i m mitt romney and i approve this message. reporter: the state of florida is ground zero for the medicare debate because so many senior citizens live there and one of the romney campaign s most popular surrogates in the sunshine state says republicans can get all the seniors on board with their plan if they explain things the right way. the polls show that the romney-ryan ticket is doing significantly better amongst elder voters than younger voters. up double-digit in florida, for voters over the age of 65. but, you have to explain that the romney plan does not change anything for anybody, that is 55 years old and older. reporter: but president obama said his plan doesn t change anything, either: president barack obama: i propose reached that will save medicare money by getting rid of waistful spending in the health care system, and reining in insurance companies. reforms that will not touch your guaranteed medicare benefits, not by a single dime.
reporter: and the word promises. is prominent in a new ad from the president s chicago-based campaign which argues seniors can t count on mitt romney to guarantee their medicare benefits. it is a promise that was made long ago. you work hard, pay in, your medicare benefits are guaranteed. but, mitt romney would break that promise. replacer benefits with a voucher. reporter: that ad aired yesterday in iowa, colorado, nevada, ohio and virginia, all swing states and, mitt romney s campaign said the ad is a false attack from a desperate president. jenna: more to come. jon: now let s welcome angela mcgowan, and, chris kafinis, thanks for being here. chris, mitt romney has said the medicare debate, we welcome it, we you know, we are going to take it on and we will win it.
billion cut to medicare the president wants to enforce. you had medicare experts who went to capitol hill and said the $716 billion cut would actually hurt seniors now. and, that is obama s plan. now, you don t say in the commercials, obama cut $700 billion from medicare, to pay for obamacare. now, why do republicans welcome the debate on medicare? because we want to get to the issues and put them at the forefront, instead of deflections, divide and distort campaign liberals are running. angela. it is great, if that is the case, then tell us why ryan includes the same cut. tell us why ryan includes the same cut. he includes the same cut dealing with the $700 billion, dealing with waste and fraud, but, what you did not say is with the voucher system, you have a choice. and, competition is good. and what you guys are distorting, you are saying that romney-ryan will hurt seniors
the average of the month before and, they can get hit with pretty high fines. it depends on how many times they can do it and it can go up to like $25,000 so there is incentive not to, quote-unquote, price-gouge. what they are doing, basically, though, is, they see their competitor down the road, go up by 5 cents, and, they are going to go up by 5 cents and so it is going to be difficult to find lower gas prices, anywhere in the area, really. they track those things pretty carefully. but, the price-gouging law really may have some impact. jon: all right, brenda buttner in our fox news room. thank you. thank you. jenna: we ll continue to watch the storm and next we ll dig a little deeper into some of these key issues for this election. the latest battle in the race for the white house, over medicare. which candidate has the best plan for saving the health care program for our seniors, for all of us, really? we have a fair and balanced debate, next and plus, governor romney and con
are they? i mean, i m not sure why they welcome it, because, when you look at the demographics they need to win, particularly doing better with seniors, bringing over independents, i m not sure the medicare debate helps at all. here s a fundamental problem with the romney-ryan plan. it is basically completely disingenuous and the notion of a $716 billion cut they supposedly attack president obama on is false. it s not a cut. it is cost savings and ryan actually includes that in his own budget. the other part here is, when you talk about this ryan plan, cbo did an analysis in 2011, and, the ryan plan on medicare actually increases cost and increases cost, administrative costs go up but privatize the program the problem the problem is they ll have a really tough time trying to communicate something the voters, especially senior voters, or soon to be senior voters are not going to buy. jon: angela, address the $716