Democrats assail Romney, Ryan over Medicare

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa -- Led by President Barack Obama, Democrats claimed yesterday that Republican challenger Mitt Romney privately backs controversial plans to overhaul Medicare and cut trillions of dollars from social programs that his new vice-presidential running mate has publicly proposed.

Rep. Paul Ryan "has given definition to the vague commitments that Romney has been making," Vice President Joe Biden said as the Democrats welcomed the Wisconsin lawmaker to the race with a barrage of criticism. "There is no distinction" between the two, Biden said.

Romney lauded his running mate's work as he resumed his own four-day bus trip through campaign battleground states.

Ryan has "come up with ideas that are very different than the president's," Romney said in Florida. "The president's idea for Medicare was to cut it by $700 billion. That's not the right answer. We want to make sure that we preserve and protect Medicare."

The former Massachusetts governor did not say so, but the tax-and-spending plans Ryan produced in the past two years as chairman of the House Budget Committee call for the repeal of Obama's health care plan but also would retain the $700 billion in Medicare cuts that were part of it.

Aides said during the day that Romney has long disagreed with that specific element of the House Republican plan, and while he wants to repeal the health care law he also wants to restore the funds to Medicare.

The day marked a first in the race for the White House, with both major party tickets campaigning at full strength and a little more than 80 days remaining in a campaign dominated by a weak economic recovery and a national jobless rate of 8.3 percent.

Polls taken before Ryan was chosen over the weekend showed that Obama had a slender advantage in a contest for eight to 10 battleground states.

Large crowds turned out for Romney and Ryan's joint appearances over the weekend, and conservatives have hailed the selection of the Wisconsin lawmaker, who is regarded by fellow Republicans as an intellectual leader on budget issues.

Democrats counter that Ryan's name on the ticket will make it easier to tag Romney with political ownership of the budgets that Republicans pushed through the House in 2011 and this year. They say it will help their candidates for Congress as well as the White House.

As head of the House Budget Committee, Ryan was the chief architect of tax-and-spending plans that called for turning Medicare into a voucherlike program beginning a decade from now. Critics say it would lead to higher costs for beneficiaries, while supporters say a fundamental change is needed to save the program from going bankrupt.