August 16, 2012 10:49 PM UTC

Romney All Over The Map On Medicare, "Ryan Plan"

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• by: Colorado Pols

Since Rep. Paul Ryan joined the GOP’s presumptive presidential ticket last week, the question of whether Ryan’s nominal boss Mitt Romney supports Ryan’s controversial budget plans from his time in Congress has not been clearly answered. The latest information to be had on the subject comes from this interview yesterday with Wisconsin’s WBAY-TV:

Action 2 News: Your senior campaign advisor said Sunday if the Ryan Budget would have come to your desk you would have signed it. In a January debate you called it a proposal that was absolutely right on. So I guess why are you distancing yourself from at least the Medicare portion of the Ryan Budget?

Romney: Actually, Paul Ryan and my plan for Medicare, I think, is the same if not identical–it’s probably close to identical. [Pols emphasis] Our plan is for people 55 years of age and older. There’s no change. The only change I’d mention for 55 or older is we’d restore the $817 billion President Obama took out of the Medicare trust fund…

Action 2 News: Critics, though, will say while you say you’re on the same page as Congressman Ryan you are providing no examples of the differences – one you mention is the more than $700 billion being cut.

Romney: Well, I’m not sure what critics you’re referring to, but what I can tell you is Paul Ryan in joining my Presidential team is on board with my policy… The place there’s a big difference is between myself and Paul Ryan and the President.

What can we glean from this interview? Well, depending on whether or not Romney stands by these remarks in the coming weeks–and of course there’s no way of guaranteeing that–he’s made a significant step by endorsing Paul Ryan’s budget plans as “nearly identical” to his own. That would presumably include Paul’s plans to replace Medicare with a voucher-type program, but he doesn’t say. But Romney says he would not “cut” the roughly $700 billion from Medicare that both Obama’s and Ryan’s proposals assume will be saved as part of “Obamacare.”

And again, these are not benefit cuts, but cost savings from waste reduction and providers.

In short, Mitt Romney has apparently embraced the privatization component of Paul Ryan’s budget, but not the cost saving agreed on by both Paul Ryan and President Obama. The inherent conflict in this approach is resolved by asserting that Ryan works for Romney now, and would follow Romney’s lead. Meaning Romney is embracing the least popular aspect of Ryan’s plan, while spurning the cost savings on which there is already bipartisan agreement.

Of course, none of this rhetoric may have a shred of value since Romney so often changes his positions as soon as his campaign realizes they are politically harmful. Republicans are already hard at work distancing both Romney and Ryan from the worst of the “Ryan Plan,” arguing that Medicare privatization is an “old proposal” of Ryan’s (2011 of course being the distant past).

What we don’t see here is anything voters can trust.