there. see you soon. gregg: want to give you context and medicare and the expense we re talking about. this program currently covers about 48.7 million people across the america. more than 30 million expected to join medicare by the year 2030. the cost of medicare, well it is up 114% over the past decade. martha? martha: medicare traffic additionally has been politically kind of a hot potato for republicans. it has been a tough issue for them. it has been a line of attack for the democrats. this is fight they. karl rove is former senior advisor to george w. bush. talk about why they re doing that. why do they want medicare to be central to this debate right now. gregg: betcha five bucks he will have the whiteboard. martha: and maps. he is fully armed. gregg: he is great. meantime ann romney will reportedly be named the main
y all in chains comment. a fair and balanced debate still ahead. martha: republicans picking up where democrats left off, bringing medicare to the forefront of this campaign. why the romney camp wants this fight, in this presidential election. i m serious, we compare our direct rates side by side to find you a great deal, even if it s not with us. [ ding ] oh, that s helpful! well, our company does that, too. actually, we invented that. it s like a sauna in here. helping you save, even if it s not with us now, that s progressive! call or click today. no mas pantalones! between taking insulin and testing mylood sugar.e, is this part of your life? freestyle lite test strips? why, are they any. beep! wow, that hardly needs
planned retirement community about 61,000 people. that means 40,000 golf carts. most of them 2 to 1 are registered as republicans. the villages typically vote in the 60 percentile for the republic candidate as it did for senator john mccain as now senator marco rubio two years ago. yesterday, up in virginia, congressman ryan had a friendly crowd. a couple of protesters there. but he was again hitting the issues. and the issues that they are targeting specifically here in florida will be one they touched on yesterday. and that is the battle over medicare. i heard the president talk about medicare the other day. we want this debate on medicare. [cheers] we want this debate. we need this debate. and we re going to win this debate on medicare. now, the obama-biden ticket
he s paid to uncle sam. i did go back and look at my taxes and over the past ten years, i never paid less than 13%. i think the most recent year is 13.6% or something like that. romney has already made his 2010 tax return and estimates of what he paid in 2011 public. team obama isn t satisfied. they still want proof. this brought the income tax debate back to the forefront after we had spent so much time talking about medicare, about the ryan pick. meanwhile in ohio, romney s running mate paul ryan stayed on message, questioning medicare s current funding. do you think raiding medicare to pay for obama care is an achievement? no! neither do i. in richmond, virginia, romney tried to get the focus off his personal finances and back onto the hot button issue this week. my plan makes no change whatsoever for seniors. none, zero, zip. anyone 55 years of age and older sees no change whatsoever to medicare. now, the president and the
and today we begin with health and taxes. the battle over medicare continued on the campaign trail yesterday with teams obama and romney trying to convince voters young and old that their plan is the most financially fit. meanwhile a mitt romney bombshell about his personal tax rate has sparked fresh controversy. nbc s claire leka joins us from washington with more on all of this. claire, good morning. good morning to you, lynn. yes, mitt romney called the interest in his personal tax returns, quote, small-minded, but it looks like it s been an issue that s dogged him all summer long, and if the obama campaign has its way, they want to keep his millions front and center. you could call it taxgate. republican presidential hopeful mitt romney says he won t release more tax returns. but while explaining how his medicare plan would work using a whiteboard in south carolina yesterday, he did give his clearest explanation yet of what