The Villages, Fla.
“This is my mom Betty,” vice presidential candidate Paul Ryan said as he took the stage at a campaign rally with his 78-year-old mother in Florida’s largest retirement community. “She’s why I’m here,” Ryan continued. “She and her grandkids are why I’m here.”
On the campaign trail this week, Ryan’s discussion of Medicare has focused on President Obama’s taking $716 billion from Medicare to pay for Obamacare, along with brief reassurances that he and Mitt Romney will protect the program. But in Florida today, Ryan put Medicare front and center. He both stepped up his attacks on Obamacare’s plan to change Medicare for current seniors and made a positive case for reforming the program for Americans under the age of 55. Ryan warned that Obamacare installed a board of bureaucrats that will “cut Medicare in ways that will lead to denied care for current seniors.” And he framed his case for reform in terms of family values—in terms of his own obligation to protect Medicare as it is today for his mother, and to reform it in his generation so that his children will benefit from a social safety net and a debt-free nation.
