opinion

Montini: Medicare hatchet man Rep. Paul Ryan hosting Debbie Lesko

In Arizona’s heavily Republican 8th Congressional District, anchored by the Sun Cities and the senior citizens who populate them, Republican Debbie Lesko’s campaign has scheduled an event at Capitol Hill featuring the man who would slash Medicare, House Speaker Paul Ryan.

Does that not seem a bit … odd?

After the Republican-controlled Congress passed a massive tax cut bill benefiting, mostly, the super rich, and putting the country $1 trillion more in debt, Ryan and the Republicans said that to make up for putting the nation in the financial toilet they were going after “entitlements.” Meaning, Medicare.

Do CD8 voters value health care?

However, in order to pass their tax bill and not lose too many mid-term elections Republicans promised not to cut Medicare … this year.

They want to get past the elections. They want to guarantee Republicans like Lesko get elected, then … bam.

The plan is to fool residents of communities like Sun City and Sun City West into voting against their best interests.

(I get the strategy. When has a plan to fool voters NOT worked?)

Voting against their best interests

As Ryan said late last year, “We're going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform, which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit. Frankly, it's the health care entitlements that are the big drivers of our debt, so we spend more time on the health care entitlements — because that's really where the problem lies, fiscally speaking.”

Many critics of the tax law said it would lead to an attack on Medicare and Social Security.

As John F. Wasik wrote in Forbes magazine, “There's little doubt that the GOP's tax ‘reform’ scheme is a sinister shell game that will eventually slash Medicare and other key social insurance programs.”

Lesko will go lockstep with Ryan in that scheme.

'A sinister shell game'

After all, he’s the star of the April 18 event for Lesko with a $2,500-per-ticket price tag.

President Donald Trump carried CD8 by more than 20 points. The voter registration advantage for Republicans is enormous. Still, the Republican National Committee has pumped hundreds of thousands of dollars into Lesko’s campaign, afraid that voters might actually recognize that Lesko’s opponent is a smart, articulate, Medicare-friendly Democratic candidate, the physician Hiral Tipirneni.

Still, in what is the most brazen display of audacity, shamelessness and old-fashioned chutzpah that I can remember, Republicans are counting on the very people who would be most hurt by the coming Medicare attacks to put Lesko in office.

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