GOP Committed to Medicare Overhaul

The Washington Post reports

Senior Republicans said Friday that they are committed to a controversial overhaul of Medicare and will continue to support it as part of their deficit-reduction plan despite strong White House opposition.

The late-afternoon proclamation came at the end of a confusing week in which several GOP leaders publicly acknowledged that the most ambitious aspects of the plan would never be enacted, creating the impression they were distancing themselves from the politically unpopular proposal less than three weeks after pushing rank-and-file Republicans to vote for it.

House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio), House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and four other leading Republicans said they remained committed to transforming Medicare into a program that would have seniors use federal funds to purchase insurance on the private market. And they said the proposal remains a part of the ongoing talks on raising the federal debt limit.

“This has been and remains the Republican position. We are committed to our budget and to making the reforms necessary to grow our economy and create jobs, preserve and strengthen Medicare, and put our nation on a path to pay down the debt,” Boehner, Cantor and the four other Republicans said in a joint statement.