Eric Griego
The GOP’s message to our parents and grandparents sounds like a broken record: If you get sick, you’re on your own.
This week, the Republicans in Congress will rally around the Budget Committee Chairman Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget plan to protect tax cuts for the wealthiest 1 percent by doubling down on their commitment to end Medicare as we know it.
How? By ending Medicare’s guaranteed earned benefits with a privatization scheme forcing seniors to buy the best insurance they can afford with a fixed-amount voucher. What the Republicans won’t say is that if the voucher’s amount isn’t enough to cover certain health problems, then tough luck being a senior living on fixed income.
When asked last week about the Republican push to end Medicare, Ryan said, “We’re just going to keep doing it and doing it, to show that we’re serious and we’re committed.”
The GOP’s message to our parents and grandparents sounds like a broken record: If you get sick, you’re on your own.
It’s unconscionable that the Republicans insist on forcing seniors to give up Medicare’s guaranteed benefits to keep paying for tax cuts for millionaires. From George W. Bush’s push to privatize Social Security to the current Republican Congress’ relentless quest to end Medicare as we know it, the Republican war on seniors must be stopped.
That is why I am calling on the leading Republican candidates in this race – namely the conservative Dan Lewis and his rival Janice Arnold-Jones – to choose: End Medicare or keep tax cuts for millionaires. I will deliver thousands of petitions to each, starting with Lewis, this week, and tell each to get on the record about their support for the Ryan plan. We must make it clear that there will be a political price to pay for trying to end Medicare while coddling millionaires and big health care companies.
As congressman, I will fight to protect Medicare and Social Security from any attempts to cut and undermine them. New Mexicans can count on it.
Griego, a Democrat, is a candidate for the First Congressional District seat in the U.S. House.