Paul Ryan: Mitt Romney's Las Vegas Headliner

He's here! Paul Ryan will be headlining a Mitt Romney campaign rally at Palo Verde High School in Summerlin today... Followed by an uber-exclusive fundraiser with none other than Willard's #1 money man ( Sheldon Adelson) at The Venetian. Wow, what a man of the people. Paul Ryan will be rallying Nevada "TEA-publicans" at the high school serving some of the highest income neighborhoods in the entire state, then he will be raising money from the guy on The Strip who actually makes the bulk of his billions from wheeling & dealing with the Macau mafia. What a guy, that Paul Ryan!

And already, Nevada Republicans are set to give Paul Ryan a very warm welcome. Just look at what they're doing to prepare for his arrival.

The Ryan pick is also shaking up the races that will decide which party controls the Senate. Dean Heller of Nevada — appointed to the Senate last year — is already under fire for the unique distinction of being the only lawmaker who voted for the Ryan budget in both chambers. Montana Republican Senate candidate Denny Rehberg is running fast from the Ryan budget. And in Florida, a state where the senior citizen vote is crucial, vulnerable Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson could barely contain his glee at the opportunity to attack the Ryan budget.

The reality is that Ryan is now all Republicans' running mate whether they like it or not, forcing GOP candidates who would just as soon run from the debate over senior citizen entitlements to embrace the third rail of American politics like never before.

One GOP insider lamented that party leaders “have spent the last year” trying to take Medicare off the political front burner, but the Ryan pick “puts it all back out there now.” [...]

Following the selection, Heller praised Ryan’s “courage to make the tough decisions needed to restore our nation’s fiscal health.” But Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley saw a ripe opportunity to drive home what Democrats see as Heller’s biggest weakness: voting to reconfigure Medicare.

“No one is happier today than Sen. Dean Heller, one of Rep. Paul Ryan’s strongest supporters who said he was ‘proud’ to vote twice for the Ryan budget plan that essentially ends Medicare by turning it over to private insurance companies.”

Both Joe Heck and Dean Heller are inextricably linked to Paul Ryan and his plan to destroy Medicare by replacing real health care coverage with vouchers. Yet since Mitt Romney has launched Paul Ryan and his quest to end Medicare & Social Security as we know it onto the center stage of the Presidential Campaign, Heller & Heck have to be more careful in tip-toe-ing around their own record of standing with Ryan. After all, about 20% of Nevada's electorate is retired. And even more Nevadans fear the kinds of cutting and gutting of Social Security & Medicare that Paul Ryan has long championed.

Already, Ryan has put Mitt Romney into even more of a precarious situation here in Nevada. But now, the entire ticket is threatened. And if/when Romney & Ryan drag down Heller & Heck with them, they can all thank the Romney-Ryan plan to slash the social safety net for the middle class (to pay for more "billionaire bailouts") for it.

It's Back! House Passes "RyanCare" with Joe Heck's Help.

The House today passed Paul Ryan's "Roadmap to Austerity Fueled Poverty" budget plan yet again. And yet again, Joe Heck voted for it. Here are two of Heck's favorite BFFs, Paul Ryan and Mitt Romney, discussing what happened today.

The blueprint by House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan is similar to his controversial Medicare plan last year, in that it ends the health insurance guarantee for seniors and replaces the program with a subsidized insurance-exchange system. Unlike last year’s plan, seniors can buy into traditional Medicare as a sort-of public option, and the vouchers it provides are more generous.

Conservative Republicans see the vote as an opportunity to lay down their marker for the sort of sweeping reforms they hope to enact if they win the presidency. Ryan has urged his party’s presidential candidates to cast the election not as a referendum on President Obama but a choice between two competing visions for the nation’s future.

“Today we will pass our budget that proposes real, honest solutions to create a stronger economy and a more certain future for our country,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor said on the floor. “Our budget takes bold steps that will get the fiscal house in order and will manage down the debt and deficit.”

As it turns out, Democrats would love to fight the battle on those terms. They’re expected to make Medicare a focal point of their election message, portraying Republicans as seeking to “break the Medicare guarantee” in order to fund large tax cuts for the rich.

“Our main focus will be on Medicare,” the Democratic aide said. “There’s clear evidence that seniors are very worried about what Republicans are doing with Medicare. And we want people to know that this is who they are in a nutshell. There’s no wiggle room for them.”

Mitt Romney, the likely Republican presidential nominee, praised the Ryan plan. “Owing in no small part to the leadership of Paul Ryan, [the House] has put conservative fiscal principles into action and passed a bold budget that directly addresses the drivers of our nation’s spending crisis,” he said in a statement. “The House budget and my own plan share the same path forward: pro-growth tax cuts, getting federal spending under control, and strengthening entitlement programs for future generations.”

Now that sounds all fine and dandy. What's wrong with what Paul and Willard said? Here's what's wrong: They're lying.



Paul Ryan's budget dumps another $187,000 tax cut on the lap of every multi-millionaire and billionaire. Yet while the ultra-wealthy are getting another "bailout", the working poor suffer as 62% of Ryan's proposed budget cuts hit programs like Medicaid and Pell Grants that are meant to lift Americans out of poverty. Oh, and let's not forget the centerpiece of Paul Ryan's budget, which is his "RyanCare" plan to end Medicare as we know it and force seniors to pay up to $5,900 more for health care. Even retired military officers have come out against Paul Ryan's budget because of his proposed cuts to international programs meant to keep America safe.

Even Mitt Romney backer and professional "reality TV" attention seeker Donald Trump admitted that this is a losing issue for Republicans.



So why is Joe Heck yet again tying himself to Paul Ryan's nonsense? Oh, that's right. He thinks he can lie his way out of this!



If even Paul Ryan's own constituents can't stand what he's trying to do to our country, what makes Joe Heck think he can get away with this here in Nevada? Between his own "Destroying America's Trust in Our Economy Act" and his constant votes for Paul Ryan's dangerous austerity agenda, Heck is sending us the message that he cares more about pleasing Paul Ryan and the rest of the House G-O-TEA leadership than doing what's right for Nevada's working families. All Heck is doing is proving Mr. Gleaner's point that he's nothing more than a G-O-TEA tool.

Yes, Nevada GOP, You Still Want to Kill Medicare If You Support Paul Ryan's Budget.

So The Beltway's favorite gossip rag, Politico, has a breathless piece this morning about the new G-O-TEA plan to sell Paul Ryan's "Doom of Austerity" plan to America: Just don't talk about what's actually in it!

Last year, they were blindsided by the backlash to the Wisconsin Republican’s plan. It was immediately framed by Democrats as ending Medicare, crushing Medicaid while keeping taxes low for the rich. Ryan, who was being pitched as a presidential prospect for the party, receded as his plan came under attack from all sides.
The 2012 plan is — simply put — to not talk about the plan too much. [...]

GOP leaders are suggesting members use props. In a presentation, the NRCC said members should try to “inoculate” themselves in a campaign season by using “credible third-party validators (mom or seniors),” according to a party document.

Above all, the Ryan budget rollout was designed to conform to a new political reality for Republicans: Changing entitlements is difficult, not popular but necessary. And even the true believers — like Ryan himself — need to build coalitions when they pitch big ideas.

To ensure the plan landed well nationally, Ryan personally reached out to presidential candidates to brief them on it. Romney endorsed the plan this week.

And DC Republicans are pointing to Mark Amodei's win in NV-02 last year as living proof of their plan working (politically, that is).

Amodei gave up talking about the particulars of the Ryan budget. He started saying the status quo was unsustainable. He tagged Marshall as supporting Obama’s health care bill, which he said cut from Medicare. When talking about the Republican plan, he said it would “save and protect” the senior health care program.

Amodei sent out direct mail that branded him as the “the one candidate working to protect Medicare.” They enlisted his mother to star in an advertisement vouching he would protect the program.

The contrast worked. [...]

“Here’s what I’m real comfortable telling people,” Amodei said in an interview in Washington on Wednesday. “I’ll tell you the truth about your program, and I’ll fight to save it, but in order to tell you the truth and to fight to save it, you can’t continue to do nothing. Can you fix it all in a year? Absolutely not. Can you fix it in five years? No you can’t. But you better start now.”

Here's what Politico is missing. First off, Barack Obama isn't behaving like Kate Marshall. Secondly, it doesn't look like Shelley Berkley, John Oceguera, or Steven Horsford plans to behave like Kate Marshall. Thirdly, Paul Ryan's plan would still destroy Medicare if enacted. And finally, Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum have wholly embraced Paul Ryan and his plan to destroy Medicare. That's why House Republicans are spinning this like crazy now.

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However, they can't just spin away the facts. The fact of the matter is that Paul Ryan's new budget slashes and privatizes Medicare and Medicaid to death just as much as Paul Ryan's old budget.

Beginning 2023, the guaranteed Medicare benefit would be transformed into a government-financed “premium support” system. Seniors currently under the age of 55 could use their government contribution to purchase insurance from an exchange of private plans or traditional fee-for-service Medicare. But the budget does not take sufficient precautions to prevent insurers from cherry-picking the the healthiest beneficiaries from traditional Medicare and leaving sicker applicants to the government. As a result, traditional Medicare costs could skyrocket, forcing even more seniors out of the government program. The budget also adopts a per capita cost cap of GDP growth plus 0.5 percent, without specifying how it would enforce it. This makes it likely that the cap would limit the government contribution provided to beneficiaries and since the proposed growth rate is much slower than the projected growth in health care costs, CBO estimates that new beneficiaries could pay up to $1,200 more by 2030 and more than $5,900 more by 2050. Finally, the budget would also raise Medicare’s age of eligibility to 67. Some seniors who would no longer be eligible for Medicare would pick up employer coverage—but they would pay more in premiums and cost sharing. And since the budget would scale back or eliminate other coverage options, hundreds of thousands of seniors would become uninsured.

The budget would eliminate the exiting matching-grant financing structure of Medicaid and would instead give each state a pre-determined block grant that does not keep up with actual health care spending. This would shift some of the burden of Medicaid’s growing costs to the states, forcing them to — in the words of the CBO — make cutbacks that “involve reduced eligibility for Medicaid and CHIP, coverage of fewer services, lower payments to providers, or increased cost sharing by beneficiaries—all of which would reduce access to care.” The block grants would reduce federal Medicaid spending by $810 billion over 10 years, decreasing federal Medicaid spending by more than 35 percent over the decade. As a result, states could reduce enrollment by more than 14 million people, or almost 20 percent—even if they are were able to slow the growth in health care costs substantially.

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This explains why Joe Heck has often danced around his own vote for "RyanCare". Remember when he lied about Medicare, and President Obama's position on Medicare, last September in Summerlin as he tried to excuse his vote for Paul Ryan's budget?



Joe Heck has to do this. On one hand, he has to look "moderate" in order to win reelection in NV-03. But on the other hand, he's still expected to mostly be a loyal follower of Paul Ryan and "Tea Party, Inc." So what's someone like Heck to do? Oh, just lie about Medicare and lie about Democrats' position on Medicare!

When House Republicans unveil their 2012 budget on Tuesday, they are expected to include a Medicare privatization plan endorsed by one Democrat — Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR). That, Republicans will claim, proves their controversial overhaul proposal has bipartisan support.

Leading Democrats say they won’t let the GOP get away with it.

“We don’t see a difference in principle between the original Ryan plan and the so-called Wyden-Ryan plan,” Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-IL) a party surrogate on health care issues, told reporters on a conference call Monday morning. “It’s equally bad or only marginally different but still would end Medicare as we know it.” [...]

“They [seniors] don’t want Medicare itself to be diminished in some way,” Schakowsky said, “or to become too expected and therefore ruined.”

So no matter how hard both the national G-O-TEA and Nevada's G-O-TEA representatives try to spin Paul Ryan's new budget proposal as a "bold, courageous, bipartisan plan to save Medicare", it's really just another attempt to pass the same old plan to destroy Medicare and take away needed health care from many Nevadans.

NV-03: Your Budget, Your Values

So DC's local gossip rag caught Joe Heck's new ad. Supposedly, this his big move to "get ahead of likely attacks on Social Security and Medicare". At first, that sounds all fine and dandy.

However, there's a catch. Joe Heck's words don't really match his actions. Remember this?



And remember this?

Paul Ryan's budget dumps another $187,000 tax cut on the lap of every multi-millionaire and billionaire. Yet while the ultra-wealthy are getting another "bailout", the working poor suffer as 62% of Ryan's proposed budget cuts hit programs like Medicaid and Pell Grants that are meant to lift Americans out of poverty. Oh, and let's not forget the centerpiece of Paul Ryan's budget, which is his "RyanCare" plan to end Medicare as we know it and force seniors to pay up to $5,900 more for health care. Even retired military officers have come out against Paul Ryan's budget because of his proposed cuts to international programs meant to keep America safe. [...]

If even Paul Ryan's own constituents can't stand what he's trying to do to our country, what makes Joe Heck think he can get away with this here in Nevada? Between his own "Destroying America's Trust in Our Economy Act" and his constant votes for Paul Ryan's dangerous austerity agenda, Heck is sending us the message that he cares more about pleasing Paul Ryan and the rest of the House G-O-TEA leadership than doing what's right for Nevada's working families. All Heck is doing is proving Mr. Gleaner's point that he's nothing more than a G-O-TEA tool.

So yes, this is something to remember when Joe Heck talks about Medicare. However, it doesn't actually end there. In addition to their shared goal of privatizing and "voucher-izing" Medicare, Joe Heck and Paul Ryan share an overall desire to rip to shreds the very social safety net that has made America's great middle class, as well as our economy built upon that foundation, possible.

Remember when Joe Heck actually jumped to the right of even Paul Ryan by introducing his "Destroying America's Trust in Our Economy Act"?

Nowhere in Heck's "Restoring America's Faith and Trust Act" does it address the Bush tax rates, war spending, or economic health. Instead, Heck wants to slash federal investment in our people to 2006 levels and fire more public sector workers! Even though we have more miltary veterans in need of VA care, college students in need of Pell Grants, working poor families in need of Medicaid and food stamps, retirees in need of Medicare and Social Security, and unemployed workers in need of unemployment insurance, Heck refuses to acqknowledge this reality and instead has introduced this bill that would plunge our economy into double-dip recession if enacted!

If we were to slash all these programs and more, we would all pay the price of further suffering. Without unemployment insurance, those without work can't survive. Same goes for seniors on Medicare, working poor families on food stamps and Medicaid, students with Pell Grants, and veterans using VA assistance. If they can't even buy food and basic supplies, let alone purchase anything else, our economy would take a massive hit. Oh, and in the longer term the budget deficit would only worsen as tax revenue plunges because of even more people losing their jobs.

Remember all of this when Joe Heck declares his love for public education, military veterans, Social Security & Medicare, or pretty much anything else that requires some kind of public investment. Remember that in the end, one values what one pays for and one's values can be revealed in how one budgets. So when we look at Joe Heck's record on setting and influencing the federal budget, we see that he doesn't actually value that middle class foundation of America's economy as much as he claims to in his ads.

Also remember to contrast Joe Heck's empty rhetoric with what John Oceguera has said and done about that middle class foundation. Here's what he told the audience at the Henderson Democratic Club last night about how he demonstrates his values.





It's one thing to pay for glitzy TV ads that show happy looking seniors, smiling students, and gauzy rhetoric about "protecting the middle class". It's another to actually match one's rhetoric with one's record. And so far, Joe Heck has failed to do that. Without Medicare, Social Security, Pell Grants, unemployment insurance, SCHIP (children's health care), and so much more of the American social safety net, America's middle class couldn't exist.

Without Medicare & Social Security, many seniors would be thrown into dire poverty. Without Pell Grants and low cost federally backed student loans, many young Americans would be forced to relinquish their dreams of finishing college and embarking on a brighter economic future. And again, without the social safety net that makes America's middle class possible, we wouldn't have a middle class and we wouldn't have any hope for a stronger economy. If Joe Heck really valued that, he'd reflect those values in his (bills targeting the federal) budget.

What's Really Behind RyanCare 3.0

He's back! In case you were missing Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Mittpocalypse Now) and his Medicare busting ways, you can miss him no more. He's released yet another House G-O-TEA budget plan this year. And yes, it's yet another attempt to kill Medicare by turning it into an unworkable voucher system (while stripping away the promise of guaranteed care).

And that's not all. There's even more to Ryan's "new old budget plan". Just don't expect any real solutions to any real problems. Ezra Klein explained earlier Ryan's true purpose in proposing this budget.

Here is Paul Ryan’s path to a balanced budget in three sentences: He cuts deep into spending on health care for the poor and some combination of education, infrastructure, research, public-safety, and low-income programs. The Affordable Care Act’s Medicare cuts remain, but the military is spared, as is Social Security. There’s a vague individual tax reform plan that leaves only two tax brackets —10 percent and 25 percent —and will require either huge, deficit-busting tax cuts or increasing taxes on poor and middle-class households, as well as a vague corporate tax reform plan that lowers the rate from 35 percent to 25 percent.

But the real point of Ryan’s budget is its ambitious reforms, not its savings. It turns Medicare into a voucher program, turns Medicaid, food stamps, and a host of other programs for the poor into block grants managed by the states, shrinks the federal role on priorities like infrastructure and education to a tiny fraction of its current level, and envisions an entirely new tax code that will do much less to encourage home buying and health insurance.

Ryan’s budget is intended to do nothing less than fundamentally transform the relationship between Americans and their government. That, and not deficit reduction, is its real point, as it has been Ryan’s real point throughout his career. [...]

It won’t create jobs this year, and will likely cost jobs in the years to come by putting the economy on a steep austerity ramp. There’s no housing policy for the millions of families in foreclosure and no way to read Ryan’s budget without assuming massive cuts to student-loans programs. That may mean fewer families watching student loans pile up, but only because they didn’t get any in the first place.

As for medical costs, fully 59 percent of Ryan’s savings come from new cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare or other health-care programs —and that omits the $800 billion in Medicare cuts he keeps from Obamacare. So there will be less health-care bureaucracy, sure, but also less health care. The nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation estimates that cuts on the order of what Ryan is proposing will mean around 35 million people lose their health-care coverage.

Got that? Paul Ryan demands even more austerity on top of the painful austerity we're already experiencing. And he's demanding even more American austerity as Europe suffers from its ongoing austerity crisis. Clearly, Ryan is on an ideology driven mission. His economic policies just don't add up.

Let's be real here. So much of this nonsense is really just political theater. With the federal budget deadline looming, many Republicans want to "lock in" the nasty budget cuts of the latest manufactured crisis without looking like a bunch of "Springtime Scrooges". So they're hoping Paul Ryan and his Medicare busting budget can do the dirty work for them in shifting "The Overton Window" of the budget debate so far to the right that manufactured crisis induced budget cuts suddenly look "moderate" by comparison.

That's also why supposed "reborn moderate" Dean Heller (R-"Office Space") is joining onto the Senate G-O-TEA bill to defund the Affordable Care Act. Sure, nothing screams "MODERATE!" by threatening one's constituents' health care to demand more job killing austerity. While Heller and his staff fight to squat on precious office space, they're tag-teaming with the likes of Paul Ryan to play games with real peoples' lives.

Of course, Harry Reid is not leaving this unanswered. Rather, Senate Democrats are releasing their own budget plan this week. Here's what we know about it so far.

According to a source familiar with the proposal, Democrats will offer a plan tomorrow that does not simply cut the deficit amid mass unemployment. It takes steps to mitigate the damage the cuts are expected to do to the economy by spending to boost job creation and job training.

According to the source, the plan —which is being presented by Senate Budget Committee Chairperson Patty Murray to the Dem caucus today —replaces the whole sequester and includes a total of $1.85 trillion in deficit reduction, derived from a 50-50 split of cuts and revenues derived from closing tax loopholes. The spending cuts include $275 billion in cuts to health care spending (but no Medicare benefits cuts; the source says cuts would be focused on the provider side), another $200 billion in non-defense spending cuts, $240 billion in defense cuts, and $242 billion in reduced interest rates.

It would spend $100 billion to boost the economy through spending on infrastructure repair and job training —all paid for by closing loopholes and cuts to “wasteful spending.” Total in new revenues: $975 billion. (Details are not yet available.)

Now, surely deficit hawks will find the health care spending cuts wanting. But the point here is that even if you grant that this won’t do much of anything to deal with long term health care costs, this is a generally balanced way to avert the immediate threat posed to the economy by the sequester, if by “balanced,” we mean, “gives both sides some of what they want.” It cuts spending amid the fragile recovery, but does include some stimulus to cushion the impact of deficit reduction. It reduces health care spending while avoiding harm to beneficiaries. Both of those are enabled partly by closing the sort of millionaire loopholes Republicans used to favor closing back when they were trying to do that to avoid raising tax rates on the rich, during the fiscal cliff fight.

Even the Senate Democratic plan has budget cuts. But here, they're at least less severe. And they're somewhat offset by some investment in our economy. If anything, this is a more honest attempt at staking some sort of middle ground in this whacked budget debate on Capitol Hill.

Really, we shouldn't be pursuing any more austerity. This just isn't the right time to pursue large budget cuts. Our economy needs more investment, not less.

Still, something must be done to stop this ongoing manufactured crisis and stop inflicting any more unnecessary economic pain on our people. If Dean Heller and Joe Heck actually want to match their "moderate" words with action, they should stop playing footsie with Paul Ryan and the "tea party"... And encourage their party's leaders to negotiate in good faith with President Obama and Senator Reid to pass a budget that won't inflict any more unnecessary harm on the American economy.

NV-02: Mark Amodei Embraces John Boehner & Paul Ryan

(Also at Daily Kos)

Mark Amodei is getting some powerful Republican assistance on the campaign trail today: House Speaker John Boehner, the nation’s top-ranking member of the GOP, is coming to Reno.

It’s primarily a fundraising trip. Boehner is speaking at a $5,000 and $10,000 per-head breakfast for Amodei. Boehner won’t attend any public events as he did for Jane Corwin in New York’s 26th in May — the last closely contested special election, which Republicans lost in an upset.

Yep, "The Boner" is coming here to Nevada. And while The Sun article points toward differences on the debt ceiling debacle, it doesn't mention how Amodei neatly fits into the extreme teabagger agenda Boehner has allowed to wreak havoc on Congress and the entire country. And it doesn't go in depth to point out why John Boehner is coming to Nevada to fundraise for Mark Amodei.

Amodei is trying hard to create "nuance" and avoid "yes and no issues"...



But his call for "change" sounds eerily familiar.



Paul Ryan, where are you?



Apparently John Boehner is begging Paul Ryan to run for President. He's elevated Ryan and his extreme agenda to the forefront of the Congressional agenda, even taking hostage the full faith & credit of the US Treasury to try to force Ryan's radical attacks on America's middle class down our throats! And remember, Mark Amodei supported Ryan all the way. Amodei will keep distracting in hopes of making us forget his own words, so it's important to keep this in mind when Amodei talks of what he will do for Nevada in Congress.

It's becoming increasingly clear whose agenda Mark Amodei will push. It certainly isn't the one of working class Nevadans.



"You have to go where the money is... And that means entitlement programs."

That's what Mark Amodei aims to do. He'll do whatever he can to please GOP leadership despite him knowing what their plans would do to harm Nevada's working families. Amodei has made it clear to teabaggers that he's ready to go along with Boehner and Ryan in killing Medicare, even if he tells non-teabagger audiences a different story.

Don't be fooled by Amodei's slick twists of words and proclamations that he's "not a yes or no kind of guy". Let him speak for himself. And his words are on record.

National Republicans are scared because this has suddenly developed into a hotly contested race. And they're scared because Kate Marshall is giving him the fight of his life.

“I'll fight to preserve Social Security and Medicare because we need a balanced budget,” said Marshall, Nevada's current state treasurer. “We can't do that on the backs of our seniors.” [...]

Marshall, meanwhile, has focused on Amodei's support for a Republican budget that calls for privatizing Medicare.

While he has praised the budget pushed by Republican Rep. Paul Ryan and approved by the Republican-led House, Amodei has also questioned the Medicare component, and vowed to protect senior citizens. Amodei, however, has said he would consider increasing the Medicare eligibility age to 67.

Marshall has said she would not support any plan to raise the Medicare eligibility age.

Kate Marshall now needs all the help we can give. Election Day is less than a month away, and early voting will begin next weekend. If we don't want to see more of John Boehner's political games and Paul Ryan's extreme ideology, then we just can't send Mark Amodei to Congress.

NV-02: Mediscared

(Also at Daily Kos)

Who knew this would yet again be THE hot button issue in yet another special Congressional election? It all seems to be coming down to Medicare, Medicare, & Medicare.

In [the NY-26 special election], Democrat Kathy Hochul went up early and hard against her Republican opponent, accusing her of seeking to kill Medicare because she supported Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget proposal. It took weeks for Republican Jane Corwin to respond.

When Hochul won the heavily GOP district, the Republicans-want-to-kill-Medicare message quickly became a national strategy, and Democrats posited that by using it they could take back the House.

Marshall has followed that playbook, focusing two of her three attack ads on Amodei’s evolving position on Ryan’s plan to revamp Medicare.

But neither national Republicans nor Amodei are letting the attacks go unchallenged. An Amodei TV ad features his mother and accuses Marshall of lying about his record.

This is what has Mark Amodei freaking out.

In addition to pushing the national momentum on Medicare, Marshall’s campaign thinks Amodei is vulnerable on the issue. The district is home to many seniors.

Early in the campaign, Amodei called Ryan’s proposal a good starting point. When he was working to get the Republican central committee’s nomination, he said he would “cozy up” to Ryan to get his plan passed.

A local Reno news station tried to debunk Mark Amodei's misleading ads...



But honestly, even KTVN got some facts wrong! For instance, the "Medicare cuts" that Amodei claims Marshall supports, and that KTVN claims were passed as part of the Affordable Care Act last year, are really provisions ensuring that Medicare funds are redirected to better patient care instead of being wasted on insurance industry profits (aka "Medicare Advantage") and other forms of waste & abuse. In addition, the Affordable Care Act actually improves Medicare coverage by lowering prescription drug costs and providing free preventive care!

This is what President Obama and the Democratic 111th Congress did to strengthen and improve health care for seniors.



Now contrast this with what House Republicans have been pushing for.



And Mark Amodei most definitely supports Paul Ryan's GOP-teabagger plan to kill Medicare. And despite what Amodei claims, the fact of the matter is that "The Paul Ryan Kill Medicare Plan" that he supported will indeed affect seniors currently on Medicare.

Amodei can spin all he wants, but the facts are simply not on his or Paul Ryan's side.

That’s not how Ryan’s plan works. For one thing, it eliminates traditional fee-for-service Medicare. For another, Its savings come from capping the growth of federal spending at inflation — which is much, much, much slower than the rate of health-care cost growth. The Congressional Budget Office estimated that, in 2022, Ryan’s plan would have a typical beneficiary shouldering 61 percent of the cost of a standard plan, and by 2030, because the government would limit its contributions, they’d be paying 68 percent. [... I]t’s absolutely central to how the Ryan budget saves money. It’s the core of his proposal.

And considering this along with Ryan's and Congressional Republicans' increasingly ugly poll numbers, no wonder why Amodei is so scared that he's trying his hardest to run away from his support for "Ryancare". He can run, but can he really hide? Not if we don't let him!

The War They Can't Give Up

President Obama is back in Nevada this week. He talked about education in Reno yesterday, and he's set to talk about job creation in North Las Vegas today. Yet while Obama is trying to talk schools and pocketbooks, the G-O-TEA has yet again injected "TEH CUL'CHUR WARZZZ!!!" into the national political discussion.

And yes, despite what Mitt Romney and RNC leadership want you to believe, Missouri US Senate candidate Todd Akin very well represents "the new normal" of the now "TEA" fueled Republican Party.

When Missouri’s Republican candidate for the Senate said that “legitimate rape” rarely causes pregnancy,not only was Todd Akin echoing the extreme antiabortion positions held by many in his party, he was exemplifying the creeping extremism within the Republican Party on women’s issues and far more. In the new, extremist Republican Party, Akin is not an aberration. He is merely the latest canary in a coal mine of crazy.

Along with Republican vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan, Akin was an original co-sponsor of the “No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act” —which, originally, narrowed the federal definition of rape to restrict the ability of women and girls to use Medicaid dollars and tax-exempt health spending accounts to terminate pregnancies resulting from rape. Akin has since said he “misspoke” in his “legitimate rape” remarks, but the legislation he and Paul Ryan sponsored similarly relabeled rape as “forcible rape” —creepily suggesting there are other, more acceptable versions. What’s more creepy? These are not fringe opinions expressed by powerless lunatics at teeny right-wing organizations. These are the opinions of over 200 Republican members of Congress, one of whom is the party’s candidate for the United States Senate in Missouri and one of whom is the party’s candidate for vice president.

Yes, the Republican establishment is condemning Akin’s remarks and distancing itself from his candidacy. But let’s be clear: Akin is only guilty of saying out loud what many Republican leaders think and legislate on the basis of. Talking Points Memo has detailed other Republican leaders throughout the years who have questioned that rape can lead to pregnancy and prominent Republican leaders like Mike Huckabee and Bobby Jindal oppose abortions under all circumstances, including rape. Both will be speaking at the Republican National Convention next week. Moreover, the many Republicans pushing back against Akin seem more concerned with preserving the dignity of the Republican Party than protecting the dignity and rights of women who have been raped.

OK, I will at least give Nevada's own Joe Heck some credit for explaining why Akin's beliefs on pregnancy from "legitimate rape" are wrong. That's at least a good first step.

However, both Joe Heck and Dean Heller have constantly fought alongside top religious right politicians like Todd Akin in the ongoing "Tea Party" War on Women. In fact, both Heck and Heller even voted for Akin's signature bill last year. No really, check this out.

But Republicans have a much bigger problem that goes beyond a race for a Senate seat in Missouri, their biggest problem is that every House Republican voted to redefine rape, including Mitt Romney’s pick of Paul Ryan (R-WI) as his Vice Presidential running mate. Ryan was also a cosponsor of H.R.3 in 2011 which redefined rape.

H.R.3 past by a vote of 251-175, in the Republican controlled House on May 4, 2011, with every House Republican voting in favor of it, including Nevada Representative Joe Heck, and former Nevada Representative Dean Heller, who was recently appointed to the U.S. Senate.

Perhaps Todd Akin made the G-O-TEA case for The War on Women quite inartfully, but the fact of the matter is that Akin's strident anti-choice and anti-women views have now become "the mainstream" of today's "tea party" controlled Republican Party. After all, Mitt Romney himself has gone out of his way to embrace the most extreme religious right positions against abortion and contraception. And in case that wasn't enough, he added Paul Ryan to his ticket. And remember, Paul Ryan co-sponsored that rape redefinition bill with Todd Akin. And G-O-TEA Congresscritters like Dean Heller and Joe Heck regularly take their political marching orders from Paul Ryan.

I'm sure Heck and Heller and Romney will soon complain about "those pesky Democrats" trying to "distract" with "silly issues" like women's health. But if they really don't want to fight The War on Women any more, why must they keep trying to restrict and/or fully destroy women's health care? Think about that.

Wait, So He's NOT Coming? I Wonder Why...

Yesterday, there was excitement on the radical right as the Nevada GOP announced Paul Ryan will come to their convention in Sparks next month. But alas, that's not to be.

Nevada’s national Republican committeewoman Heidi Smith of Reno said Monday that U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wi, won’t be attending the State Republican Convention in Sparks May 5-6.

Smith, heading the organization of the convention, said Sunday Ryan would attend.

I wonder why...

After House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-WI) released his Medicare-ending budget last spring, he and his fellow Republicans faced tough questions and protests at town hall meetings across the country. Protesters slammed Republican representatives for voting to end Medicare and cut vital safety net programs while slashing taxes for the rich.

The House passed Ryan’s newest iteration of the “Path to Prosperity” budget last week, and immediately, multiple Republicans faced backlash from their constituents. Voters gathered outside the Duluth, Minnesota office of Rep. Chip Cravaack (R), calling for a budget that preserves vital safety net programs like Medicare and raises taxes on the wealthiest Americans to help pay down the debt.

Well, Paul Ryan always has his BFFs here in Nevada... Right?



Funny enough, "Obamacare" saves Medicare by trimming waste and redirecting funds to patient care. Yet even as Joe Heck, Dean Heller, and Mitt Romney attack "Obamacare" while backing "Ryancare", their "Ryancare" plan would actually end Medicare. Is this why John Boehner resorted to the very "Deem & Pass" trick he complained about in 2010 to pass the deeply unpopular Ryan Budget?

So now, all of sudden, Paul Ryan won't be going to the Nevada GOP Convention next month? I wonder why...

NV-02: While Amodei Two Steps With "Tea Party", Nevadans Need Real Solutions

(Also at The Nevada View & Daily Kos)

Yesterday, Republicans were already taking out the "Mission Accomplished" sign and declaring victory. They were proclaiming a shoddy "poll" paid by a shadowy "tea party" outfit that couldn't even refer to Kate Marshall by her correct name as "proof" that they're on track to win.

Some of the readers of the Reno Gazette-Journal have contacted me to say that reports of last week’s poll on the special election for the open seat in the 2nd Congressional District are bogus.

It showed that Republican Mark Amodei has a 13-point lead over Democrat Kate Marshall with three weeks to go until the Sept 13 election. It would be almost an insurmountable lead, with so little time remaining.

Yet three readers sent e-mails last Friday after the story appeared, saying Marshall was referred to by another name during the robo polling sponsored by Americans For Prosperity, considered a conservative group with Republican leanings.

"I was contacted by the poll to which you refer in your article today," Kathleen Fogarty wrote last week. "Kate Marshall’s name was not even offered as a candidate. Instead, they listed Kate Jackson as a candidate. I would have voted for Marshall, but when her name was not offered I just hung up. I did listen to the message twice though before I hung up to make sure I heard it correctly."

So now that PPP is about to release a real shocker of a poll showing a statistical tie, Mark Amodei and his teabagger buddies are freaking out. He told Jon Ralston last night that he's "a solutions guy"... And apparently that means voting against one's own legislation and voting contrary to what one indicated just weeks ago! You have to see last night's "Face to Face" debate moderated by Jon Ralston to believe it!

As I was saying last week, Amodei is trying to have it both ways on Paul Ryan's plan to kill Medicare and attack the middle class. Just pay attention to Amodei's own words!

• “I need to cozy up to Paul Ryan and give him whatever support he needs.” – Mark Amodei, on Paul Ryan (Las Vegas Sun, Jul. 14, 2011)

• “I like a lot of what he [Rep. Paul Ryan] has to say in terms of Medicare, I think that’s excellent.” (Republican Congressional District 2 debate, Jun. 15, 2011)

• The Las Vegas Sun reported, “Amodei has embraced Ryan’s plan” (Las Vegas Sun, Jul. 14, 2011)

• Amodei praised the Ryan blueprint. “I like a lot of what he has to say in terms of Medicare. I think that’s excellent.” (Politico, Jun. 20, 2011)

Does this sound like someone who would have voted "Nay" on Ryan's plan? Amodei continues to lie about what he really stands for. No wonder why his poll numbers are crashing.

Public Policy Polling for Daily Kos & SEIU (8/18-21, likely voters, no trendlines):

Kate Marshall (D): 42
Mark Amodei (R): 43
Timothy Fasano (AI): 3
Helmuth Lehmann (I): 3
Undecided: 8
(MoE: ±4%)

Now contrast that with what Kate Marshall has been doing this summer.





She was here last weekend to talk to voters. She did house parties in Henderson and addressed everything from Medicare to the military. You don't have to read her issue statements and second guess them.

And on Sunday, I was out canvassing in the North Las Vegas section of the district. Believe it or not, NV-02 actually comes this far south. And believe it or not, voters in the neighborhood I walked with a group of friends on Sunday (including one who actually lives right there) are not used to being engaged in this kind of conversation and actually being asked for their votes.

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People here had questions about job creation, Medicare, renewable energy, foreclosures and much more. They know people out of work, and they saw their neighbors being foreclosed out of their homes. They didn't have time for double-speak. They didn't have time for politics as usual. And they really didn't have time for someone who wanted to "get cozy" with Paul Ryan's agenda of attacking the middle class.



Unlike her opponent, Kate Marshall has always put the middle class first.

Kate Marshall is well known in Nevada, and well liked. She’s won two statewide elections here. She has a solid chance to win this election, particularly given the extreme positions of her opponent. Even though it’s a conservative district, CD2 doesn’t necessarily like fringe ideologues like Mark Amodei.

Kate Marshall is a prudent thinker. She has always maximized the use of our tax dollars as Nevada’s State Treasurer. She led the way to save the Millennium Scholarship. She has reinvested Nevada’s state budget giving us larger returns. [...]

Kate Marshall wouldn’t put our economy, our credit rating, the value of the dollar and the entire global economy at risk by voting against raising the debt ceiling. Mark Amodei has made it clear he would. Apparently he doesn’t care if our economy plummets and we all lose our jobs. He’s an ideologue.

Kate Marshall will shake things up in Washington, putting Congress back to work for us. She’ll be a budget hawk, but she won’t destroy the very things that have made America great. She’ll guard Medicare and Social Security, which Mark Amodei wants to slash and burn. She’ll fight for you and your children’s education opportunities.

Mark Amodei may have loaded "tea party" friends tossing out bogus "polls" and paying for multi-million dollar disinformation campaigns, but they're learning the hard way they can't just buy this election for him. We the people still matter. We need real solutions coming out of Congress right now, and Kate Marshall actually wants to get working on that.

Ryan's War

Perhaps the end is finally near. Yes, yes, I know you've been seeing that here since last week. But now, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D) is signaling that an end to the Armageddon death threat is in sight.

Yet even with the encouraging signs from the Senate, President Obama is still warning the nation of the consequences of allowing Armageddon to commence. Perhaps he just wants to drive home the point in case the House G-O-TEA Crazy Caucus tries to force Republican "leaders" to derail any last-minute budget deal.

Of course, it doesn't help that the G-O-TEA Crazy Caucus is getting a boost from Rep. Paul Ryan (R-"TEA" Curious). Over the weekend, he threatened to blow up any budget deal if it doesn't deny women access to contraception. Oh, yes. That's right. He went there.

Salon's Joan Walsh noticed this... And she noted what we had discussed earlier on how this melee must be resolved.

Ryan, who was savaged by some on the right last week for seeming to trade the goal of repealing Obamacare in exchange for Obama embracing most of the infamous Ryan budget, is now back to Obamacare. In fact, he’s insisting the House GOP shouldn’t back any deal that opens the government or extends the debt ceiling deadline without major changes to the Affordable Care Act, including letting employers withhold birth-control coverage from insurance plans for religious reasons.

Get it? They’re back to their crusade against birth control access. If that doesn’t define delusional, I’m not sure what does. [...]

Now Ryan is really, really angry at Senate Republicans,according to NRO’s Jonathan Strong, and he’s going to take his ball and go home. “They’re trying to cut the House out, and trying to jam us with the Senate. We’re not going to roll over and take that,” Ryan told reporters on Saturday.

The only way this ends is the only way it ever was going to end: with House Speaker John Boehner, having let extremist GOP babies cry themselves out, finally passing a deal with the support of Democrats. And he shouldn’t count on them being the Democrats who approved the debt-ceiling “deal” that ultimately imposed sequester cuts, or the fiscal-cliff deal that compromised on tax rates and kicked those cuts down the road. On both the Senate and House side – where Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi openly frets that Democrats have “been enablers” of the “irresponsible” GOP – there’s a new tone of toughness. Let’s hope it holds.

They just couldn't help themselves. They had to go there. They just had an urge to slip another Culture War battle into the Shutdown Shitfest that they started.

Did they really think they could get away with this? Does Paul Ryan truly believe he has some special license to subject his extremist agenda on the nation, an extremist agenda that most Americans rejected last year?

We've said it before, but we'll have to say it again today: Contraception saves lives. And if Paul Ryan was serious about pursuing "pro-life" policies, he'd admit this.

While the G-O-TEA culture warriors may be thrilled about the prospect of another battle in their War on Women, everyone else just wants an end to both the Armageddon death threats and the nonsensical attacks on women's health care.

Guess what Americans now consider to be the nation's biggest problem? Hint: It's not contraception. It's also not abortion. And it isn't even women making their own health care decisions. Nope, it's actually government dysfunction (according to Gallup). So instead of threatening to force Armageddon upon America if we don't force more women into unwanted pregnancies, why can't Paul Ryan and his fellow Republicans agree to solve America's actual biggest problem?

"Count on Joe"

Today, let's take another trip to the always exciting Nevada Progressive archives. This time, we're traveling back to September 2011. Rep. Joe Heck (R-Henderson) was caught doing a rare town hall meeting in Summerlin. And he had to answer a tough question from the audience on his vote for Rep. Paul Ryan's (R-Wisconsin) Medicare busting austerity budget earlier that year.



Ouch. He had to resort to rhetorical pretzel twists to defend that vote... Yet he voted for another Paul Ryan austerity budget in March 2012. But after he caught some political heat for those votes later that year, Rep. Joe Heck turned around and voted against the third Paul Ryan austerity budget last year.

Now, Heck seems to be feeling the "Ryan-mentum" again. This past June, Rep. Heck had Paul Ryan write a fundraising letter for his reelection campaign. Of course, the letter contains all the usual accusations of President Obama, Senator Harry Reid (D), and Nancy Pelosi being such meanie poopyheads who won't let the "YOUNG GUNS!!!" have any fun on Capitol Hill. Oh, and Rep. Ryan "can count on Joe as a leader in the struggle to revive our economy".

How so? Was he talking about the government shutdown that yanked $26 billion out of our economy? Is he talking about the continuing denial of unemployment insurance (UI) that's hut over e million Americans (including over 37,000 Nevadans)? Is he talking about the denial of a minimum wage increase that could have given our economy the extra boost we all need? Or is he just talking about his austerity program that's been suppressing economic growth?

Income inequality is a serious problem in this nation. Don't believe us? See the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and Standard & Poors (S&P) reports. Income inequality hinders economic growth.



And Paul Ryan's austerity regime is worsening our income inequality problem. Is that what he meant when he "can count on Joe as a leader in the struggle to revive our economy"? He can certainly "count on Joe" to vote for his policies that harm the economy and hurt working families. And if that's the message they want to share with Nevada voters, we won't stand in the way of that.

Shocker in New York... Upset in Nevada?

Last night, DC pundits were shocked by what they thought was impossible.

Democrat Kathy Hochul defeated Republican state Assemblywoman Jane Corwin in New York’s special election to replace former Rep. Chris Lee (R-NY). Despite the $2.36 million spent by groups like Karl Rove’s American Crossroads and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to keep the district red and the $60 per vote Corwin spent herself, Hochul secured a clear victory in a traditionally Republican district [...]

Viewed as a referendum on House Budget Chairman Paul Ryan’s plan to end Medicare, Hochul’s victory exemplifies the American public’s overwhelming disgust with the GOP push to force seniors to bear the burden of increasing health costs. Expecting a loss, several Republicans — including Corwin herself — tried to assert the election had nothing to do with Ryan’s Medicare plan. But DCCC chairman Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY) outlined the three reasons that Corwin lost the election: “[I]n alphabetical order, Medicare, Medicare and Medicare.”

Apparently, Paul Ryan's disgusting "roadmap" to destroy the American middle class proved to be quite the political stink bomb. Even Republicans admitted early on that this special election would be a referendum on their plan to unravel the American social safety net, which starts by ending Medicare. And now, Democrats are poised to use this NY-26 election as a launch pad to retake Congress.

"We can ensure we do not decimate Medicare," Hochul said. "We will keep the promises made to our seniors who have spent their lives paying into Medicare, so they can count on health care when they need it most."

If Democrats have their way, there will be a lot more speeches along those lines come November 2012. The chairs of both legislative election committees made clear on Tuesday that they believe they have found a winning formula they intend to use elsewhere.

"The election last night showed that Democrats have the keys to drive the budget debate and play offense in 2012," Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), chair of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, said in a statement. "The implications of this election extend to Senate races in battleground states and red states across the country. The results provide clear evidence that Democratic senators and senate candidates will be able to play offense across the country by remaining focused on the Republican effort to end Medicare and force seniors to pay thousands more for health care costs."

Rep. Steve Israel (D-NY), chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said that the party had "served notice to the Republicans" that the Medicare issue could hurt them.

"Even in one of the most Republican districts, seniors and independent voters rejected the Republican plan to end Medicare," he said. "The American people will continue to hold House Republicans accountable for their plan to end Medicare from now until election day 2012."

For Rob Zerban, a Democrat running against GOP budget guru Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) in 2012, the Hochul race was an instructive boost to his campaign hopes.

"I just am overwhelmed at the results from this election. It's a harbinger of things to come," he told TPM over the phone on Tuesday night. "I'm certainly going to make this a key issue in the 1st Congressional District in Wisconsin. ... Democrats are going to focus on how we can actualy shore up, strengthen, and keep Medicare solvent, and this will be a clear distinction in the 2012 cycle."

So can this be another factor that shakes up the already zany special election in Nevada's own 2nd Congressional District? The legal drama over how the election itself will be conducted ("Ballot Royale?" Or behind closed doors?) is proving to be a giant hot mess with none other than Dean Heller at the center of it. For quite some time, the focal point of the NV-02 special has been the (at times hilarious) cast of characters running. But now, is there a chance this will change and... GASP! ... the election may actually be decided on policy?

Don't laugh just yet. Notice these numbers (via DB).

Republicans falsely claim Nevada seniors will not be impacted by the GOP’s plan, but starting next year, more than 26,700 Nevada seniors will be forced to pay $15 million more in prescription drug costs [if the Ryan Budget is passed]. The Republican budget also slashes billions in health care through Medicaid, putting seniors at risk.

Specifically:

The Republican plan to end Medicare will increase out-of-pocket health care costs for a typical 65 year-old Nevada senior by $5,862 in 2022 – more than double the cost under current law.

The Republican plan could force at least 7,800 Nevada seniors to pay over $828,000 more for annual wellness visits in 2012.

In Nevada, more than 26,700 seniors would pay $15 million more for prescription drugs in 2012 alone under the Republican plan.

By turning Medicaid into a block grant program, the Republican plan could cost Nevada at least 9,600 private-sector jobs over the next five years.

In Nevada, the Republican plan could cut $1.7 billion in federal health care funding for seniors and the disabled through Medicaid, including life-saving nursing home care.”

I guess that's why Mark Amodei is already running scared and refusing to specifically endorse the Ryan Plan. However, Kirk Lippold has enthusiastically endorsed Ryan's plan. And in the not-all-that-distant past, all three Republican men have embraced it.

Amodei says he likes the "honesty" of the deep spending cuts found in the 2012 budget proposal from U.S. Rep. Paul Ryan, the Wisconsin Republican and House Budget Committee chairman, whose plan clashes with President Barack Obama's competing proposal. Brower likes the Ryan proposal, too, and says its plan to reduce corporate taxes while keeping President George W. Bush's tax cuts for the rich "could spur the economic activity we so desperately need." Lippold, a retired Navy commander, says Ryan's plan is a good blueprint that "sets forth some aggressive goals."

Meanwhile, I think we already know what Sharron Angle thinks about the Ryan Plan...





I think we know what's next. But funny enough, it's not just the usual Sharrontology. In fact, all the above mentioned Republicans have in some way endorsed Ryan's plan to destroy Medicare and undermine the middle class. Even if they try to run away and distance themselves from this, they will just look as silly as Jane Corwin did in New York's 26th Congressional District.

So maybe Mr. Gleaner will get his wish come true after all? Maybe the special election in Nevada's 2nd will be decided on the issues (not just the personalities) after all?

NV-Sen: The Truth Behind Berkley's New Ads (& Heller's Complaints About Them)

So the pundits are not liking this.



Why? It completely obliterates their previously prepared narrative of, "ZOMG!!! Democrats are running away from Shelley Berkley and her SCANDALS!!!!" They're having such a hard time realizing that somehow her campaign has been able to scoot past Dean Heller's manufactured "controversy" and turn the "scandalous" spotlight back onto Dean Heller and his actual record.

In particular, a handful of pundits are screaming out Berkley calling out Heller for his support of Paul Ryan's Medicare busting plan. While they're arguing over semantics, they're ignoring the fact that "Ryan-care" would indeed end the traditional Medicare system and dramatically raise health care costs for seniors if enacted.

Even a REPUBLICAN member of Congress recently admitted the truth behind Paul Ryan's spin. He even sent a flier to his constituents late last month highlighting his opposition to "Ryan-care"!

House Republicans approved a budget in April that would drive up Medicare costs for seniors, and Mitt Romney has embraced the plan crafted by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI). But not all in the party are in agreement. Ten Republicans voted against Ryan’s budget in April, and now, Rep. David McKinley (R-WV) is campaigning on his opposition to it. [...]

The GOP plan that McKinley opposes would give seniors the option of enrolling in traditional Medicare or taking a stipend to buy their own health care policy on the private market. Republicans have argued it would slow the federal government’s rising costs for Medicare, but the Congressional Budget Office says the plan would increase seniors’ out-of-pocket costs by privatizing Medicare.

In the flier, McKinley says Congress “must balance the budget,” but not on the backs of seniors. McKinley spokesman Jim Forbes told the Los Angeles Times that the congressman “is standing for what he believes in,” but in an election cycle dominated by health care and budget issues, McKinley’s stance is out of step with the rest of his party.

And this is exactly what Shelley Berkley has been saying. Unlike the manufactured "Kidney-gate SCANDAL!!!" about nothing, Heller actually voted for "Ryan-care". And if it's really not as frightening as Berkley's ad suggests, why won't Heller run on it? Why won't he just come out and defend his BFF Paul Ryan? What could he possibly be afraid of?

So keep this in mind as you hear media pundits console Dean Heller's campaign as they whine and complain about Shelley Berkley's new ads.

He's Here! Nevada Republicans to Embrace Paul Ryan Himself in Sparks Next Month.

Yes, he will really be in town next month. In fact, Paul Ryan will be headlining the Nevada Republican Convention in Sparks next month! I guess it wasn't enough that the Nevada GOP picked a guy twice convicted by the Nevada Ethics Commission (while serving on the Las Vegas City Council) as their new Chairman. No, they needed to spice up their convention even more by bringing in the creator of "Ryancare"!

Remember Paul Ryan? He's just the G-O-TEA "Budget Czar" who wants to redistribute wealth from the middle class and working poor to the 1%. Both Joe Heck and Dean Heller have doubled down (literally!) their support for their BFF, Paul Ryan, and his plan to kill Medicare. I'm sure they will be thrilled to share a stage with him!

And I'm sure Mitt Romney is excited to remind Nevadans that he fully supports Paul Ryan's budget.



I'm sure Nevada Republicans must be excited about making such vivid memories to last a lifetime (or at least great campaign ads for Nevada DEMOCRATS!).

What's He Talking About?

Last week, House Republican "leaders" unveiled their long awaited "principles for immigration reform". Yet while those "principles" didn't really seem all that principled, some media pundits nonetheless rejoiced because they were better than nothing. And now that Republicans have "principles" to rally around, then they must finally be preparing to pass some sort of comprehensive immigration reform (CIR)... Right?

Wrong. Already, top House Republicans are already running away from their own "principles". Why? Of course, it must be President Obama's fault!

When questioned by [ABC News' George] Stephanopoulos on whether the President would have an immigration bill to sign at the end of the year, [Rep. Paul] Ryan [R-Wisconsin] said, “I really don’t know the answer to that question. That is clearly in doubt. It depends on whether they’re willing to actually secure the border, actually have interior enforcement and not — and agree to not having an amnesty. If we can do that, where it’s security first, no amnesty, then we might be able to get somewhere.”

He added, ‘‘This isn’t a trust-but-verify, this is a verify-then-trust approach.”

Ryan has little reason to doubt Obama’s commitment based on his record. Statistics suggest Obama has been pretty willing thus far — nearly two million immigrants have been deported, “illegal entries are at a 40-year low,” there are more “boots on the ground” at the border than there have ever been in history, and the Senate bill would simultaneously secure the border and implement a biometric exit system that would track visa overstayers.

In fact, some progressives have criticized President Obama for deporting too many immigrants. Late last year, 29 House Democrats (including Rep. Dina Titus [D-Paradise]) sent a letter to President Obama urging him to halt deportations & expand DACA while immigrants are waiting for CIR to happen. So what is Paul Ryan talking about?

And what's he talking about when he says "amnesty"? Amnesty has never been on the table. Rather, S 744 contained plenty of border security & law enforcement provisions. And just over 3 months after S 744 passed the Senate in June, HR 15 was introduced in the House with the same border security & law enforcement provisions. And let's not forget that both bills would force undocumented immigrants to pay thousands of dollars worth of fines, learn English, go without any sort of publicly funded health insurance coverage, and endure a 13 year long wait before securing citizenship!

So what's Paul Ryan talking about? Both CIR bills introduced in Congress last year were anything but amnesty. And President Obama has gone to great lengths to enforce current immigration law. Why is he shooting down perhaps the last chance to pass CIR in the near future?

Is he just giving cover for House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) to permanently scuttle CIR? Is he trying to deflect blame from G-O-TEA backbenchers like Rep. Joe Heck (R-Henderson), backbenchers who risk losing if CIR is left by G-O-TEA "leadership" to die on the vine? Most likely, the answer to both questions is a resounding "Yes!" However, that's not all.

Let's remember why Reps. Boehner & Ryan are so afraid of bringing any kind of CIR to the House floor. Here's a hint: G-O-TEA Civil War. They simply don't want to do anything to antagonize the 21st Century Know Nothings too much. After all, they must save their "TEA" tinged political capital for the manufactured crisis.

So what's Paul Ryan talking about? In order to figure that out, we must dig through the political spin and uncover the reason why he and his fellow Republican "leaders" are so afraid of allowing any sort of sane, rational governance on Capitol Hill.

Why Ron Paul's "Movement" Still Matters

Remember when we discussed this back in May?

As much as some grassroots folks on the left and the right love to see epic ideological battles unfold at party conventions and purge all "unsavory moderates" out of their respective parties, the fact of the matter is that doing that gets us no closer to winning elections. (If anything, that HURTS efforts to win elections.) While it's always important to promote the values we believe in and hold fast to them, we can't punish political parties for focus on party building while perhaps shirking "ideology enforcement" duties. After all, the first responsibility of a political party is to build the infrastructure necessary to win elections. [...]

And this is why Orrin Johnson is panicking. Ron Paul's supporters care deeply for their libertarian beliefs, and they're set to accept nothing less than full fealty to those beliefs. But in pursuing complete ideological purity, they're also set to lose a whole lot of elections because they simply don't care about that stuff. This is why Nevada Republicans are in such dire straits. And it should serve as an important lesson to all the rest of us trying to balance ideological wishes with political reality.

So far, this truly has come to full fruition. And it's happened in a way that's truly scared Nevada Republican "elites". And now, we're set to finally experience the climax of this epic saga.

Putting a candidate’s name up for nomination is not the same as voting for the ultimate nominee. Paul’s supporters would have to persuade 1,144 delegates to switch their vote to take the nomination away from Romney.

Given the fact that Romney has won an overwhelming majority of the delegates, and given the party’s requirement that results in early states are binding, that’s unlikely.

In Nevada, for example, 20 of the 28 delegates are required to vote for Romney as the ultimate nominee, even if the individual delegate personally supports Paul.

Still, Paul supporters will not acknowledge defeat.

“We’ve been communicating with some other Ron Paul delegates. ... Anything’s possible,” said Carl Bunce, Paul’s former Nevada campaign chairman. “That’s the way conventions work. Right now, the Romney campaign is making sure his (Paul’s) name doesn’t get on the ballot. But if his name gets on there and Rand speaks, and Ron speaks, people wake up. I’ve seen it happen.”

Oh yes, that's right. Ron Paul's intensely devoted fan club still can't give up their fantasy of Ron Paul becoming this year's Republican Presidential Nominee. Never mind that RNC leaders have already set up next week's GOP Convention in Tampa to be one giant coronation ceremony for Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan.

Yet even though Ron Paul has no realistic chance of wresting the G-O-TEA nomination away from Mitt Romney, Romney's campaign keeps running scared. Romney and RNC staffers have had to negotiate with Ron Paul loyalists, giving them a prime time speaking role for US Senator (and son of Ron) Rand Paul (R-Kentucky), "The Most Conservative [National Party] Platform in Modern History", and even more concessions, just to convince them not to "ruin Willard's big moment". Yet despite all this, Ron Paul's Nevada troops refuse to concede this fight. And depending on how far they intend to take their quixotic quest in Tampa next week, it may cause yet another political headache for an ailing Romney campaign.

After all, a good chunk of the G-O-TEA base never really warmed up to Romney. They're only backing him now in hopes that "Favorite Son" Paul Ryan will end up serving as "The De Facto President" if Romney wins... Or becomes the favorite for the 2016 GOP Nomination if Romney doesn't. Even though Ron Paul's devotees represent "the fringe of the ('tea party') fringe", they may nonetheless remind America of just how brutal the G-O-TEA primary season was... To Mitt Romney's political fantasies and ambition.

And this is how Ron Paul and his "movement" have managed to remain relevant all this year.