Sherrod Brown: Obama gets it on Medicare, jobs

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/post/sherrod-brown-obama-gets-it-on-medicare-jobs/2011/03/03/AF7rWW0G_blog.html

Sherrod Brown: Obama gets it on Medicare, jobs
By Greg Sargent


According to a number of media outlets, the primary message that President Obama delivered to Senate Democrats during their private meeting yesterday was that they should not “draw lines in the sand” in the standoff with Republicans over spending, the deficit, and the debt ceiling. That would seem to mean that the President isn’t committed to drawing a firm line against Medicare cuts, as liberals want him to.

But leading liberal Senator Sherrod Brown tells me he took a very different message away from the meeting. He left convinced that Obama knows it would be folly to give ground on Medicare — and that the President understands that the 2012 election will be about jobs, not the deficit.

Brown says that he told the President in the meeting that a pivot to jobs will be essential as the reelection campaign heats up, and that Obama agreed.

snip//

“We’re going to make the contrast on Medicare,” Brown said, characterizing the discussion. “Republicans are going to lose this debate, because the country is not on their side. Republicans are governing by ideology.”

Asked if he left the meeting with any sense that the President wasn’t fully committed to drawing a hard line on Medicare, Brown said: “I’m not worried.”

but Democrats can't?

such a line is so easy to change. Just brush it smooth and draw another. It is the opposite of what people act like it means and is disconcerting to hear used as meaning setting some unmovable limit. Heck a bucket of water can erase it

That aside, your question. Not sure if you mean in this case or ever
We do need to change Medicare but not the way repubs want to, not privatizing or dumping more burden on elderly
Some good starts in health care bill that added years on
But boy this is not the Congress we could make good changes with, they are nasty and stupid. This is not a time frame that would even be possible to do it in
Unless...we handle the Medicare problem and their hatred of health care act. We'll do the Medicare for all, greatly enlarging population in it, adding in the younger healthy people