During the past few years, the urgency of saving Medicare has really hit home for me. My 81-year old mother has had to cope with several strokes. She’s relied on Medicare to pay for doctor visits, hospital stays and medicines.

Similarly, my father relied on Medicare. When he was diagnosed with lung cancer, access to care through Medicare not only prolonged his life, it also allowed him to live his final months with dignity.

Medicare is a program we should all be proud of. America needs it to continue without any benefit reductions for those, like my mother, who are currently in the system and for those about to enter it. But we need it to survive for my generation and my children’s generation, too.

TODAY:

Politico: GOP piles on Harry Reid for Rubio comment: The RNC and a bevy of conservative Hispanic groups are pouncing on Harry Reid’s comment to me in today’s story on the Marco Rubio-White House skirmish over the stalled nomination of Mari Carmen Aponte as ambassador to El Salvador… “Only a day after Jim Messina’s insensitive chimichanga comment, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid makes an inflammatory remark regarding one of the Republican’s rising stars Senator Marco Rubio from Florida,” RNC spokeswoman Alexandra Franceschi told Univision. “By implying that Senator Rubio represents ‘Hispanic issues,’ Senator Reid is creating an unnecessary separation between the Hispanic community and the general population. Hispanics in the United States care about the same issues as everyone else such as job creation, the economy, education, and healthcare.”

Yahoo News: Barack Obama Moves from Contraception Pan into ‘Chimichanga’ Fire: ”@Messina2012 clearly doesn’t understand the diversity of Hispanic community,” Tweeted Alexandra Franceschi, the RNC’s press secretary for Latino press. “Hispanics deserve an apology for his inflammatory comment.” The RNC’s Latino Twitter account also re-tweeted the comment of an irritated user who said: “[N]ot to try and insult your intelligence or anything, but not all Hispanics are about chimichangas.”

FLASHBACK:

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid: “I don’t know how anyone of Hispanic heritage could be a Republican, okay? Do I need to say more?”

The RNC and a bevy of conservative Hispanic groups are pouncing on Harry Reid’s comment to me in today’s story on the Marco Rubio-White House skirmish over the stalled nomination of Mari Carmen Aponte as ambassador to El Salvador…

“Only a day after Jim Messina’s insensitive chimichanga comment, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid makes an inflammatory remark regarding one of the Republican’s rising stars Senator Marco Rubio from Florida,” RNC spokeswoman Alexandra Franceschi told Univision. “By implying that Senator Rubio represents ‘Hispanic issues,’ Senator Reid is creating an unnecessary separation between the Hispanic community and the general population. Hispanics in the United States care about the same issues as everyone else such as job creation, the economy, education, and healthcare.”

Majority Leader Harry Reid’s suggestion that the job of Florida Senator Marco Rubio is to represent Hispanics nationally raised some eyebrows this morning…

BuzzFeed asked Rubio spokesman Alex Conant what he made of the implication that Rubio “is supposedly representing Hispanic issues.”

“Senator Rubio represents Florida,” he replied.

Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., who has emerged as one of the crusaders in the fight against a rule requiring religious institutions to provide contraceptives in their health care, has joined forces with a Democratic senator to fight the mandate. 

 …Meanwhile, Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio announced his Religious Freedom Restoration Act in response to the law.

“As Americans, we should all be appalled by an activist government so overbearing and so obsessed with forcing mandates on the American people that it forces such a choice on religious institutions,” Rubio wrote Feb. 3 in the New York Post.