financial viability of medicare for the next ten years. your the republican plan does nothing to put medicare on a sound financial footing over the next ten years. i do give paul ryan credit for raising the long-term viability of medicare as an issue. but if you exempt those savings, the long-term viability is negated. you have numbers, white boards. the bottom line, does this boil down to who is more credible on the issue of medicare? yes. they re both finger pointing saying the other guy for a confused person, and anybody can be excused for being con fufused on this. the question is, who do you trust more to protect or strengthen medicare? mitt romney or barack obama? the argument, just very quickly. the argument is ryan was the leader of george w. bush s entitlement that s a scare tactic. ryan actually tried to hammer
veterans don t have the i.d. that is going to qualify for this very strict voter i.d. the judge has now imposed. so they re confused. some people are going to go to the polls and be turned away. they re going to find the door to democracy slammed shut and they will not be able to exercise the franchise. others are going to find insurmountable hurdles to try to get that voter i. d. in time for the fall. leila mcdowell, with the civil rights group. thank you very much. we appreciate your time. thank you. we ve been telling you on the campaign trail, the focus, on medicare, the debate. is that the debate they want to have right now? our first read team says, the central premise of romney campaign at least from what we ve heard over the past year has been the economy. what are we all talking about today, tomorrow, probably through the weekend? medicare. nbc news senior political reporter mark murray joins us live. paul ryan says this is the debate they want, they want it now, the
whiteboard, whatever he had? it doesn t matter if it s a chalkboard or not. it was limited to information, at least on the plan he says now is near identical to paul ryan. well, what mitt romney was trying to do today is what they also did with their new tv ad that came out on tuesday and they re really welcoming this fight. they want to take it to president obama. they are making this calculation that what president obama did on his health care law in 2010 regarding cuts that were made or slowing the growth of the medicare program is actually politically worse and more politically damaging than what paul ryan and mitt romney are proposing in their proposal to substantially transform medicare. do they have a singular proposal? i mean, usually when you want to fight, you walk into the ring. the person swings, you swing back hopefully harder. in case case, are we clear what
savings from the 2013 budget with ryan. governor romney says now his plan is near identical to ryan s plan. what do you say to that? how do you draw a line there? well, i think it s a valid point. there s an important distinction to make, though, when you re talking about dissimilarity in the $700 billion. the $700 billion in saving winds up going to bay fpay for the affordable care act under obama care. under ryan s plan, it would not go toward that. he would make sure that we maintain medicare advantage. would it go to tax cuts as jonathan alter is saying? would it go to tax cuts? i mean, whatever the case, the discussion about growing the economy is certainly relevant as well. no, i mean, the money that ryan and now romney would save by making these changes in medicare and much, much crueller changes in medicaid which will also impact seniors who use
the plan is from romney and paul ryan? romney went from i m my own man, i have my own plan, to, again, we have an identical plan. tamron, we actually do have a very good idea of the plan they want to construct. the thing is, they haven t really been talking about that other than saying they want to save medicare for future seniors or preserve medicare. here s what paul ryan proposed and house republicans passed in 2011. it was a plan where seniors and future seniors would receive either a voucher or premium support to purchase health care on the private insurance market. in 2012, paul ryan modified that to allow seniors to have the option once they had that voucher premium support to either go to private insurers or stay with traditional medicare. it s that second version that mitt romney says he supports. that s pretty much their plan. democrats think that substantial transformation is what makes them vulnerable come the fall. but the highlight from today, and we ve heard it sever