Rep. Steve Israel (D-N.Y.), chairman of the Democrats’ House campaign committee, said Friday that the GOP’s vote on Medicare would be the “defining vote that secures the majority for the Democrats.” He said the issue “is the most intense driver in the polls for independents and seniors.”
The GOP’s challenge was evident Friday to Rep. Charles F. Bass (R-N.H.), who fielded questions at a senior center in his district and said later that Democrats “have beaten the world record for getting misinformation out fast.”
“The first thing [the seniors] asked me is whether or not I’m planning to vote to end Medicare completely,” said Bass, elected last year in a swing district that he had previously represented for 12 years.
Bass said the encounter has convinced him he needs to compile a “fact sheet” to distribute to the senior centers in his district that would include the assurance that nobody 55 or older would be affected by the changes.
Earlier in the week, Bass faced similar questions at a town hall. He defended the GOP plan on Medicare, according to a video of the event, but at one point sought to reassure the room that it was not a done deal and still would be debated.
“Remember that budgets are not law,” he said.
At a town hall this week captured on video by a critic, Rep. Patrick Meehan (R-Pa.) argued with a woman who asked why he had voted to abolish Medicare, calling the charge “factually wrong.” But then he, too, offered a reassurance, calling the House GOP budget a “blueprint, a sense of what we would like to do, a direction that we’d like to go in.”
Conservative activists, hoping to tilt the debate back in the GOP’s favor, also mobilized this week.
The conservative group Americans for Prosperity is targeting seniors in about two dozen House districts with radio and Internet ads and recorded phone calls lauding Republicans who backed the budget plan, said Tim Phillips, the group’s president. The group is spending about $400,000 on the campaign.
One mail piece sent to people 55 and older said the House budget would “improve and protect” Medicare.
“There’s absolutely anxiety” among Republican lawmakers, “and there’s a reason for it,” Phillips said.
Another pro-GOP group, the 60 Plus Association, is placing calls and sending mail thanking Republicans for backing a plan that “strengthens and preserves Medicare,” according to the group’s Web site.
The tea party group FreedomWorks has introduced a new social networking tool to connect activists for a budget debate that the organization’s president, Matt Kibbe, describes as a pivotal moment for the movement. And Heritage Action for America, a newly formed advocacy group affiliated with the Heritage Foundation, is distributing budget talking points for volunteers to use at lawmakers’ town hall meetings.
“Our role is to make it possible [for GOP lawmakers] to vote for stuff that might now be seen as politically impossible,” said Michael Needham, chief executive of Heritage Action, which hopes to raise millions this year for issue advocacy campaigns.
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