Vice presidential hopeful Paul Ryan says his family relied on Medicare to take care of his grandmother, and his mother now counts on the program in retirement.
Ryan on Saturday told a mostly older audience in a large Florida retirement community that Republicans will protect those in or near retirement from Medicare cuts if Mitt Romney wins the White House.
Ryan pointed to his 78-year-old mother who joined him. He says he isn't going to hurt his mother's financial security and wouldn't hurt others, either. He says he saw first-hand Medicare's benefits as a child when his grandmother, with Alzheimer's, moved in with his family.
However, the 42-year-old congressman says the program needs to be overhauled during his generation so his children will be able to count on it, too.
Betty Ryan Douglas was on stage with her congressman son Saturday at the world's largest retirement community as the Republican campaign tried to blunt withering criticism from President Barack Obama and his allies. The Democratic team charges that presidential candidate Mitt Romney and Ryan would gut programs for older people.
Obama planned to dig in on that point Saturday in New Hampshire. Aides say he will cast the voters' choice as one between two fundamentally different approaches to government's responsibility to its citizens and who pays the bill.
Romney's schedule had him raising money in Massachusetts.
The Romney-Ryan ticket is betting big that voters' worries about federal deficits and the Democrats' health care overhaul have opened the door for a robust debate on the solvency of Medicare, one of the government's most popular and costliest programs. Obama has welcomed the conversation, which has temporarily taken attention from the weak economic recovery.
The Democratic campaign, trying to reach female voters, released an ad Friday that sought to undercut Romney by pointing to Ryan's voting record on funding for Planned Parenthood and abortion. "For women, for president, the choice is ours," the ad says. The ad was airing in Colorado, Nevada, Virginia, Ohio, Florida and Iowa.
In the week since Romney announced Ryan as his running mate, Medicare and Social Security have appeared as a driving issue. Florida, Pennsylvania and Iowa are among the top five states in the percentage of people 65 and over, and all three are closely contested this election.
Polling generally shows that the public places more trust in Democrats' ability to handle Medicare than they do Republicans. People also generally oppose plans to replace the current program with one in which future seniors receive a fixed amount of money from the government to be used to purchase health coverage, according to polls.
At the same time, polling shows the public strongly believes the financial security of Medicare as well as Social Security must be guaranteed for the long term. Government reports for years have warned of a looming shortfall if something isn't done to change course.
The GOP ticket's challenge is to convince seniors, who reliably vote, that the GOP ticket is best positioned to cure the ailing system for them and their grandchildren.
"We will not duck the tough issues. We will lead," Ryan said Friday in Virginia.
Ryan's stop Saturday at the gated retirement cluster known as The Villages is familiar ground for presidential candidates. Florida has the highest concentration of voters over 65 in the country. Some 17% of Floridians fall into that group.
New Hampshire, where Obama will campaign later in the day, has 14% of its residents over 65.
While residents of this Florida cluster of retirees make this a conservative stronghold, its builder is H. Gary Morse, a wealthy developer who is backing Romney. But the appearance could be tricky for Ryan, Congress' chief advocate of significantly restraining entitlement programs.
Put simply: Voters like their Medicare and Social Security.
Looking to connect with this group, the 42-year-old Wisconsin lawmaker told CBS' 60 Minutes that the issues hit close to home.
"My mom is a Medicare senior in Florida," he said.
Betty Ryan Douglas spends part of her year in Broward County's Lauderdale-by-the-Sea community and has been registered to vote in Florida since 1997.
By Philip Elliott / Associated Press
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