[bigbob]

It’s the wrong issue.

Medicaid and gimme handout free money from Obama’s unlimted stash as well as state-funded welfare entitlements are going to catch up with us sooner than Medicare, which is a hot-button (”you’re killing Grandma!”) issue.

[Conservative Coulter Fan]

It is not the wrong issue. It is a fundamental question about where conservatives out to stand on the issue that will become the entire theme Obama and the Democrats hope to ride on all the way to 2012.

And Medicare is the largest of the entitlement program problems and I'll quote Robert Fischer, the CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas: " Medicare Part A, which covers hospital stays; Medicare B, which covers doctor visits; and Medicare D, the drug benefit that went into effect just 29 months ago. The infinite-horizon present discounted value of the unfunded liability for Medicare A is $34.4 trillion. The unfunded liability of Medicare B is an additional $34 trillion. The shortfall for Medicare D adds another $17.2 trillion. The total? If you wanted to cover the unfunded liability of all three programs today, you would be stuck with an $85.6 trillion bill. That is more than six times as large as the bill for Social Security. It is more than six times the annual output of the entire U.S. economy."

[cradle of freedom]

How about e-verify for Medicaid, food stamps and other government welfare programs? These measures would get lots of support from the vast majority of Americans; Republican, independent and Democrat alike. Everybody knows that there is a tremendous amount of waste in the welfare programs. Even many illegal aliens are receiving these programs even though they are not supposed to.

If the Republicans started with these issues, they would get a big round of applause from the American people, would save billions for taxpayers’ dollars and would build up a lot of trust from the voters so that that the Republicans would be seen as the responsible and trustworthy party. When you go after Medicare first, you are waving a red flag in front of the bull and just causing a lot of animosity for yourself. Fix the problems of the freeloaders first and then address the entitlements that apply to honest working Americans.