GOP releases latest hostage demand

[Mike Luckovich cartoon]

The GOP apparently now realizes they're going to have to cave on the tax rate hike for the wealthy 2 percenters. So the "new" GOP plan is to replay last year's debt ceiling fiasco:

Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) introduced a bill Wednesday to trade nearly $1 trillion in entitlement savings for an equal hike in the debt ceiling.

Corker said the Dollar For Dollar Act would include $937 billion in savings from Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, with an equivalent, dollar-for-dollar hike to the debt ceiling. [...]

Corker said his bill would raise the age of Medicare eligibility to 67 and would include the Medicare Total Health package that would increase private-sector competition for covering the elderly. ...

Because everybody knows private insurers are just going to fight each other to the death in order to grab the lucrative coverage for the olds and their increasing health issues.

Corker said he’d also “slowly” raise the age of eligibility for Social Security benefits, but did not specify an age.

The bill also includes a chained Consumer Price Index for Social Security, which will slash benefits, especially for those tiresome olds that refuse to die. The longer you live, the less you get. And as an added bonues, if those old moochers expect to get a free ride on the poverty gravy train, well he'll show them. The bill institutes "a waiver program for states for Medicaid coverage." Which means the states can effectively kill the coverage for anyone they consider underserving. You know, like old moochers who refuse to die in a timely manner.

Makes you kind nostalgic for the old "death panels," doesn't it? And did I dream that the GOPers just spent the whole last election cycle wailing hysterically about how the Democrats were trying to kill Medicare? Not sure, since I've yet to see a single Big Media report mention it.