Photograph by Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg

Representative Paul Ryan, a Republican from Wisconsin, speaks during a news conference following a vote at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 23, 2013.

Paul Ryan is getting ready to release another budget.

Like the first one the House Budget chairman introduced two years ago, it will contain a provision to move people from Medicare to a voucher for private health care, starting with those who are younger than 55 today.

Bloomberg’s Brian Faler reports today that Ryan’s plan “will reach the politically important milestone of erasing the government’s deficit.”

“The plan, which aides say will be unveiled March 12, will show how Republicans would eliminate the budget shortfall by 2023, when it is projected to total $978 billion. That’s far more ambitious than previous iterations of Ryan’s tax-and-spending plans, the last of which wouldn’t have balanced the government’s books until 2040.”

The additional cuts that would be needed are “modest,” he said today in a meeting with reporters.

“You won’t see big surprises in our budget,” said Ryan, a Wisconsin Republican who served as Mitt Romney’s running mate in the 2012 presidential election. “We can show the country that this is an achievable goal, a goal that we all ought to share, a goal that helps us prevent a debt crisis, a goal that helps our economy.”

The Pew Research Center reminds us of something else today:

Ryan’s Medicare plan, surveyed during the midst of that 2012 campaign, had an approval rating of 34 percent.

Paul Ryan saying new budget plan will have only ‘modest’ changes. Last year, just 34% favored his Medicare proposal.pewrsr.ch/Nezm3z

— Carroll Doherty (@CarrollDoherty) March 6, 2013

Original post is Paul Ryan’s 34% Medicare Plan by Political Capital.

Photograph by Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush on the final day of the Republican National Convention (RNC).

Updated at 1:15 pm EST

Jeb Bush is in town.

The former Florida governor, brother of one former president and son of another, is encamped in Washington — in a hotel just a few blocks from the White House, as the National Review Online notes  – ostensibly for another national conference of his Foundation for Excellence in Education. It’s the fifth annual conference, the last one in San Francisco. Bush sets the election year parleys in Washington.

While here, NRO’s Robert Costa reports, Bush held a private, one-hour meeting Monday with some political operatives — including Neil Newhouse, a Washington-area pollster who served as Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney’s campaign pollster and has a long association with Bush.

Neilhouse, of Alexandria, Va.-based Public Opinion Strategies, polled for both of Bush’s winning campaigns in 1998 and 2002. He tells Political Capital that the get-together yesterday was nothing but an informal gathering of a couple of mostly policy-oriented associates of Bush over drinks — the door to their meeting open, with no speechifying.

Bush, Costa reports, was not ruling out a presidential run of his own in 2016: “I am here to catch up with folks and promote education reform,” he said in an interview — with a reported smile. He called the crew with whom he met in the J.W. Marriott hotel’s Cannon room “an alumni group that I like keeping in touch with.” He maintained that he is “here to focus on educational reform.”

Bush, who served two terms as governor and has long been involved in education reform,  opened his two-day education summit of workshops and speeches at the Marriott this morning as the “keynote” breakfast speaker. They counted 950 people from 45 states.

They’ll be talking about many of the same issues that Bush has explored since starting another foundation following his first, losing, campaign for governor in 1994, when he opened a charter school in Miami with the leader of the Urban League there, T. Willard Fair: School choice. Tuition vouchers are on the agenda today.

True to form, Bush has an ecumenical guest list: With Arne Duncan, President Barack Obama’s education secretary, and John Podesta, a former chief of staff for President Bill Clinton, on the speakers’ list. Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, who had been seen as a potential Republican presidential candidate this year, will deliver the keynote breakfast address tomorrow.

And the keynoters tonight at dinner include: Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state in the administration of Bush’s brother, former President George W. Bush, will join Joel Klein, a former education chancellor for New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Original post is Jeb Bush: `Here’ for Education by Political Capital.

Photograph by Joe Raedle/Getty Images

Mayer Kotlarsky, owner of The Village Pharmacy store, speaks with Kay Stein who has questions about the Medicare Drug Plan in Deerfield Beach, Florida.

President Barack Obama’s re-election campaign began airing a television ad in Florida this morning that criticizes Republican opponent Mitt Romney on Medicare.

“We’re not going to turn Medicare into a voucher,” Obama, dressed in shirtsleeves, is shown saying to two older couples over a meal at a café in Cocoa, located on Florida’s “Space Coast” east of Orlando. Obama visited Cocoa on Sept. 9.

“This is all part of keeping a commitment and a pledge to your generation but also to future generations,” Obama says.

“Voucher” is how Obama and Democrats describe a proposal from Romney’s vice-presidential running mate, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, that would overhaul Medicare as a “premium support” system in which beneficiaries get a fixed payment from the government for their insurance.

Romney has attacked Obama’s 2010 health-care law for $716 billion in Medicare cost savings it anticipates from scaling back payments to hospitals and other providers.

Florida, with 29 electoral votes at stake, is the biggest of the nine states where Obama and Romney have been spending most of their time and campaign resources. About 22.3 percent of Florida’s voting-age population was age 65 or older in 2011, the highest in the nation, according to a Census Bureau estimate. Older voters have higher rates of turnout in elections than younger voters.

Obama’s Medicare ad first appeared on Orlando’s NBC affiliate this morning, according to Kantar Media’s CMAG. The Central Florida region along Interstate 4 from Tampa to Orlando, Cocoa and Daytona Beach is the heart of a swing-voting electorate critical to victory there.

Original post is Obama Attacks Romney on Medicare `Vouchers’ in Florida TV Ad by Political Capital.

Photograph by Lynne Sladky/AP Photo

Hands raised when the audience was asked how many are on Medicare during the Florida Alliance for Retired Americans fifth annual town hall meeting on health care reform in Delray Beach.

That’s the number of Medicare beneficiaries in Florida as of 2011, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation’s statehealthfacts.org website.

There are more Medicare beneficiaries in Florida than in any other state except California, the nation’s most populous state. About 18 percent of Florida residents receive Medicare, tied for third behind West Virginia at 21 percent and Maine at 20 percent.

So it wasn’t an accident that President Barack Obama mentioned Medicare seven times during a campaign visit yesterday to West Palm Beach, part of a two-day swing through the nation’s biggest battleground state. Obama planned to campaign in Fort Myers and Orlando today, though he will instead address the Colorado shooting in Fort Myers and has canceled his Orlando-area event.

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney “plans to turn Medicare into a voucher program,” Obama said. Romney has said that the 2010 health-care overhaul Obama signed into law includes $500 billion in Medicare benefit cuts. Politifact.com, a research project based in Tampa, Florida, said that Romney’s claim is “mostly false”  because the health law slows future growth in Medicare spending and doesn’t cut current benefits.

Here’s a look at some Bloomberg stories about the election and the economy:

FLORIDA FOCUS: Kate Andersen Brower has more about Obama’s swing through Florida, where he and Romney are in a close race for the state’s 29 electoral votes.

TAX DEBATE: As debate continues on extending Bush-era tax cuts that expire at year’s end, Richard Rubin looks at some of the rhetoric that Democrats and Republicans are employing to bolster their cases. The top 2 percent of taxpayers are neither millionaires nor primarily job-creators.

ROMNEY’S TAX RETURNS: A 54 percent majority believes that Romney should release additional tax returns, according to a USA Today/Gallup Poll that Mark Silva analyzes.

Original post is Bloomberg by the Numbers: 3.4 Mln by Political Capital.