When a plan doesn't poll well, don't change the plan ... just change the name

Voucher Denial

Paul Krugman, NYT

So, I was airborne during the VP debate, which means no theater criticism. But I do have the transcript. And I thought it was interesting that Ryan was the first to use the word "voucher", as a preemptive strike to try to stop Biden from using it to characterize his plan.

Indeed, the official line seems to be that you're a liar if you call a plan under which people receive a fixed sum to spend on insurance, as opposed to simply getting insurance, a voucher scheme.

Among the lying liars, then, is the guy who, back in 2009, described the Ryan plan as "converting Medicare into defined contribution sort of voucher system". Oh, wait: that was Paul Ryan.

We've seen this movie before. For decades the right pushed for Social Security privatization -- their own term for it. The Cato Institute even had a Project on Social Security Privatization. Then they found that the term polled badly, and tried to pretend that only evil liberals accused them of favoring such a terrible thing (Cato even tried, incompetently, to purge its web site of all references to the program's previous name).

So here we go again. Oh, and Ryan also, in the course of the debate, endorsed .. Social Security privatization.

(Article here.)