping the issue, but that the timing and method for taking on Medicare is not yet decided.
"We have a future of insolvency with Medicare that needs to be addressed. How and when we address that is something we will decide later," he told the Journal-Sentinel.
It's hard to imagine that the issue hasn't come up in discussions with the Trump team, since it was one of the first things Ryan started touting immediately after the election. Beyond that, the Trump transition team immediately replaced language on Trump's campaign website that said "I'm not going to cut Medicare or Medicaid" to the very Ryan-esque promise to "modernize Medicare."
This shouldn't be read as a retreat from Ryan, because this is one constant in his wish list for destroying the social compact. But it is likely Ryan recognizing the reality that he'll have to fight with fellow Republicans to gut the essential program. The first Senate Republican to defect is Susan Collins, who says the "complete upending of a program (Medicare) that by and large serves seniors well is not something that appeals to me."
He won't have any control over Senate Republicans and sure as hell won't be able to bend a unified Senate Democratic conference to his will. This is definitely a fight we can win, and win fast, with steadfast opposition.