Steele Changes Tune on Medicare Cuts

The RNC has joined the fracas over health care reform with a proposed “seniors’ bill of rights” that guards against Medicare cuts, ABC News reports. “Our seniors have really come under fire in the last few weeks,” says RNC chair Michael Steele—who backed Medicare cuts as a Senate candidate in 2006. His argument today on Good Morning America: "We should protect the seniors' ability to access health care."

President Obama has called Medicare “one of the greatest threats to our federal deficit,” but the reform bill proposes no cuts in benefits. “What's really disturbing is this feigned interest in Medicare and the plight of seniors is coming from the Republican Party,” a DNC official says, “the very Republican Party which opposed the creation of Medicare to begin with." (More Medicare stories.)