Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

POLITICS:

Federal budget battle waged over women, seniors

As Republicans and Democrats gear up for another round of vitriol, compromises and counterproposals, it’s clear that hashing out a budget is as much about election 2012 as keeping the government funded and the deficit down.

It’s not just because of the country’s staggering debt is weighing on the minds of voters. It gets much more personal than that — or so hope Democrats, who have seized from the budget battles thus far what they think will be a winning message with two key constituencies: women and seniors.

“What we cut will always be more important than how much we cut. That is because our nation’s budget is a representation of our values,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said on the Senate floor last week.

“We value women’s health. But Republicans tried to use the budget to make it harder for women to get contraception that reduces abortions ... and tried to slash funding for cancer research,” he said. “We stayed true to our values, and we didn’t let them.”

“We also value our seniors’ ability to support themselves. But Republicans tried to use the budget to slash the Social Security Administration ... (and) reopen the doughnut hole, which would have sent seniors’ prescription drug bills skyrocketing,” he said. “We stayed true to our values, and we didn’t let them.”

The not-so-subtle message: We’ve got your back, women, seniors; while they’re trying to solve the country’s problem on your very backs.

It’s a political message that Nevada voters can expect to hear over the next 18 months, out of Washington and in the 2012 Nevada Senate race.

Republicans have roundly rejected the Democrats’ characterization of their proposals. When Democrats accused House Republicans, led by Speaker John Boehner, of holding up a budget deal over funding Planned Parenthood, Republicans retorted with what became almost their mantra: “There is only one reason we don’t have an agreement yet, and that reason is spending,” Boehner said.

Republicans have been battling similar accusations that their budget bill — passed by the House on Friday with no Democratic support — hangs seniors out to dry by turning Medicare into a subsidized voucher system.

“We don’t want to ration Medicare, we don’t want to see Medicare go bankrupt, we’re trying to save Medicare,” GOP budget author Paul Ryan said on the House floor Friday.

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Dean Heller

We “preserve Medicare for future generations while making no changes for current recipients,” Nevada Rep. Dean Heller added in a statement after the vote. Ryan’s bill only applies to future recipients younger than 55.

But politically speaking, if you’re a woman or a senior, it wasn’t much of a stretch to take the messages out of Washington last week personally.

“Scare tactics work. So Republicans better be worried about this,” said Chuck Muth, a conservative commentator in Las Vegas. “It could be very effective if Republicans don’t get their communications act together and counter it.”

The Republicans’ spending-centered message packs scare tactics of its own: The country is reeling from runaway debt, and staggering under a $14.3 trillion deficit that they say warrants the kinds of cuts and changes they’re trying to make.

But Republicans aren’t starting with the strongest political foothold from which to sell that message. Seniors may swing more conservative than the average voting bloc, but the one word they don’t like to hear bandied about political circles is “Medicare.”

President Barack Obama drove that point home two years ago when he read a letter he’d received from a senior to a town hall hosted by the AARP. “I don’t want government-run health care,” the president said, quoting the letter. “I don’t want socialized medicine. And don’t touch my Medicare.”

Recent numbers back up the sentiment. According to a Gallup poll published April 11, just 13 percent of adults want to see Medicare fully revamped, and just 18 percent are willing to accept major changes to the program.

That poses an especially critical danger, if the Democrats’ messaging sticks, because seniors are one of the most loyal and reliable cohorts of the Republicans’ base. Fifty-nine percent of seniors voted GOP in the 2010 midterms, and 38 percent voted Democrat.

In Nevada, seniors 65 and over were the only age group to vote Republican, or for Sharron Angle, in larger numbers than they voted Democrat, or for Harry Reid, with 52 percent swinging GOP and 45 percent voting Democrat.

“That’s why the Republicans need to make sure that they’re out front, reminding seniors that proposed changes will not affect them,” Reno-based conservative strategist Robert Uithoven said. “They need to stay out there, ahead of the argument ... immediately fire back every time, and remind people why things such as Medicare and Social Security are so threatened.

“The Democrats tried this heading into the 2010 election cycle too, and it didn’t work,” Uithoven said. “The effort to pander to certain constituencies is wearing off.”

But as long as Democrats are targeting these groups, Republicans are threatened, especially when it comes to the senior vote.

“If (Democrats) can even get a small percentage of the Republican base vote, imagine how big a percentage of the independent nonideological vote they could get,” Muth said. “It’s definitely not too late for Republicans to own the message — we’ve still got a year and a half to go. But they can’t blow this.”

The concerns about an eroding base go for the female vote, too. Once considered squarely in the Democrats’ camp, women have been trickling to the right over the past few election cycles. In 2010, nationally, women actually voted in slightly higher numbers for Republicans (49 percent) than Democrats (48 percent).

Even in Nevada, where exit polls showed Reid winning the women’s vote by 13 percentage points, there were hints in the two weeks before the election that Angle was slowly narrowing the gender gap.

Candidates for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Sen. John Ensign in 2012 have begun to highlight these issues.

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Shelley Berkley

That race will pit Democratic Rep. Shelley Berkley, who represents the district with one of the fastest-growing senior populations in the country, against Republican Rep. Dean Heller, who backs the Republican proposals to defund Planned Parenthood and revamp Medicare. She is all but guaranteed to make these the central, decisive issues in what’s presumed will be their head-to-head campaign.

“Without a doubt,” Berkley told the Las Vegas Sun last week, following the declaration of her Senate candidacy.

“I think the contrast between Mr. Heller’s positions and mine are quite dramatic. My seniors know they have someone who works for them every day and is going to protect their Medicare and protect Social Security,” she said. “That’s where I am. Congressman Heller isn’t.”

Heller, in his official statements, is casting the niche subjects that may appeal to certain portions of the electorate in terms of the bigger picture of deficits and national debt.

“We can continue with the status quo which leads to bigger government, higher taxes, less jobs and rationed health care for our seniors, or we can decrease government spending, create jobs and preserve Medicare for future generations,” he said. “Out national debt will serve as an anchor that drags down the economic opportunity of our children and grandchildren.”

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