Dena has even more recently. When Dean first spoke to Russert in 1995 about raising the retirement age, he also stated that he would make cuts in medicare payments, and again in June indicated that he would limit growth in medicare spending:
Russert: When the Republicans tried to limit the growth, the Democrats said that was an actual cut.
Dean: Well, they’re going to say what they’re going to say. All I...
Russert: You would be willing to limit the growth...
Dean: Absolutely.
Russert: ...in Defense, in Medicare and Social Security?
Dean: You have to do that. If you don’t go where the money is—Social Security, we’re going to fix differently. We’re not talking about Social Security. We’re talking about Medicare. We’re talking about Defense and we’re talking about all the other things the federal government does.
http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/912159.asp?0sl=-13Unfortunately for Dean, Pickler points out, “according to
1995 Newhouse News Service article, Dean said the way to balance the budget is for Congress to move the retirement age to 70, cut defense, Social Security, Medicare and veterans pensions, and then have the states cut almost everything else.” Not so far back was Dean’s June appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” in which “He said to balance Social Security, he would consider raising the retirement age to 68 and letting more salary above $87,000 fall under the payroll tax.”
http://www.socialsecurity.org/sstw/sstw08-11-03.pdf.or:
http://216.239.37.104/search?q=cache:Z5GJBOqgOKkJ:www.socialsecurity.org/sstw/sstw08-11-03.pdf+%E2%80%9CThe+way+to+balance+the+budget+is+for+Congress+to+cut+Social+Security,+move+the+retirement+age+to+70,+cut+defense,+Medicare+and+veterans+pensions,+while+the+states+cut+almost+everything+else.+It+would+be+tough+but+we+could+do+it.%E2%80%9D&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&client=REAL-tbYes, Deans statements about cutting back on medicare and veterans pensions was lauded in the right wing media, and the repeat performance and reminder in his speech in June, and being called to the carpet on it by Kucinich is another example of Deans real politica philosophy, which Trippi has had to get him to tone down while running for president.
A number of Vermont liberals and progressives have frequently pointed out that this is NOT atypical of Dean, campaigning in one political direction, but as soon as he gets what he wants, reverting to his extreme conservative policies.
Gephardts statements refer to the fact that while Dean was governor, he supported Gingrich's and the Republican party's ideas about government spending and in particular for cuts to thpse programs mentioned above. Gephardt is simply reiterating Dean's fiscal alignment with Gingrich's contract with America as a while he was involved with setting policies and platforms for the nations governors
There is little difference between Deans statements about Medicare, and the goals of the neo-conservative movement.
Lets put it this way, Dean has gotten higher Grades for conservatism from the renowned conservative Cato Institute, Receving B's for the first several years of his years as governor, then slipped to C in 1998. Only when Dean decided to run for president, and started speaking in LESS conservative terms, did he finally get a "D" in 2002.
Kerry and the other candidates get solid "F"'s from this bastion of conservatism.