Santorum says cutting foreign aid hurts Detroit

Kudos to Rick Santorum for providing some straight talk to this tea party-dominated audience about cutting the federal deficit.

When the former Pennsylvania senator mentioned the popular idea of cutting U.S. foreign aid, he said this: “If you cut foreign aid, you will hurt Detroit.”

That remark generated some chuckles in the audience from people who thought a punch line was coming.

Instead, he explained that foreign aid makes up about one-half of 1 percent of the federal budget. Most of that aid comes in the form of military hardware and food grains, he added, so a manufacturing area like Metro Detroit (and especially Macomb County) would be hurt by cuts in foreign aid.

The presidential contender reminded the audience that the “big three” entitlements – Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security comprise 60 percent of the budget. And Medicaid is more than a health care program for the poor. Its largest expense is nursing home care for the elderly.

Surprisingly, he also went after GOP rising star Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin. The Ryan plan fails on two counts: It does nothing to reduce Medicare costs until 10 years out; and it doesn’t tackle the future financial problems for Social Security.

But as he continued to talk about Ryan’s plan for Medicare vouchers/subsidies, that’s where he went off the track …

Santorum railed against “Obamacare,” describing it as a monolithic government program that would bloat the federal government, and he went so far as to say that “we will not be a free country” if the coming reforms devised by the president are not halted.

He made some references to mandates in the health care law, defended his opposition to the Obama compromise on coverage for contraceptives, but failed to mention some of the highly popular mandates – family insurance coverage to age 26, no more rejections of those with pre-existing conditions, and no recissions which allow the insurance companies to dump an extremely ill, expensive patient.

Then he praised the Ryan plans call for Medicare vouchers – “premium support plans” – and proceeded to make the exact same argument for the Ryan approach that Democrats tried to make in favor of Obamacare.

He energized the audience by telling them that the Ryan plan will provide private health care for seniors that matches the insurance coverage offered to Congress. Seniors will be offered several different private plans in an online exchange — a marketplace of choices — and they will receive a federal subsidy, tied to their household income, that will make that coverage affordable.

Apparently without realizing the irony, Santorum had described the exact same plan for an exchange that will be offered to the uninsured in the Obama plan. In fact, the exchange, modeled after the insurance system offered to Congress and federal employees, is the centerpiece of Obamacare.

Sooner or later, this Santorum-style slight of hand will bite the Republicans in the butt. (And the Democrats deserve to take a much bigger hit than they have for claiming the Ryan plan would “end Medicare as we know it.”)

The enormous crowd of 1,500 at the Santorum event was impressive. With just a few days to spread the word (and, for the most part, a lack of media coverage), the organizers put together an audience that stood three deep all along the walls, while others sat on the floor.

In comparison, that same room at the Palazzo Grande in Shelby Township has been used in the past for numerous Republican events, including the Macomb GOP Lincoln Dinner. The Lincoln Dinner is the big event of the year and it is preceded by weeks of publicity in Republican circles. Yet, Santorum attracted a crowd that nearly doubled the attendance for the Lincoln Dinner and other GOP gatherings.

The event was organized by the Oakland County-based Michigan Faith & Freedom Coalition, the Romeo Area Tea Party, the St. Clair Shores-based tea party group known as the Metro Detroit Freedom Coalition, or MEDEFCO, and the Macomb GOP.