At first, former president Bill Clinton was caught on camera’s having a polite conversation with Rep. Paul Ryan at this morning’s fiscal summit sponsored by the Pete Peterson Foundation, praising him for the work he was doing to highlight the problems with Medicare. Once on stage however, Clinton’s tune changed. The Daily Beast’s Howard Kurtz:
Clinton threw a roundhouse right at Paul Ryan’s plan, approved by the House, to turn the health care program for the elderly into a voucher system. Not only would that approach fail to cut costs, he said “people will use less, get sicker and die quickly. Or they will be poorer because they’ll have to spend so much of their money on health care.”
ABC News cameras captured the semi-candid conversation between former President Bill Clinton and GOP Rep. Paul Ryan. “I’m glad that we won this race in New York, but I hope that the Democrats don’t use as an excuse to do nothing on Medicare.” said Clinton to Ryan.
“My guess is that it’s going to sink in paralysis is what’s going to happen,” says Ryan glumly, “And you know the math, its. . we knew we were putting ourselves out there but you gotta start with this you gotta get out there, you gotta get moving. . ”
“If you ever wanna talk about it. .,” Clinton begins, “Yeah,”says Ryan, “I’ll give you a call.”
