“Right Wing Social Engineering”: What Romney’s Medicare Plan Actually Does
DC journos have spent much of the 2012 election trying to answer the question of how exactly a President Romney would govern. On one side, there are the skeptics who never bought into Romney’s rhetoric during the Republican nomination. They argue Romney is, at heart, still a moderate northeastern governor, a businessman unsuited for the extremism that has come to dominate his party. Others are equally convinced that Romney must be taken at face value. Sure he might have positioned himself in the middle while he governed a state dominated by Democrats, but he has spent the past five years running for president full-time, aligning himself with every right-wing whim over the course of his two campaigns. He’s the Republican who sought the endorsement of Ted Nugent, discarded a gay spokesman, and calls corporations people. Lest we forget, it was Romney who was poised to run as the right-wing challenger to John McCain and Rudy Giuliani in 2008 before Mike Huckabee swooped in to steal the evangelical vote.
The best measure to get at the real Romney is to read his actual proposals and ignore the standard posturing at campaign stops or TV interviews. These are the documents directed primarily at the obsessive political class, barely noticed by your average voter, thus freeing Romney to be closer to his true self. They’re probably the most important piece of evidence for any politician before an election. As Jonathan Bernstein has convincingly argued, presidential pledges should be taken at face value, as newly elected presidents are almost always constrained by the commitments they made during the campaign.
When weighed by this measure, Romney is undoubtably aligned with the far right-wing vision of his policy, particularly on budgetary and fiscal matters. He’s advocated not only for the extension of the Bush tax cuts, but has suggested even further reductions in the U.S. tax rate that would heavily benefit the wealthy. He’s endorsed the Paul Ryan budget wholesale, an Ayn Randian vision of the limited government that even Newt Gingrich termed “right wing social engineering” when it was initially introduced.
One of the key elements of the Ryan/Romney overlapping vision is how the government should handle the exploding costs of Medicare. The New York Times delved into Romney’s proposals in contrast with Obama’s in an article Tuesday. The piece unfortunately falls into the pitfalls of equivocating newspaper journalism, weighing both plans largely by the attacks poised by the opponent rather than independent descriptions of what each candidate is suggesting. Romney’s plan is introduced as “ending Medicare as we know it” in Obama’s words, while the article introduces the Affordable Care Act as such:
The president’s 2010 health care law, Mr. Romney says, “could lead to the rationing or denial of care for seniors,” as it will squeeze nearly a half-trillion dollars from the growth of Medicare over 10 years while putting the program’s future “in the hands of 15 unelected bureaucrats.”
Either side of the political divide can agree that Medicare is on a perilous path. Health care expenditures as a whole are eating up an increasingly large share of the country’s GDP, and the number of Medicare enrollees is set to jump as the Baby Boomers start to retire. The government has projected that by 2024 the Medicare fund will no longer be able to match the full cost of expected benefits.
This concern is one of the primary reasons Obama pushed health care reform early in his administration. Alongside the measures that make it easier for low and middle income Americans to purchase health insurance, the Affordable Care Act takes a first stab at tackling the looming problem. The bill included a variety of measures to incentivize cheaper, more effective health care to bring down costs throughout the health care market, along with a medical advisory board that will suggest best practices to keep the tab lower on Medicare.
Meanwhile, Romney and Ryan’s strategy is to largely ignore the general growing cost of health care, instead focusing on Medicare itself. They would turn Medicare into a premium support plan—essentially a voucher program that would shift the burden of health spending off the government ledger by forcing future retirees to spend far more of their own funds on health services. These vouchers would initially meet the value of buying insurance on the private market, but they would soon fall behind the actual cost for consumers if the general price of health care continues to rise unabated.
Romney has not yet released a proposal with all of the details, but it is safe to assume that his premium support plan would largely follow the model set forth by Ryan. Under that plan—which has already passed the Republican controlled House before it was blocked by Democrats in the Senate—all Medicare enrollees who enter the program beginning in 2023 would have to enter the voucher program, and, as the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities has highlighted, by 2050 Medicare expenditures would be 35 to 42 percent lower for each participant, primarily by shifting the cost burden onto enrollees rather than lowering the overall cost of the care they consume.
Yes, Medicare expenditures would be lowered—but on enrollees’ dime.
By: Patrick Caldwell, The American Prospect, May 15, 2012
“Recalcitrant And Incorrigible”: John Boehner Threatens To Take The Debt Limit Hostage Again
Last August, the nation narrowly avoided hittingits debt limit thanks to a last minute deal cut by Congress. House Republicans had threatened to push the country into a default unless Democrats agreed to spending cuts that were larger than the amount of the debt limit increase.
The episode is widely regarded as an embarrassment for good governance and a blow for the economy. Standard & Poor’s, even with the deal, downgraded America’s credit rating, citing the GOP’s complete intransigence regarding revenue increases. But it seems Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) is ready to write the sequel, as he will reportedly demand today that the next increase in the debt limit follow the same GOP criteria:
In a speech Tuesday, House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) plans to address the issue of national debt, which will once again be nearing its legal limit in January, just as the tax hikes and spending cuts are due to hit.
According to advance remarks provided to The Post, Boehner will insist that any increase in the debt limit be accompanied by spending “cuts and reforms greater than the debt limit increase” — the same demand that pushed the Treasury to the brink of default during last summer’s debt-limit standoff.
According to the Economic Policy Institute, the cuts demanded by the GOP in exchange for raising the debt limit will cost the economy 1.8 million jobs this year. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner already pushed back on Boehner’s remarks, saying, “this commitment to meet the obligations of the nation, this commitment to protect the creditworthiness of the country, is a fundamental commitment that you can never call into question or violate.”
By: Pat Garofalo, Think Progress, May 15, 2012
“A Partisan Cleerleader”: Supreme Court Justice Scalia Turns Advocate Against Obama
In January, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia accused the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency of “high-handedness.” He was just getting warmed up.
Over the next 3 1/2 months, Scalia asked whether federal immigration policy was designed to “please Mexico,” fired off 12 questions and comments in 15 minutes at a government lawyer in a case involving overtime pay, and dismissed part of Solicitor General Donald Verrilli’s defense of President Barack Obama’s health-care law as “extraordinary.”
Scalia’s tone this year, particularly in cases involving the Obama administration, is raising new criticism over the temperament of a justice who has always relished the give-and-take of the Supreme Court’s public sessions. Some lawyers say Scalia, a 1986 appointee of Republican President Ronald Reagan, is crossing the line that separates tough scrutiny from advocacy.
“His questions have been increasingly confrontational,”said Charles Fried, a Harvard Law School professor who served as Reagan’s top Supreme Court advocate. While the justice has always asked “pointed” questions, in the health-care case “he came across much more like an advocate.”
Scalia’s approach is fueling the perception that the biggest cases this term, including health care, may be influenced by politics, rather than the legal principles that he and other justices say should be their guide. A Bloomberg News poll in March showed that 75 percent of Americans think the court’s decision on the 2010 law will be based more on politics than on constitutional merit.
Campaign Issue
“Someone who had just tuned into the health-care argument might get the impression that the court is a much more partisan institution than it actually is,” said David Strauss, a constitutional law professor at the University of Chicago Law School.
The week after the health-insurance argument, Obama showed a willingness to make the court an issue in his re-election campaign, saying a ruling striking down the law would be“judicial activism” by “an unelected group of people.” The court will probably rule by the end of June.
Scalia, 76, declined to comment for this story, said Kathy Arberg, a Supreme Court spokeswoman.
The justice has never shied away from controversy. He once wrote that a colleague’s reasoning in an abortion case “cannot be taken seriously.” When the court expanded the rights of prisoners at the U.S. naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, he dissented by saying the ruling “will almost certainly cause more Americans to be killed.”
‘Nasty’ Question
In 2009, he told a college student she had posed a “nasty, impolite question” when she asked whether book tours by the justices undermined their case for banning camera coverage of arguments. In 2006, he flicked his hand under his chin, using a dismissive gesture he said was Sicilian, to show his disdain for a reporter’s question.
In the courtroom, he is quick with one-liners, drawing laughter more frequently than any other justice during the court’s current nine-month term, according to DC Dicta, a blog that tracks the court.
Of late, Scalia’s most pointed remarks have come at the Obama administration’s expense.
In January, he directed his fire at Malcolm Stewart, a Justice Department attorney. Stewart was defending the EPA’s use of administrative compliance orders that demand an end to alleged environmental violations, in many cases insisting that recipients restore their land to its previous state.
‘That’s Very Nice’
Scalia made his contempt clear after Stewart said that people and companies could seek to change any “infeasible”requirements.
“Well, that’s very nice,” the justice said. “That’s very nice when you’ve received something called a compliance order, which says you’re subject to penalties” of $32,500 per day.
When Stewart said the EPA had modified the order at issue, dropping a requirement that an Idaho couple replant vegetation on their property, Scalia scoffed again. “It shows the high-handedness of the agency, it seems to me, putting in there stuff that is simply not required,” he said.
The court unanimously ruled against the EPA in March, giving landowners more power to challenge compliance orders in court.
Target: Verrilli
With health care, Scalia’s primary target was Verrilli, the administration’s top Supreme Court lawyer. Defending the law’s requirement that Americans get insurance or pay a penalty, the solicitor general argued that uninsured people often receive care, even if they can’t pay for it, because of the “social norms to which we’ve obligated ourselves.”
“Well, don’t obligate yourself to that,” Scalia said.
Later, Scalia called one strand of the government’s defense– its contention that Congress could legally enact the law as a tax — “extraordinary.”
The following day, he mocked an assertion by another Justice Department lawyer, Edwin Kneedler, as the court considered what would happen to the rest of the law should a key provision mandating that most Americans obtain insurance be declared unconstitutional. Kneedler said the court should look at “the structure and the text” of the 2,700-page statute.
“Mr. Kneedler, what happened to the Eighth Amendment?”Scalia asked, referring to the provision of the U.S. Constitution that bars cruel and unusual punishment. “You really want us to go through these 2,700 pages?”
‘Statute’s Gone’
At times during the health-care debate, Scalia took to stating his position, rather than asking questions. He all but declared that he would vote to invalidate the whole law, not just the insurance mandate. “My approach would say if you take the heart out of the statute, the statute’s gone,” he said.
In a Labor Department case that concerns claims for overtime pay by drug-industry salespeople, lawyer Stewart urged the court to side with the employees and defer to the department’s interpretation of a federal wage-and-hour law.
Scalia, who directed a dozen questions and comments at Stewart, criticized the department for laying out that position in court filings, known as amicus briefs, rather than through formal rulemaking.
“This is part of a regular program that the agency has now instituted, to run around the country and file amicus briefs –is that it?” Scalia asked — again calling the approach“extraordinary.”
‘Please Mexico?’
Scalia described as “extraordinary” yet another administration position, this time when Verrilli urged the court to strike down Arizona’s illegal-immigration law. Scalia bristled when the solicitor general said “we have to have the cooperation of the Mexicans,” something Verrilli said the federal government could best secure without state interference.
“So we have to enforce our laws in a manner that will please Mexico?” Scalia said. “Is that what you’re saying?”
Not everyone thinks that Scalia has gone too far. Ilya Shapiro, an opponent of the health-care law who attends eight to 10 arguments each term, says he sees no change in Scalia’s approach.
“He’s sarcastic, and he goes right to the heart of the weakness of the advocate who’s in front of him,” said Shapiro, a senior fellow at Washington-based Cato Institute, which advocates for limited government.
On health care, Scalia was simply trying to “express his exasperation with the government’s assertion of power,” he said.
Troubling Pattern
To other Supreme Court lawyers, Scalia’s questions show a troubling pattern. Rather than merely probing legal arguments, he has served as a “partisan cheerleader,” said Doug Kendall, president of the Constitutional Accountability Center in Washington, which supports the administration on health care and immigration.
“It’s disturbing to see a justice use oral argument as a platform for expressing the talking points that you hear each night on Fox News,” Kendall said. “I can’t think of a serious question that he posed in either argument suggesting that he was open to have his mind changed.”
By: Greg Stohr, Bloomberg News, May 15, 2012
Yep, “Call Him Cynical”: Rand Paul Rebuked For Gay Marriage Remark
Sen. Rand Paul, who said he wasn’t sure President Obama‘s views on marriage “could get any gayer,” was rebuked by an influential evangelical leader Sunday.
Family Research Council President Tony Perkins, appearing onCBS’ “Face the Nation,” strongly disagreed with the Kentucky Republican’s choice of words.
“I don’t think this is something we should joke about,” Perkins said. “We are talking about individuals who feel very strongly one way or the other, and I think we should be civil, respectful, allowing all sides to have the debate…. I think this is not something to laugh about. It’s not something to poke fun at other people about. This is a very serious issue.”
Perkins’ words were echoed by Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus on NBC’s“Meet the Press” Sunday.
“People in this country, no matter straight or gay, deserve dignity and respect. However, that doesn’t mean it carries on to marriage,” Priebus said. “I think that most Americans agree that in this country, the legal and historic and the religious union marriage has to have the definition of one man and one woman.”
Paul made his remarks during a meeting of the Faith and Freedom Coalition in Iowa on Friday.
“The president recently weighed in on marriage and you know he said his views were evolving on marriage. Call me cynical, but I wasn’t sure his views on marriage could get any gayer,” he said, drawing laughter from the audience.
Same-sex marriage surged to the forefront of political debate after Obama declared his support last week.
In an interview with ABC News’ Robin Roberts — hastily arranged to quiet the fallout from Vice PresidentJoe Biden’s comments days earlier that he was “absolutely comfortable” with same-sex marriage — Obama said: “At a certain point, I’ve just concluded that for me personally, it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.” He also said it was “the golden rule, you know? Treat others the way you’d want to be treated.”
In response, likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney reiterated his belief that “marriage is a relationship between one man and one woman.”
And Rand Paul’s father, GOP presidential hopeful Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, said the government should not make rules on marriage.
The libertarian view, he told Fox News, is, “Stay out of people’s lives. I would like the state to stay out of marriage…. Let two people define marriage.”
By: Morgan Little, The Los Angeles Times, May 13, 2012
“Idelogical Extremism”: Former Republican Senator Hagel Says Reagan Would Not Identify With Modern GOP
Last week, former Sen. John Danforth (R-MO) told ThinkProgress that his party was becoming “increasingly inconsequential” and “intolerant” following the defeat of veteran Sen. Dick Lugar (R-IN). Now, former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-NE) has also taken aim at his party for its ideological extremism.
Hagel — who served two terms in the Senate, between 1997 and 2009 — told Foreign Policy magazine on Friday that the Republican Party “is in the hands of the right, I would say the extreme right, more than ever before.” He observed:
Reagan wouldn’t identify with this party. There’s a streak of intolerance in the Republican Party today that scares people. Intolerance is a very dangerous thing in a society because it always leads to a tragic ending. Ronald Reagan was never driven by ideology. He was a conservative but he was a practical conservative. He wanted limited government but he used government and he used it many times. And he would work with the other party. …
Now the Republican Party is in the hands of the right, I would say the extreme right, more than ever before. You’ve got a Republican Party that is having difficulty facing up to the fact that if you look at what happened during the first 8 years of the century, it was under Republican direction. …
The Republican Party is dealing with this schizophrenia. It was the Republican leadership that got us into this mess. If Nixon or Eisenhower were alive today, they would be run out of the party.
Hagel hopes the pendulum will eventually swing back to moderation for the GOP, but warned that it is unlikely to happen in this election, noting that “what latitude [Mitt] Romney has to shape the party as we go into the election is somewhat limited because of the primary he’s had to run.”
It again bears mentioning that like Lugar and Danforth, Hagel was himself a solid conservative in the Senate earning a lifetime 85 percent rating with the American Conservative Union. The fact that even solid conservatives like these men — or Reagan — are not conservative enough to fit in the modern Republican Party is an indication of just how far right the GOP has drifted.
By: Josh israel, Think Progress, May 14, 2012
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