t from Democrats, who charge it would "end Medicare as we know it." The Senate rejected it in a vote last week, but also unanimously struck down an alternative plan proposed by President Obama.  Democrats said they wanted to leave it off the table while Vice President Biden leads a bipartisan group of senators to come up with a new budget that would include cuts in spending that would satisfy lawmakers who don't want to increase the nation's borrowing limit without reducing government's size. "The one thing we can't do is nothing," McConnell said. "The president, to his credit, is at the table. ... We're going to negotiate the contours of the plan in these negotiations. I'm personally very comfortable with the way Paul Ryan would structure it in the out years, but we have a Democratic president. We're going to have to negotiate with him on the terms of changing Medicare so we can save Medicare." Appearing on the same program, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called on Republicans to abandon the House Medicare plan, noting an analysis by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that says it would require seniors to shoulder an increasingly large share of their health care costs. Schumer said there are only three options -- doing nothing, the Ryan plan or a Democratic vision that preserves benefits and changes "delivery systems," but does "not let providersaid not just for the volume of procedures they crank out, but whether people are actually getting healthier and getting better," Pawlenty told The Des Moines Register. He also told ABC's "This Morning" that he would support Ryan's proposal to privatize Medicare if his only choices were Ryan's plan or doing nothing. Pawlenty, who launched his bid for the Republican presidential nomination last week in Des Moines, had stops planned later in the day in Boone and Fort Dodge. He is scheduled to visit Sioux City on Tuesday and Council Bluffs on Wednesday. Former Louisiana Gov. Buddy Roemer, considered to be another possible GOP presidential hopeful, joined Pawlenty at the Waukee event, laying out a detailed plan to create jobs by overhauling the nation's trade, energy and tax policies. He said America is addicted to Middle Eastern oil, corporations that don't back taxes and special interests that have cost the nation jobs. "We've stood by and let our best jobs go to China and Mexico," he said. "We are a nati