Mitt Romney's plan to turn Medicare into a voucher program would enable him to pay for a massive tax cut for the rich, which former Rep. Alan Grayson described as Romney's "shell game" on PoliticsNation.
Romney has said that he would eliminate the Affordable Care Act in his first week in office, and has previously endorsed Paul Ryan's budget plan, a plan that's very popular among Republicans as a whole. Ryan's plan would, among other things, raise the Medicare eligibility age to 67 and turn Medicare into a voucher program—which the Congressional Budget Office estimates will cause the typical senior to pay around $6,400 more for Medicare per year than they do today.
President Obama, who has been campaigning in Florida, has hit Romney hard for supporting this plan, and for using the additional funds to pay for a huge tax cut for millionaires. “Now, Florida, that’s the wrong way to go. It’s wrong to ask seniors to pay more for Medicare just so millionaires and billionaires can pay less in taxes," Obama said during a rally.
As the Rev. Al Sharpton pointed out on PoliticsNation, Florida is a good place for Obama to bring this up, since its population is 31% seniors. Former Rep. Alan Grayson (D-FL), who is running for office in Florida, agreed. "Seniors are learning more and more exactly how bad the Ryan plan is going to be for them," he said.
Grayson added that the Ryan plan, if implemented, would cause seniors to pay thousands more than they do today. "For what purpose?" he asked. "So that Mitt Romney can have a tax cut? You know, Mitt Romney wants millionaires in America to have a tax cut because Mitt Romney wants a tax cut. That's what it comes down to. And he and his selfish friends are going to gut government and gut the economy for the sake of that."
"Seniors are beginning to realize that Romney is basically conducting a shell game," Grayson continued. "The interesting thing is that when the President points out all these elements, the deficiencies, in what Romney is proposing for the country, Romney doesn't even take a stab at defending the Ryan plan. He doesn't even try to do it, even though he's endorsed it in the past."
"He can't explain why it's right after the President explains why it's wrong. That means it's wrong," Grayson said.