MEDICARE CUTS

Polls show Romney and Obama running neck-and-neck in Florida, where the cliffhanger 2000 presidential election was decided.

Republicans accuse Obama of cutting $716 billion from Medicare to pay for the healthcare overhaul law that the Democratic president signed in 2010.

But Ryan's plan also would cut that money from Medicare, even as he proposes repealing the broader healthcare law. Romney says he would keep those funds for Medicare.

Ryan talked on Saturday about his grandmother who had Alzheimer's disease and moved in with him and his mother when he was in high school.

"Medicare was there for our family, for my grandma when we needed it then. And Medicare is there for my mom, when she needs it now. And we have to keep that guarantee," he said.

"But in order to make sure that we can guarantee that promise for my mom's generation, for those baby boomers who are retiring every day, we must reform it for my generation."

Medicare benefits nearly 50 million elderly and disabled Americans, but its financing will be squeezed by the growing numbers of retirees.

Concerns about the program's future have become the top healthcare issue in the 2012 election, surpassing worries about Obama's controversial healthcare law, a Kaiser Family Foundation poll found earlier this week.

Joseph Bulla, 62, a Romney supporter at The Villages, said he liked Ryan's voucher plan for Medicare.

"It will give us a chance to choose what we want instead of being dictated to," he said.

Later on Saturday, Ryan and his mother attended a fundraiser at the private Club at the Treasure Island, near Tampa. The event was expected to raise more than $1 million and was hosted by a prominent Republican financial backer and former US Ambassador to Italy Mel Sembler.

Addressing some 200 attendees, Ryan pointed to the debt crisis flaring in Europe as a warning sign for the United States, putting the responsibility for the economic troubles abroad on European politicians who, he said, for decades made promises just to get re-elected.

"And now debt crisis hit and those empty promises have become broken promises," he said. "We will have the same fate if we don't turn this around."