New polling from the pro-health care organization Protect Your Care shows once again that the Paul Ryan plan to end Medicare is extremely unpopular, and that it may be affecting public opinion on the Affordable Care Act, which has moved more positive by comparison. The poll shows that just 38% support the Ryan plan, with 54% opposed, and among seniors, that opposition increases to 58%. Voters are just as opposed to the cuts to Medicaid (the Ryan budget would slash it by 1/3) as they are the changes to Medicare. And net support for the ACA has moved as a result:

A majority of voters do not want the ACA repealed: Just 42% of voters want to see the new healthcare law repealed, with 56% preferring to either give it a chance to work and make changes as needed (48%) or to keep it as is (8%).

Support for healthcare reform is consistently understated by polls – 10 percent of voters
both do not think the current law goes far enough and do not support the ACA. Support
for the ACA currently stands at 42% (with 50% opposed), but that does not take into account
that among the 31% of voters who feel that the law does not go far enough, a third do not
currently support it. That translates to 10% of the total electorate that does not support the
law but also doesn’t believe that it goes far enough. Overall, a plurality of 47% of voters
believe that the new healthcare law made the right amount of changes (16%) or does not go
far enough (31%), compared to 43% who say that it goes too far.

The Ryan plan’s over-reach on healthcare in this year’s budget has the potential to
increase support for the ACA. Once voters hear about the Ryan plan’s impact on healthcare in this country, support for the ACA rises 3 points to 45%.

John Lizst, who went over the polling in a conference call, said that “Something that has had as much coverage as the ACA isn’t going to have a lot of elasticity. In that context, 5 points of net movement because of attention of the Ryan plan means a lot.” I think ultimately the ACA support or opposition will be borne out by experience with the program, but there’s no doubt that the overreach by Ryan has dampened any enthusiasm for Republican handling of health care.

Incredibly, House Republicans are going to double down on this again today, when they vote on a rule for Homeland Security appropriations. Tucked inside the rule is a directive that deems the Paul Ryan budget passed – again – upon adoption. Here’s the language:

Sec. 2. (a) Pending the adoption of a concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2012, the provisions of House Concurrent Resolution 34, as adopted by the House, shall have force and effect (with the modification specified in subsection (c)) in the House as though Congress has adopted such concurrent resolution. The allocations printed in the report of the Committee on Rules accompanying this resolution shall be considered for all purposes in the House to be the allocations under section 302(a) of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 for the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2012. (b) The chair of the Committee on the Budget shall adjust. the allocations referred to in subsection (a) to accommodate the enactment of general or continuing appropriation Acts for fiscal year 2011 after the adoption of House Concurrent Resolution 34 but before the adoption of this resolution. (c) For provisions making appropriations for fiscal year 2011, section 3(c) of House Resolution 5 shall have force and effect through September 30, 2011.

As David Waldman points out, this means that the House will “deem and pass,” that terrible indignity they said Democrats were doing during the health care debate. This deeming says that, until there’s an actual budget, House committees will act as if the Ryan budget to end Medicare is the real one, and set their appropriations accordingly. I believe this was also part of the House rules adopted at the beginning of the year. What it means in practice is that every Democratic admaker who wanted to say that their Republican House opponent voted to end Medicare once, can now say they voted to end it twice. And counting.