What The Republican Budget Plans Tell Us About Republican Values
The Republicans want you to believe that they’re concerned about the deficit. Of course, that concern is a lie. They don’t care about the deficit. They only care about using the deficit as an excuse to pursue their extremist agenda. And the single most extreme part of it is their war on people. On workers. On women. On immigrants. On the environment that keeps us all healthy and alive. If they cared about the deficit itself, they’d have noticed that the previous three Republican presidents produced consecutively the largest deficits in human history, each outdoing his predecessor, and the most recent Republican president not merely shattering his father’s unprecedented standard, but actually having to destroy the federal surplus built by a Democratic president in order to do so. An impressive feat, by any measure. But when Republicans talk about deficits, you know they are lying. Republicans destroy surpluses and create record deficits. That’s the truth.
If Republicans cared about the deficit, they wouldn’t have held middle-class tax cuts hostage for a ransom of tax cuts for the very wealthy, tax cuts that the very wealthy do not need. Tax cuts for the wealthy that won’t create jobs or stimulate the economy. Tax cuts for the wealthy that added to the federal deficit, the same federal deficit Republicans now pretend to be so worried about that they need to slash and burn federal spending. Spending for such things as food assistance for low-income Americans, which Republicans want to cut even as they retain farm subsidies. Spending for such things as life-saving immunizations. Spending for such things as food and health assistance around the world, without which some 70,000 children could die. And not content to make Americans go hungry and die of preventable diseases, and for tens of thousands of children around the world to starve to death, rather than have the very wealthy pay more taxes, Republicans also have their “hearts” set on eliminating Medicare and eviscerating Medicaid. And they want to repeal the Obama health plan, even though doing so would make the deficit even worse.
Let’s not pretend that Republicans actually care about the deficit. If they did, their approach in addressing it would be responsible and humane. Republicans don’t care about the deficit. They only care about cutting government programs that help people in need. It’s part of their larger agenda of blatant class warfare. Republicans prefer that millions of people suffer, and that at least tens of thousands of people die, rather than that the very wealthy once again pay the taxes that eliminated the previous Republican deficits to create the previous Democratic surplus. Leave it to the mental health professionals to diagnose the psychology of such values. If anyone can afford mental health professionals, with states now also in budget crises thanks to the genius of tax cuts.
But lest you think that Republicans don’t have any spending priorities at all, keep in mind that they do want to use federal money, just so it is spent in pursuit of their Medieval social agenda. But that’s just relative pocket change. While Republicans seem actually to want for people in need to suffer and die, they also want to throw unfathomably budget-busting pallets of cash at their favorite budget sinkhole. As reported by Ryan Grim:
While media attention focuses on the cuts to government spending demanded by House Republicans and broadly accepted by Democrats, the Pentagon is poised to reap billions more in federal funds, according to sources close to the discussions. The confines of the budget negotiations established by the two parties results in a system where every extra dollar going to military spending ends up being offset by a dollar reduction in spending on domestic social programs.
Got that? It’s an actual tradeoff. Punish more people in need to free up more cash for the Pentagon. The Democrats actually proposed some reductions to the Pentagon budget, and in January Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Mike Mullen outlined plans for responsible Pentagon budget cuts:
“A major objective beyond creating monetary savings is to make this department less cumbersome, less top heavy and more agile and effective in the execution of its responsibilities,” Gates said. “My hope and expectation is that as a result of these changes over time, what had been a culture of endless money, where cost was rarely a consideration, will become a culture of savings and restraint.”
But Republicans know better than the Defense Secretary and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Grim:
Democrats and Republicans are now moving toward an agreement that would increase defense spending. But Democratic sources close to the talks said the Democrats’ spending recommendation remains roughly $2 billion shy of that of their Republican counterparts. A spokesman for the Senate spending panel declined to comment, citing ongoing talks. A spokesman for Senate Democratic leadership did not respond to requests for comment.
So the Pentagon itself says it doesn’t need more money, but not only are Democrats being pushed to give them more, the Republicans are insisting that the amount the Democrats are offering, and which the Pentagon says it doesn’t need, still isn’t enough! But it’s so important that we cut the deficit that we have to cut funding that feeds the hungry, prevents disease, and cares for the sick. And keep in mind that it’s not as if the Pentagon is anything remotely close to being underfunded. So what is it? Do Republicans think the answer to everything is to throw money at it? Do they have so little respect for the men and women in American uniform that they think they need such hardware overkill in order to protect the homeland? Are Republicans perpetually mired in a state of priapic adolescent arrested development, thinking the measure of their machismo is the size of their arsenal? Or is it just good old corporate welfare for the military industrial complex? Maybe it’s some combination of all of the above. But it’s a staggeringly irresponsible waste of resources that does nothing to enhance our national security.
As The Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation made clear, the United States spends more than eight times as much on defense as does the next closest country, Russia. The United States spends more than twice as much as does the next major military presence, which is America’s combined NATO allies. And not that it will satisfy paranoid Republicans, but the United States spends more than three times as much as do imagined potential adversaries Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Pakistan and Venezuela combined. And for those particularly paranoid Republicans, the United States also spends more than 10 times as much as does that most sinister of all perpetual antagonists: France. And to put it in terms of actual budget and policy priorities, there is this concise explanation from The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities:
Between fiscal year 2001 (the last year for which appropriations levels were set under President Clinton) and fiscal year 2008, funding for domestic discretionary programs has been more constrained than any other area of the budget and has shrunk both as a share of the budget and as a share of the economy. In contrast, appropriations for defense and other security-related programs have increased more rapidly than any other area of the budget — even more rapidly than the costs of the “big three” entitlement programs: Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Republicans don’t care about the budget. They are using the budget as an excuse and red herring to recast the very nature of the United States government, and the very nature of the United States. They don’t care if those in need suffer and die. They don’t care about jobs. They don’t care about a social safety net. They do care very much about protecting the very wealthy. They do care very much about wealthy corporations. And the one thing at which they want to throw truly unimaginable amounts of money is the military. This is a huge clue as to their mindset. Because when you stop and consider the consequences of causing more and more suffering and unrest among more and more people while at the same time ensuring that the military is much more powerful than any military anywhere needs be, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that Republican values are not only inhuman and inhumane, they are dangerous and creepy.
By: Laurence Lewis, Daily Kos, April 10, 2011
Pay Close Attention To The Insurers Behind Rep Paul Ryan’s Curtain
Democrats who think Paul Ryan and his Republican colleagues have foolishly wrapped their arms around the third rail of American politics by proposing to hand the Medicare program to private insurers will themselves look foolish if they take for granted that the public will always be on their side.
Rep. Ryan’s budget proposal would radically reshape both the Medicare and Medicaid programs. It would turn Medicaid into a block grant, which would give states more discretion over benefits and eligibility. And it would radically redesign Medicare, changing it from what is essentially a government-run, single-payer health plan to one in which people would choose coverage from competing private insurance firms, many of them for-profit.
Poll numbers would seem to give the Democrats the edge in what will undoubtedly be a ferocious debate over the coming months and during the 2012 campaigns. An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll (pdf) conducted February 27-28 showed that 76 percent of Americans considered cuts to Medicare unacceptable. The public is almost as resistant to cutting Medicaid, at least for now: 67 percent of Americans said they found cutting that program unacceptable as well.
According to a story in Politico this week, Democrats “with close ties to the White House” think Ryan has handed them a gift that will keep on giving. They believe the Ryan blueprint will enable them to portray Republicans as both irresponsible and heartless, hellbent on unraveling the social safety net that has protected millions of Americans for decades. That message will be the centerpiece of the Democrats’ advertising and fundraising efforts, unnamed party strategists told Politico.
Perhaps. But know this: Ryan et al would never propose such a fundamental reshaping of those programs unless they were confident that corporate America stands ready to help them sell their ideas to the public. Like big business CEOs, Congressional Republicans wouldn’t think of rolling out Ryan’s budget plan without a carefully-crafted political and communications strategy and the assurance that adequate funding would be available to carry it out.
Republicans know they can rely on health insurance companies — which would attract trillions of taxpayer dollars if Ryan’s dream comes true — to help bankroll a massive campaign to sell the privatization of Medicare to the public.
The Secret Meeting, and the Secret PR Plot
Four years ago, in a secret insurance industry meeting in Philadelphia, I saw numbers that were similar to those in the NBC/Wall Street Journal poll. The industry’s pollster, Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies, told insurance company executives, who had assembled to begin planning a campaign to shape the health care reform debate, that Americans were rapidly losing confidence in the private health insurance market.
For the first time ever, he said, more than 50 percent of Americans believed that the government should do more to solve the many problems that plagued the U.S. health care system. In fact, he said, a fast-growing percentage of Americans were embracing the idea of a government run “Medicare-for-All” type program to replace private insurers.
The executives came to realize at the meeting that the industry’s very survival depended upon the successful execution of a comprehensive campaign to change public attitudes toward private insurers. They needed to convince Americans they “added value” to the health care system, and that what the public should fear would be more government control.
Knowing that a campaign publicly identified with the industry would have little credibility, the executives endorsed a strategy that would use their business and political allies — and front groups — as messengers.
The main front group was Health Care America. It was set up and operated out of the Washington PR firm APCO Worldwide. The first objective was to discredit Michael Moore’s documentary, Sicko, which was about to hit movie screens nationwide. Moore’s film compared the U.S. health care system to those in countries that had “Medicare-for-All” type programs run by governments. The American system, dominated by private insurers, did not fare well in Moore’s cinematic interpretation.
The front group painted Moore as a socialist but also went about the larger task of scaring the public away from “a government takeover of the health care system.” Part of that work involved persuading Americans that any reform bill expanding Medicare or including a “public option” would represent a government takeover.
The industry knew it had to enlist the support of longtime allies such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Federation of Independent Business and the National Association of Health Underwriters to repeat the term “government takeover” like a mantra. It also had to get conservative talk show hosts, pundits and politicians to play along. And play along they did. In the debate preceding one key House vote involving a public option, a parade of Republicans took to the floor to repeat the industry’s favorite term: government takeover.
To help make sure the term stuck, America’s Health Insurance Plans (AHIP), the insurers’ lobbying group, funneled $86 million to the Chamber of Commerce to help finance its advertising and PR campaign against any reform legislation that included the public option. It worked like a charm. Polls showed during the course of the debate that public opinion was increasingly turning against the Democrats’ vision of reform. By the time the bill reached President Obama in March 2010, the public option had been stripped out, and public support for reform was well below 50 percent.
“Government Takeover of Health Care”: 2010’s Lie of the Year, Courtesy of Insurers
As a testament to the success of the industry’s campaign, PolitiFact, the St. Petersburg Times’ independent fact-checking website, chose “a government takeover of health care” as its Lie of the Year in 2010. (The 2009 Lie of the Year was the fabrication that the Democrats’ reform bill would create Medicare “death panels.”)
While they were leading the effort to torpedo the public option, the insurers were lobbying hard for a provision in the bill requiring all of us to buy coverage from them if we’re not eligible for a public program like Medicare or Medicaid. They won that round, too. That provision alone will guarantee billions of dollars in revenue the insurers would never have seen had it not been for the bill the president signed.
But even that is not enough for the insurers. For many years, they’ve lobbied quietly for privatization of Medicare, with significant success. They were behind the change in the Medicare program in the 1980s that allowed insurers to offer what are now called “Medicare Advantage” plans. The federal government not only pays private insurers to market and operate these plans, it pays them an 11 percent bonus. That’s right: People enrolled in Medicare Advantage plans cost the taxpayers 11 percent more than people enrolled in the basic Medicare program.
During the Bush administration, the insurers persuaded lawmakers to allow them to administer the new Medicare Part D prescription drug program. That has been a major source of new income for the many big for-profit insurers that participate in the program.
Rest assured that insurers have promised Ryan and his colleagues a massive, industry-financed PR and advertising campaign to support his proposed corporate takeover of Medicare. If Democratic strategists really believe that Ryan has all but guaranteed the GOP’s demise by proposing to shred the social safety net for some of our most vulnerable citizens, they will soon be rudely disabused of that notion. The insurers and their allies have demonstrated time and again that they can persuade Americans to think and act — and vote — against their own best interests.
By: Wendell Potter, Center for Media and Democracy, April 7, 2011
Our Narrow And Wrong Headed Economic Debate
There’s a janitor who lives in a studio apartment just outside of Stevens Point, Wis. He cleans the math and science buildings at a state university, a job he’s been doing for about 18 months, after a year of unemployment. He’s 43 and last year made $24,622. He doesn’t have kids, so he doesn’t qualify for a child-care tax credit. He doesn’t own a home or a hybrid car — those credits don’t apply to him, either. He hasn’t been enrolled in school since the 10th grade, so he definitely doesn’t qualify for any education credits or deductions. He just learned that Gov. Scott Walker’s new budget has slashed his benefits and that next year he’ll be bringing in about 16 percent less per month. And when he sits down to do his taxes next week, he’ll find that he paid the federal government around $1,400 in 2010.
“People can think what they think,” said Jeff Immelt, GE’s chief executive, in response to a growing anger to this story, first reported last week by the New York Times. What else is there to think, one wonders, but that with the muscle and money of lobbyists and lawyers, with the access and influence built over generations, GE has done not just the audacious but the outrageous. And it is not alone.
Exxon Mobil, for example, made $19 billion in profits in 2009 but paid no federal income taxes. In fact, it received a $156 million rebate from the IRS. Bank of America received a $1.9 billion tax refund from the IRS last year, even though it made $4.4 billion in profits and was handed a nearly $1 trillion bailout by taxpayers. The list, inconceivably, goes on.
And yet the conversation in Washington hasn’t turned to aggressively closing the loopholes that GE’s lobbyists created for its accountants to exploit. It hasn’t turned toward ending the ridiculous tax breaks on corporate dividends and capital gains that allow hedge fund managers and the very wealthy to pay the government a lower percentage than their middle-class employees. Instead, Congress is debating whether $33 billion in cuts to the social safety net is enough to make the Tea Party happy.
While Republicans in the House have stopped talking nearly altogether about jobs (and have embraced a budget that could cost the economy 700,000 of them, according to Moody’s chief economist Mark Zandi), the head of the President’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, someone charged with finding a way to sustained job growth, is none other than Jeff Immelt himself, tax evader in chief. This is a systemic problem that neither belongs to nor can be solved by a single man. But for Immelt to keep his post with the administration now would be bad politics, bad policy and bad messaging. Yet as I write this, it doesn’t look as if he will be asked to step down.
Still, I am hopeful.
I am hopeful because an incredible spirit and energy has been unleashed. It was first shown during the Wisconsin labor battle, and it is being sustained and nurtured, and broadened to communities across the country. People are showing that they will not abide a system that finances corporate greed on the backs of the poor and middle class.
On Monday, the nation commemorated the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., who was killed in Memphis, where he had gone to fight for the rights of sanitation workers. Thousands gathered across America for a national day of action supporting public employees, other working people and trade unions in a common quest for jobs, justice and decency for all citizens. They participated in teach-ins, protests, demonstrations and vigils, all with a simple and deeply American message: It is time for the richest, most privileged among us to pay their fair share.
They spoke of the widening gulf in American politics, between the powerful and the powerless, between those who most need the government’s assistance and those most likely, instead, to receive it. They are not alone. For all the disappointment that progressives feel about this Congress, there are members who have been leaders and allies on Capitol Hill.
Consider Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.). Always the people’s champion, Sanders has called for closing corporate tax loopholes, which, if done, would raise more than $400 billion over a 10-year period. He’s also introduced legislation imposing a 5.4 percent surtax on millionaires that would yield up to $50 billion more a year — more than enough to protect Pell Grants and Head Start and other programs facing the chopping block.
He is joined by Rep. Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.), who has introduced legislation to create a separate tax bracket for millionaires and billionaires — an option that garners the support of 81 percent of the American people, according to an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll.
The common sense, humane response at this moment is to fight to reset the terms of a suffocatingly narrow and wrongheaded debate. This is the heritage of the progressive movement and, indeed, our obligation. The best principles of our country have been trampled by corporate immorality and right-wing extremism. But they can be restored. Martin Luther King Jr. knew as much when he fought for the sanitation workers of Tennessee 43 years ago. Now, we must know it too.
By: Katrina Vanden Heuvel, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, April 5, 2011
The Efficacy Of A Republican Hostage Strategy
Matt Yglesias offered a helpful reminder this morning about leverage.
Details on the appropriations deal are still hard to come by, but you don’t need the details to know that substantial short-term cuts in domestic discretionary spending will hurt the poor while harming macroeconomic performance. The problem with not agreeing to the deal, of course, is that a government shutdown would also hurt the poor while harming macroeconomic performance.
If you genuinely don’t care about the interests of poor people and stand to benefit electorally from weak economic growth, this gives you a very strong hand to play as a hostage taker. And John Boehner is willing to play that hand.
Right. A hostage strategy works well when the hostage taker makes it clear that killing the hostage is a perfectly viable option.
In this case, President Obama knew he was facing an unpleasant choice: accept spending cuts, which would hurt working families and undermine the economy, or allow Republicans to shut down the government, which would hurt working families and undermine the economy. As much as I really don’t like the agreement reached last night, I’m not unsympathetic to the dilemma.
But it’s worth appreciating the dynamic itself. The moment it was clear that the White House and congressional Democrats were determined to avert a shutdown, and congressional Republicans saw a shutdown as a reasonable, if not attractive, option — one that their base would celebrate — the rules of the game were already written to guarantee a discouraging result.
By some measures, Dems entered the process with the better hand. Democrats not only had the White House and the Senate majority, but polls showed the American mainstream opposed to the GOP agenda. But they also made clear that they were ready to make concessions — because they were determined to save that hostage, and Republicans didn’t much care either way.
Or as Greg Sargent put it this morning, “Republicans knew full well that the White House wouldn’t allow a government shutdown, allowing them to continue to move the spending-cut goalposts in the knowledge that Dems would follow — again ensuring that the debate unfolded on the GOP’s turf.”
The variable here would, ideally, be electoral considerations — Republicans wouldn’t kill the hostage because they’d be afraid of a voter backlash, creating a built-in incentive for the GOP to act responsibly. In theory, this gives Dems at least some leverage, too — “If you shut down the government, we’ll blame you and you’ll lose in 2012.”
So why doesn’t that work more? Probably because Republicans know that news organizations feel obligated to blame “both sides” at all times for everything, enough so that the GOP is willing to take its chances. Besides, even if they are blame, GOP officials can count on the party, the Koch Brothers, and Karl Rove to run a bunch of attack ads that will help them stay in office in anyway.
“Revere America”: Another Conduit For A Super-Wealthy Family To Influence Elections
On March 23, 2011 a group called Revere America issued a dire-sounding PRNewswire press release titled, “Americans Fear Loss of Freedom on Anniversary of Health Care Reform Law.” It warned that “a majority” of Americans view health care reform as “a threat to their freedom” and cited a poll by Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies to prove it. The release came well after Revere America had spent $2.5 million on attack ads in the 2010 mid-term elections to defeat Democratic candidates in two states — New York and New Hampshire — who had voted in favor of health care reform. Just prior to the mid-term elections, in the autumn of 2010, Revere America ran a a slew of false and misleading attack ads against the health care reform bill that erroneously called health reform “government-run healthcare” (a Republican and insurance industry buzz-phrase). The ads said that the new law will result in higher costs and longer waits in doctors’ offices. In another false claim aimed at inducing fear, the ads told viewers that “your right to keep your own doctor may be taken away.”
But who, or what, is Revere America? And how did it pull together enough money in less than a year to run a multi-million-dollar attack ad campaign, engage an expensive, professional polling firm and pump their message out on PRNewswire?
“Revere America”: Another Veil for a Wealthy Family
Revere America (RA) is a Delaware-based advocacy organization that sprang up in April, 2010. Like so many similar groups springing up after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Citizens United, RA is set up in a way that allows it to accept corporate donations, and that keeps it from having to reveal its funders. RA’s titular head at the time of its startup was former New York Governor George Pataki. The group pushes to repeal health reform, also known as the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which Pataki described a “horrific” and “costly bungle.” Donations to RA are not tax deductible, which would seem to make donating huge sums of money to the group less attractive to large numbers of people if it was a real grassroots group made up of ordinary people.
The Collier’s Hamilton Yacht ClubBut it turns out that Revere America is not made up of ordinary people, and its primary funder isn’t all that concerned about money. According to Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) and other sources, Revere America’s primary funder is Parker J. Collier of Naples, Florida, the wife of Miles Collier, a wealthy Florida land baron and real estate developer. Ms. Collier has given half a million dollars to the Republican Party of Florida, $60,800 to the Republican National Committee, and gave an overall total of $1,239,014 to Republican interests — and that was just in 2009-2010.
The Collier money flowing towards Republicans and Revere America is old family money. Parker’s husband, Miles Collier, is the grandson of Barron Collier, who bought over a million acres in south Florida in the early 1900s, and after whom Collier County, Florida is named. Through their company, Collier Enterprises, the Colliers develop tony yacht, golf and members-only country clubs in southwest Florida, where the rich play, dine and sail. In recent years, Collier Enterprises has even been developing entire towns in Florida.
Influencing Elections Throughout the U.S.
The Collier’s private, members-only golf clubFor the Colliers, though, it apparently isn’t enough to have all the amenities of uber-wealth. Through Revere America, the family’s apparent political front group, the Colliers have also been using their money to influence elections throughout the rest of the country. They have financially supported far-right Republican candidates not only in New York and New Hampshire, but in many other states, including Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota), Senator Scott Brown (R-Massachusetts), and Republican Sue Lowden in her failed primary bid to gain the Senate nomination in Nevada, to name just a few. The list of Republican candidates RA funded and Democrats they worked to defeat in the 2010 election cycle numbers over 100, with some elections meriting six figure donations — amounts that far exceed what individuals can legally donate to influence an election.
The professional Republican pollster doing work for RA, Bill McInturff, conducted the message and advertisement testing for the infamous “Harry and Louise” television commercials that helped defeat the Clinton-era health care reform effort. Some of McInturf’s other clients include insurer Blue Cross Blue Shield Association, America’s Health Insurance Plans (the health insurance industry’s lobbying group) and drug maker Pfizer — all of which have a stake in undermining health care reform.
Pataki resigned as RA’s chairman in February, 2011, citing a Florida judge’s ruling the same month that the new health reform law’s federal mandate to purchase health insurance is unconstitutional. Pataki cited this ruling, and the House of Representatives’ symbolic vote to repeal health reform, as creating a good time for him to step down, and as proof that RA had been “successfully launched.” RA’s spokesperson and president is now Florida attorney Marianne R.P. Zuk, who is listed in Florida incorporation records as an officer or director for several Collier-owned companies.
Revere America is a “grassroots group” for the uber-wealthy Collier family in the same way that Americans for Prosperity is a “grassroots” group for the uber-wealthy Koch brothers. Such groups are conduits through which the super-rich are increasingly exerting powerful influence over elections nationwide. RA is yet another group that demonstrates the growing trend in which the wealthiest Americans — in the forms of both human beings and corporations — use their money to create fake “grassroots” front groups to hide behind and influence elections across the U.S.
Be on the look out for many more such groups to crop up in the future as the richest one or two percent of U.S. citizens come under increasing pressure to pay their fair share of taxes, and as we move closer to the 2012 elections.
By: Anne Landman, Center for Media and Democracy, April 8, 2011
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About a thousand miles to the east, in Fairfield, Conn., General Electric, one of the world’s largest multinational corporations, posted a $14.2 billion profit for 2010. When its accountants were finished working their magic, the company didn’t owe a single dollar in federal taxes.