Posted on 05/17/2011 10:21:27 AM PDT by CutePuppy
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) on Monday sought to walk back his controversial remarks on healthcare after coming under friendly fire from the right.
Gingrich, who's acknowledged that his discipline and judgment would be a key metric of success in his bid for the Republican presidential nomination, had come under intense criticism from conservatives stunned by his comments on NBC's “Meet the Press."
“I am completely opposed to the ObamaCare mandate on individuals," Gingrich said in a video posted to his website on Monday. “I am for the repeal of ObamaCare and I am against any effort to impose a federal mandate on anyone, because it is fundamentally wrong and, I believe, unconstitutional."
The Web video was posted less than 24 hours after Gingrich, one week into his formal White House bid, criticized Medicare reforms included in the House Republican budget and offered support for the concept of an individual mandate to buy health insurance.
Gingrich expressed support for people “being required to have health insurance," and told “Meet the Press" host David Gregory, “I believe all of us have a responsibility to help pay for healthcare."
Later on Monday, the former Speaker again tried to clarify his comments, saying he viewed the federal mandate as unconstitutional but reiterating his belief that individuals should be responsible to pay for the care that they receive.
Under the 10th Amendment, states should be free to design a system that works best to achieve that goal, Gingrich added in an endorsement of a position similar to the one advocated last week by former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who faces his own set of challenges in the GOP presidential primary because of the healthcare law he supported in his state.
Gingrich described Medicare reforms in the House GOP budget as “right-wing social engineering" and radical change. Democrats have been hitting the GOP hard on the proposed Medicare reforms, and the former Speaker's criticism seemed to play into their hands.
“With allies like that, who needs the left?" asked House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who authored the Medicare reforms, in a radio interview.
Ryan's proposal would transform Medicare into a voucher-based system for Americans under the age of 55.
Former Sen. Rick Santorum (Pa.), one of Gingrich's foes for the Republican nomination, pounced on both sets of comments.
“For several years, Newt Gingrich has deserved a lot of credit for thinking through a great many issues in a serious and interesting fashion," Santorum said in a statement. “But his criticism of Congressman Paul Ryan's Medicare reform plan yesterday was a big departure from Speaker Gingrich's often sound policy proposals."
Santorum said it is “out of line with conservative principles" to support an individual mandate, something he said both Gingrich and Romney have done in recent appearances. The Massachusetts healthcare law spearheaded by Romney includes an individual mandate.
The conservative group Club for Growth seized on Gingrich's comments to say that they exemplified why Gingrich, as president, would “sometimes be a major disappointment to fiscal conservatives."
Gingrich on Monday acknowledged that he “may have been too dramatic" in describing Ryan's plan as social engineering, but renewed his warnings to Republicans to tread lightly on Medicare, which polls suggest voters do not want to change.
“We just went through two years of Obama trying to ram something down our throat that people didn't want," Gingrich said on conservative pundit Michael Gallagher's radio show. “My message to conservatives is: Be very careful, and don't get in the habit of trying to ram things down people's throats."
Gingrich accused the media of using “gotcha" tactics to take his words “dramatically out of context."
“I don't have a fight with Paul Ryan; we would approach Medicare differently," he said. “I don't think that's a fight - that's part of the legislative process."
Gingrich had previously offered support for the Ryan budget. In an interview earlier this month with Time magazine, he said he would have voted for the Ryan plan, which he called a “first step" toward addressing the deficit.
Writers on some conservative blogs on Monday were wondering what Gingrich was thinking, and his statements are likely to raise worries about whether Gingrich has the discipline necessary to win a campaign for president.
We seem to have to parse terms a lot in order to agree that Gingrich got misunderstood yesterday, and I don't think that voters are in a mood to mince words, wrote Ed Morrissey, of the influential conservative blog Hot Air.
GOP lawmakers who served under Gingrich's Speakership, from 1995 to 1999, have described a style of leadership that sometimes thrashed wildly from one issue to another.
That assessment has at times been reflected in seemingly conflicting statements. When President Obama first launched strikes against Libya, Gingrich said that he didn't favor military intervention, despite having said days earlier that he favored establishing a no-fly zone over the North African nation. Gingrich's camp blamed the media for the confusion.
The former Speaker acknowledged Sunday that he faces questions about his ability to stay disciplined.
“I think it's fair to say that ... one of the tests on the campaign trail is going to be whether I have the discipline and the judgment to be president," he said. “I think that's a perfectly fair question."
Gingrich seems to understand that just because ObamaCare is unpopular and is going to down to defeat doesn't mean that "reforming" entire Medicare system can or should be done from the budget, at the same time. Putting Medicare reform into the budget process will only confuse and lose the support of a lot of the people who otherwise would be for Ryan's budget. In fact, putting Medicare reform into the budget process is jeopardizing both the budget fight and Medicare reform.
Do the budget, defeat ObamaCare in states and in courts and then there will be a natural need for reforming Medicare where several ideas, including running of Medicare by the federal government entirely (possibly by only giving block grants to states).
Keep it simple, GOP. First, do the budget. Second, defeat ObamaCare and win elections with Medicare and entitlements reforms in the platform. Third, when elected, reform entitlements.
Republicans on Capitol Hill may be in the process of learning a hard lesson: Meddling with Medicare, whatever the nation's fiscal circumstances, just isn't popular.
They are feeling the heat now because of House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) controversial plan to turn Medicare into a type of voucher system. Presented as a serious attempt to fix the program's projected shortfalls, the proposal instead appears to have turned the political tide back toward the congressional Democrats, who were on the ropes after last November's midterms.
Fifty-three percent of voters recently surveyed by The Hill said they would not accept any reduction in Medicare benefits even if doing so 'would help get the national debt and federal deficits under control.'
Medicare also appears to have boosted Democratic nominee Kathy Hochul's campaign in the special election in New York's 26th District. Recent polls show her competitive or slightly ahead of Republican nominee Jane Corwin, although a Tea Party candidate complicates the handicapping of that race.
"I think the Ryan budget has given us the impetus," Hochul told MSNBC last week. She added that, in conversations with voters in the upstate district, conservatives and liberals alike "were talking about two things: jobs and protecting Medicare. And the Republicans in Washington appear to be tone-deaf to that."
The GOP on Capitol Hill may be belatedly getting the message, however.
Last month, it seemed like House Republicans were intent upon charging ahead with the Ryan proposal. Despite Democratic attacks - including one from the president himself - only four Republicans defected when the measure came to a vote.
Republicans suffered through some testy town halls during the April recess - and the party leadership appears to have retreated on the issue ever since.
House leaders do not plan to put Ryan's blueprint into authorization legislation. Senate Republicans, meanwhile, have introduced a deficit-cutting bill that calls for more Medicare spending than Obama has embraced.
Republicans accuse Democrats of trying to scare seniors by attacking their Medicare plan, but political analysts note the GOP was doing the same thing to Democrats last year. The GOP seized on $500 billion in Medicare cuts in President Obama's push for healthcare reform to attack Democrats. The criticism nearly torpedoed the entire measure, and helped Republicans win the House last fall.
The success of the attacks, which have a history that goes back well before the Obama healthcare law, creates legitimate questions over whether it's possible for the political system to agree to changes to Medicare despite the budgetary implications of doing nothing.
"When the other side says 'Cut Medicare spending,' Republicans and Democrats say, ˜That's unconscionable,'" said Joe Antos, a former health adviser at the Congressional Budget Office now at the American Enterprise Institute.
Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), a longtime member of the House Ways and Means Committee, said some on Capitol Hill believe the “4th of never" is an ideal time to revamp the popular entitlement program.
"I think it's always been the third rail," said Rep. Rob Andrews (D-N.J.).
And while most current members were not serving then, many veteran lawmakers remember the miscalculation Congress made in 1988 when it enacted a law to provide catastrophic illness and prescription drug benefits, partly by requiring the wealthiest seniors to pay more.
In the summer of 1989, then-Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dan Rostenkowski (D-Ill.), was confronted and chased down a Chicago street by angry seniors. The law was soon repealed.
Even more infamously, five years later, Hillary Clinton's healthcare bill crashed soon after takeoff partly due to concerns over how it would affect senior citizens.
These failures are all the more frustrating for many policy-makers because there is, in fact, broad agreement on the need for reform.
is growing that Medicare will go broke unless the body politic takes action. In their annual report released on Friday, the program's trustees said Medicare will run out of money five years earlier than previously estimated because of the ailing economy.
"Projected long-run program costs for both Medicare and Social Security are not sustainable under currently scheduled financing," the trustees wrote, "and will require legislative corrections if disruptive consequences for beneficiaries and taxpayers are to be avoided."
Republicans are barely able to contain their dismay at what they perceive as Democratic politicking on the issue.
"Where is the criticism of Democrats for not even being willing to look at entitlements and do something to try and bring those under control?" Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) asked plaintively on MSNBC last week. "Medicare is $38 trillion in unfunded liability."
In a sign of increasing panic, Dick Morris, a columnist for The Hill, recently wrote GOP leaders should allow their members a new vote to repudiate their support for the Ryan Medicare reforms.
"House freshmen, if they wish to become sophomores, must demand that Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) set a vote that permits them to undo their support for the Medicare portion of the Ryan budget," wrote Morris.
Yet, for all the challenges, it is possible to make changes to Medicare and survive.
Medicare was significantly overhauled on a bipartisan basis in 1997, during former President Bill Clinton's second term. Clinton, working with a Republican Congress, passed the Balanced Budget Act, which included a slew of reforms that bolstered Medicare's solvency.
Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), a longtime member of the House Ways and Means Committee with jurisdiction over Medicare, predicts Medicare reforms will eventually pass.
Pressed on when that will happen, McDermott responded, with a smile, "Democracy reacts when the people speak."
Any Republican who sat on a couch with Nancy Pelosi to fight global warming is simply too stupid to be president. One can have twenty university degrees and still be stupid.
Hey Newt, go cry on Nancy Pelousy’s shoulder.
Don’t dis St. Paul Ryan, Newt. You’ve lost it forever with me and mine.
The article is improperly titled. Gingrich is the aggressor here, and attacked the right. He has become a pitiful example of what not to do with one’s life and honor.
It's a fair question that has been answered.
Fiberglass and horse’s ass.
"You’re an embarrassment to our party."
Gingrich needs to go to the range with a photo of hisself and Pelosi on the couch and show us a tight grouping centered just above his shoulders (in the picture - though Newt does seem to attract ricochets).
Gingrich?
“As far as I’m concerned, just take him out and shoot him.”
http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/10/cokie-on-polanski-just-take-him-out-and-shoot-him.html
about makes me puke.
I heard Mark Levin interview Newt last night. I heard leadership, command of the issues, and substantive positions - oh wait, THAT WAS DR. LEVIN!
We need to go deeper in the roster. Newt could be a good distraction for a while, could be a good sparring partner with a better candidate, but otherwise... not interested.
He understands conservatism well, but he has Bush disease - he just wants to be part of the intelligentsia and loved by the MSM too much. So while his instincts seem right, every so often his inner RINO pops out.
He’s like the smart guy raised in church who knows his bible backwards and forwards, but inside would rather not be in church at all.
Newt needs to shut up and sit down... his time is over.... he proved unreliable and untrustworthy.
I am not about to vote for this RINO ever.
Mark destroyed him last night. I heard it and Mark was keeping things simple and logical with Newts phoney premise of having a “discussion” on this issue. Newt stumbled around and looked like a total incompetent and phoney. That was the moment I realized that he is done in this election. Everyone hypes him as the smartest and greatest debater in the GOP. That episode showed he is neither and has a bit of a temperament issue.
I really don't know what happend to Newt. He was the next Reagan.
Now he is a footnote.
My guess is that he wanted to make his mark on Conservatism. The problem is that Conservatism does not need any new marks.
This is garbage.
The Ryan Medicare reform plan does NOTHING to reduce Medicare benefits for anyone receiving them or about to receive them.
What is does is offer options to people at least TWENTY YEARS out from being eligible for Medicare as to whether they want to enroll in Medicare or use another vehicle to provide for their own health care in old age.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.