State GOP Official: The Medicare Debate Is A Debate We're Happy To Have

Republican Party of Wisconsin Vice Chairman Brian Schimming and former State Sen. Van Wanggaard stepped off of the Romney/Ryan bus as about 30 Republican supporters cheered their arrival Monday at the Victory Center in Mount Pleasant.

Schimming joked about how well Mitt Romney supporters, and even non-supporters, responded to the bus. Romney, the GOP presidential nominee, picked Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wisconsin), 10 days ago and the Romney/Ryan bus stopped in Racine on Monday.

“We went by the occupy place there in Madison and I gotta hand it to them, they came up with a whole new way to say we’re number one with the one fingered salute,” Schimming said. “…But I gotta call it ‘Bus-force one.”

Schimming said he would give President Barack Obama a deal, that when Romney and Ryan get elected he’d give Obama the bus if he used it to go back to Chicago.

Joking aside, Schimming pointed out that the both campaigns have focused recently on Medicare.

“And we’re just fine having that debate about Medicare and this administration has made it worse,” he said. “This administration has gone and cut $716 million dollars out of Medicare to hand it over to Obama care, to finance Obama care.”

Over the past 10 days, Romney and Obama have locked into a debate about the Medicare program.

According to a story by ABC, Romney has framed Obama's Medicare plan as a government takeover of healthcare. ABC also reported Romney's plan would not change Medicare benefits for people 55 and older.

Romney explained:

"Do you think raiding Medicare to pay for 'Obama care' is an achievement? Do you think empowering a board of bureaucrats to cut Medicare an achievement? Neither do I. Medicare should not be used as a piggy bank for 'Obama care.' Medicare should be used to be the promise that it made to our current seniors. Period. End of Story."

But during a press conference Monday written about on a New York Times blog, President Obama said nearly 5.4 million seniors with Medicare benefits have saved more than $4.1 billion on prescription drugs, or $768 per person. That was information included in a Department of Health and Human Services report which also announced 18 million seniors with Medicare (benefits) have taken advantage of new preventive care benefits in the first seven months of the Affordable Care Act.

“These are big deals for a lot of Americans,” Obama said. “And these are important ways that the improvements made as part of the Affordable Care Act have strengthened Medicare.”

Still, Schimming hammered home the message that with over 8 percent unemployment for 41 straight months, that there was no recovery in sight.

“The supposed recovery that we are in, as far as I’m concerned, is just getting worse now,” he said. “So there’s no hope, there’s no kind of change, they rammed Obama care down our throat, even though every poll in the country was showing that we didn’t want Obama care and now they raid Medicare to pay for Obama care.”

Obama supporters , when people went to Wilson's Coffee and Tea in Racine to speak against Ryan's budget, and his proposed changes to Medicare, including the introduction of vouchers.

Schimming asked the question of whether people were better off now than they were four years ago, and many in the audience yelled, “no.”

With 140,000 people having lost their jobs in Wisconsin, Obama shouldn’t be re-elected on that record, Schimming said.

“We are clearly not better off than we were four years ago,” Schimming said. “There’s no doubt about that, there’s no measure – any statistical measure – that we are better off (now) than four years ago.”