The party of 'screw the elderly' blaming the other party for screwing the elderly

Fiscal frauds

By Greg Sargent, WashPost, Updated: April 10, 2013

Okay, if this isn’t the clarifying moment we’ve been waiting for, nothing will ever be.

This afternoon on CNN, GOP Rep. Greg Walden, the chairman of the NRCC, opened fire on Obama’s budget by claiming it is an assault on seniors:

“I’ll tell you when you’re going after seniors the way he’s already done on Obamacare, taken $700 billion out of Medicare to put into Obamacare and now coming back at seniors again, I think you’re crossing that line very quickly here in terms of denying access to seniors for health care in districts like mine certainly and around the country,” he said on CNN Wednesday afternoon.

This makes it all but certain that Republicans will use Obama’s Chained CPI proposal to attack Democrats in the 2014 elections for cutting Social Security. Brian Beutler points out that this vindicates the warnings of those on the left who predicted this would happen.

I think this certainly could matter in 2014, but it’s too early to say for sure whether it actually be all that big a problem. As I noted below, the White House thinks 2012 shows that Dems can successfully litigate against Republican arguments on entitlements. Either way, we’ll soon find out.

(More here.)