“The Collapse Of Civilization”: GOP Releases Plan To Save America From The Poor
The House Republicans unveiled their new budget today, complete with a spooky video pressing home the point that only the House Republicans and their leader Paul Ryan stand between us and CIVILIZATIONAL COLLAPSE. Yes, the peril of rising debt is that bad. No, it’s not so bad that it’s worth restoring Clinton-era tax rates to prevent. But so bad that it’s worth throwing tens of millions of people off health insurance? Oh, yeah.
The first place to begin with the House budget is taxes. The plan is to slash tax rates, with the top rate dropping to 25 percent. The budget asserts that it will make up for most of the lost revenue by eliminating tax deductions, but it does not say which ones. This would require them to produce about $6 trillion worth of tax deductions. It would also ensure that, if they succeeded, taxes on the rich would fall, a lot, and taxes on many non-rich people would rise. This probably explains why they are not providing any details, which also explains why this promise would be tricky to fulfill. In any case, the upshot is that they have delineated $6 trillion worth of deficit-expansion, offset by unspecified promises to make it up.
On the spending side, things get somewhat more specific. Medicare would be partially privatized. The basic functions of government, like:
Over the next decade, Ryan would spend 30 percent less than the White House on “income security” programs for the poor — that’s everything from food stamps to housing assistance to the earned-income tax credit. (Ryan’s budget would spend $4.8 trillion over this timeframe; the White House’s would spend $6.8 trillion.) Compared with Obama, Ryan would spend 38 percent less on transportation and 24 percent less on veterans. He’d cut “General science, space, and basic technology” by 20 percent. And, compared with the White House, he’d slash “Education, training, employment, and social services” by a full 44 percent.
Do House Republicans really think the federal government is vastly overinvesting in things like roads and scientific research, or is this merely a gimmick to make their tax cuts appear affordable? It is hard to say.
They do genuinely seem to believe that the federal government spends way too much on the poor and sick, and move to correct that. Poor people, or people who have a family member with a serious medical condition, come in for special abuse here. The Republican budget would repeal the Affordable Care Act, which provides health insurance coverage to 30 million people, and replace it with nothing. On top of that, it would absolutely slash Medicaid and the childrens’ health insurance plan, eliminating coverage from 14-27 million more people (the wide variation reflects the fact that the outcome heavily depends on how states respond to the huge cuts, and the elimination of rules that force states to cover poor people.)
All in all, we have a standard mix of specific benefits for the rich, specific pain for the poor, and a lot of vague promises that would entail pain for the middle class, without committing themselves in a way that could hurt politically.
By: Jonathan Chait, Daily Intel, March 20, 2012
“Sowing Confusion”: Is There Any Limit To Mitt Romney’s Dishonesty?
The other day, David Bernstein argued that there’s been an “important tipping point” where many national media figures have come to understand that “in the Romney campaign, they are dealing with something unlike the normal spin and hyperbole.” Bernstein suggested they are realizing Romney has crossed into groundbreaking levels of dishonesty.
I wish I were as optimistic. I’d argue that much of the national media is still treating Romney’s nonstop distortions, dissembling, and outright lying as par for the course, as business as usual.
Here’s a test case: The debate over Medicare — and Romney’s embrace of the Paul Ryan plan — is about to dominate the conversation. Romney is moving to get ahead of the story by accusing Obama of being the one who would “end Medicare as we know it.” Here’s the Romney campaign’s statement this morning:
“There are two proposals on the table for addressing the nation’s entitlement crisis. Mitt Romney — along with a bipartisan group of leaders — has offered a solution that would introduce competition and choice into Medicare, control costs, and strengthen the program for future generations. President Obama has cut $500 billion from Medicare to fund Obamacare and created an unaccountable board with rationing power — all while America’s debt is spiraling out of control and we continue to run trillion-dollar deficits.
“If President Obama’s plan is to end Medicare as we know it, he should say so. If he has another plan, he should have the courage to put it forward.”
The claim that Romney supports a solution favored by a “bipartisan group of leaders” is a reference to the plan authored by Ryan and Dem Senator Ron Wyden. The idea that this represents “bipartisan” suppport is laughable. But this type of claim is made on both sides, so put it aside.
More interesting is the assertion that Obama has “cut $500 billion from Medicare” and created an “unaccountable board with rationing power” even as the deficit is “spiraling out of control.” That’s a reference to Obamacare’s efforts to curb spending with $500 billion in savings that are actually wrung from health care providers, not Medicare beneficiaries. That “unaccountable board,” meanwhile, is a reference to the Independent Payment Advisory Board, which is designed to make recommendations for reducing Medicare costs, and explicitly cannot recommend rationing.
Get the trick here? The Romney campaign is accusing Obama of slashing Medicare, and hence “ending Medicare as we know it,” while simultaneously accusing him of failing to curb entitlement spending in ways that pose grave danger to the nation’s finances. This, even as Romney has endorsed a plan that would quasi-voucherize Medicare and end the program as we know it.
This is all about muddying the waters in advance of a debate that could cut badly against Romney. The GOP primary forced him to embrace Ryancare; Dems are going to hammer him over it. So the Romney camp is trying to get out front by blurring lines and sowing confusion over who actually is defending traditional Medicare and who would end the program’s fundamental mission as we know it. The question is whether this, too, will be treated as just part of the game.
By: Greg Sargent, The Washington Post, The Plum Line, March 12, 2012
Are Republicans About To Commit Medicare Suicide?
It’s shaping up to be spring 2011 redux. Just under a year ago, Republicans — euphoric after a midterm election landslide, and overzealous in their interpretation of their mandate — passed a budget that called for phasing out Medicare over the coming years and replacing it with a subsidized private insurance system for newly eligible seniors.
The backlash was ugly. But Republicans seem to have forgotten how poisonous that vote really was, and remains…because they’re poised to do it again. This time they’re signaling they’ll move ahead, with a modified plan — one that, though less radical, would still fundamentally remake and roll back one of the country’s most popular and enduring safety net programs.
“We’re not backing off any of our ideas, any of our solutions,” GOP budget chairman Paul Ryan said last week in an interview with Fox.
Why on earth would Republicans put the whole party back on the line? Particularly after a year of serial brinkmanship and overreach that has dragged their popularity down to record lows?
The answers speak as much to the hubris of this GOP majority as it does to the fact that the party’s in thrall to a movement that demands unyielding commitment to a platform of reducing taxes on high-income earners and rolling back popular, though expensive, federal support programs.
That creates a dilemma: Vote against the platform and face a primary. Vote for it, and face constituent backlash.
House Republicans will now have to choose between reigniting that backlash, or admitting to constituents that they erred the first time around.
To make that choice easier, Ryan’s signaling he’ll swap out his old Medicare plan with a new one — one that he actually co-wrote with a Democratic Senator. That’s what Democrats think he’s going to do, and if they’re right, it will allow him and members of his party to claim they’ve moved significantly in the Democrats’ direction.
Here are all the details of the so-called Ryan-Wyden plan. There are two key differences between this plan and the original Ryan plan. The first is that Ryan-Wyden would preserve a Medicare-like public option as a competitor to private plans in its insurance exchange, and allow seniors to buy into it. The second is that it would leave the rate at which the program’s costs are allowed to grow exactly where it is in current law — forcing seniors to pay less out of pocket than would the original Ryan plan.
So substantively it is, indeed, a step or two left for the GOP. But here’s the key: it ultimately hands Medicare’s benefit guarantee over to a whimsical market, instead of keeping it in government hands, where it’s been for nearly 50 years. It would constitute a massive policy shift to the right. And that’s why Democrats abandoned Ron Wyden en masse the day the plan was unveiled.
House leadership and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee couldn’t be happier. They think the GOP’s walking right back into a political buzz saw, confident the public won’t be impressed by the technical modifications to the plan, or sympathetic to the fact that a single Senate Democrat endorsed it. It’s a lesson Dems learned the hard way during health care reform — all the hair splitting over specifics didn’t stop Republicans from characterizing every permutation of it as “Obamacare.” And the label stuck. Democrats are betting they can pull the same trick in reverse this year. Indeed, as you can tell from the poster below that’s already being distributed by the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, they liked “Ryan Plan 1” so much, they’re lining round the block for the sequel.
http://50.56.28.37/talkingpointsmemo.com/images/GOP-Horror-Movie-660.jpg
By: Brian Beutler, Talking Points Memo, February 7, 2012
PolitiFact’s Pants On Fire For Choosing “Ryan Will End Medicare” As “Lie Of The Year”
This morning, PolitiFact announcedthat the Democrats’ charge that Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) budget will end Medicare is the biggest lie of the year — even though it’s 100 percent true!
Here is why: Ryan’s plan ends traditional fee-for-service program and forces all future retirees to ultimately enroll in private coverage.
Under his proposal, beginning in 2022, people turning 65 will receive a pre-determined “premium support” payment to purchase private insurance. Insurers will offer a basic package of benefits, but traditional Medicare — the program that President Lyndon Johnson enacted in 1965 — will literally stop enrolling new beneficiaries. Rather than paying health care providers directly — and using its market clout to secure better bargains and other efficiencies for enrollees — the government would now pay multiple private health insurers pre-determined amounts per beneficiary to act as middle men between patients and providers.
It will no longer guarantee seniors a defined package of benefits, but will instead only offer a defined contribution towards their health care costs. As the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) analysis of Ryan’s proposal explains, “the payment for 65-year-olds in 2022 is specified to be $8,000, on average, which is approximately the same dollar amount as projected net federal spending per capita for 65-year-olds in traditional Medicare.” However every subsequent year, as health care costs increase, the government’s contribution “would grow at a slower rate,” inflation, and the age of the enrollee. By 2030, under the proposal, the premium support would “only cover 32 percent of a typical 65-year-old’s total health care spending” and would decrease every subsequent year.
PolitiFact concedes that this is, in fact, “a huge change to the current program.” But it’s more than that. Capping costs to beneficiaries, closing the traditional fee-for-service program, and forcing seniors to enroll in new private coverage, ends Medicare by eliminating everything that has defined the program for the last 46 years.
By: Igor Volsky, Think Progress, December 20, 2011
Romney Doubles Down On Medicare Privatization
Mitt Romney clearly didn’t want to endorse Paul Ryan’s radical budget plan, which includes a measure to end Medicare. But now that he’s losing, Romney apparently feels as if he doesn’t have any choice.
After months of avoiding taking a firm stand on Ryan’s privatization scheme — Medicare’s guaranteed benefit would be scrapped, replaced with vouchers — Romney is suddenly on board with the far-right agenda without leaving himself much in the way of wiggle room. This began in earnest yesterday, when the Romney campaign boasted, “Mitt Romney supports what Paul Ryan did. He endorsed what Paul Ryan did.”
The Romney camp then further embraced the Ryan plan overnight, unveiling a new video attacking Newt Gingrich for having criticized Medicare privatization. Today, Romney was even more explicit at an event in Iowa, responding to a voter’s question.
“I spent a good deal of time with Congressman Ryan. When his plan came out, I applauded it, as an important step,” he said. “We’re going to have to make changes like the ones Paul Ryan proposed.”
Romney added that by using “vouchers,” he intends to help “protect” Medicare.
Right about now, I suspect there are a lot of folks at the DNC and at Obama for America HQ who are smiling.
Remember, Romney didn’t want to go to this point. He’s been entirely aware of how radioactive Ryan’s Medicare scheme was — polls showed the American mainstream hates it — and the fact that it cost Republicans at least one congressional special election this year, and will be a major issue in 2012. When Romney was confident that he’d be the nominee, he was comfortable avoiding this issue.
But now he’s stuck. Romney apparently intends to use his support for the Ryan plan to get ahead in the GOP nominating race, despite the general-election risks, working under the assumption that there won’t be a general-election for him unless he goes to the hard-right now.
I made the case yesterday that this is a major campaign development. Jonathan Cohn goes a little further today, explaining why this “may prove to be a critical moment.”
All of this frames a pretty stark choice for the next election…. [A] vote for President Obama will be a vote to implement Obamacare and keep Medicare, while a vote for the Republican nominee, assuming it’s Gingrich or Romney, will be a vote to eliminate the former and at least begin dismantling the latter (along with Medicaid, most likely).
Or to put it a bit more simply, the choice in the next election will be for universal health care for people of all ages or universal health care for nobody.
By: Steve Benen, Contributing Writer, Washington Monthly Political Animal, December 9, 2011
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