In an
interview for ABC's "Subway Series", House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi says that Democrats "have a very good chance" to win back the House in 2012. Key to that chance, coming back to key Dem strengths and values, and that means protecting Medicare.
"What we're about is policy," she added. "What we want is to change the view that the Republicans have that it is OK to abolish Medicare [and] to make seniors pay more for less while we give tax breaks to big oil. That's not a formula that I think works for the middle class."
And that leads to the good news in the budget and debt ceiling fight, at least if Dem negotiators are listening to her:
Pelosi said that cuts to seniors' benefits are "absolutely" off the table in the ongoing deficit reduction negotiations, but suggested that Congress could improve Medicare by working to eliminate fraud and also by giving the Secretary of Health and Human Services unilateral authority to negotiate for lower prices for the endangered entitlement program.
"When you talk about Medicare, the first thing I would do if I ruled the world would be to allow the secretary of HHS to negotiate for lower prices. That would save tens of billions of dollars," Pelosi said. "The last place we need to go—we don't ever have to go there—is to what the Republicans are doing: Eliminate Medicare [and] make seniors pay more for less as you give tax breaks to big oil and say that's how we have to reduce the deficit. We don't subscribe to that."
Pelosi said the election in 2012 "is not about Paul Ryan [the architect of the Republicans' budget and Medicare proposals]. It is about the Republicans in Congress."
She's articulating what should be the core for both policy and politics for Dems, what it's always been: contrast. Dems are about making smart policy that protects the middle class, Republicans are about giving big tax breaks to big oil (in a nutshell). That's going to be hard argument to make with 9%+ unemployment unless we see a major jobs push, which there's no indication of on the horizon.
So protecting Medicare, and with it Social Security and Medicaid, is pretty much all they got. Let's hope they all get that as clearly as Pelosi does.