Tag Archives: politics

April 5, 2011 · 8:54 pm

CBO: GOP Budget Would Increase Debt, Then Stick It To Medicare Patients

These are the facts…

Now let’s see how the Republicans spin them as they try to kill Medicare…

They usually use their specially created data from the Conservative “Think” Tank, The Heritage Foundation that’s about as credible as Fox News…

However, unlike Faux News and The Heritage Foundation, The CBO is non-partisan, generally accurate and widely respected…

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s initial analysis of the House GOP budget released today by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) is filled with nuggets of bad news for Republicans.

In addition to acknowledging that seniors, disabled and elderly people would be hit with much higher out-of-pocket health care costs, the CBO finds that by the end of the 10-year budget window, public debt will actually be higher than it would be if the GOP just did nothing.

Under the so-called “extended baseline scenario” — a.k.a. projections based on current law — debt held by the public will grow to 67 percent of GDP by 2022. Under the GOP plan, public debt would reach 70 percent of GDP in the same window.

In other words, the spending cuts Republicans would realize in the first 10 years would be outpaced by deficit increasing tax-cuts, which Ryan also proposes. After that, debt projections under the plan improve decade-by-decade relative to current law. That’s because 2022 would mark the beginning of the Medicare privatization plan. That’s when, CBO finds, “most elderly people would pay more for their health care than they would pay under the current Medicare system.”

If the current Medicare system were allowed to continue, CBO found that an average 65-year-old beneficiary’s costs would be only 25 percent of what it’d be in the individual private insurance market. Under the GOP plan, those costs would jump to 68 percent.

In plain English, “the gradually increasing number of Medicare beneficiaries participating in the new premium support program [the GOP’s Medicare privatization plan] would bear a much larger share of their health care costs than they would under the current program.”

via CBO: GOP Budget Would Increase Debt, Then Stick It To Medicare Patients | TPMDC.

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April 4, 2011 · 9:16 pm

Dean Baker: It’s Time for Representative Ryan to Man Up

This guy is going to be all over the news the next few days…

He’s the one crafting the Republican Budget that destroys Medicare…

He’s the new darling of the far Right…

I really think the only thing he may be qualified for is to replace the actor playing Eddie Munster in “The Adams Family”…

Look at him closely….

Great article from Dean Baker at the Huffington Post:

Congressman Paul Ryan is the new darling of both the Republican Party and the major media outlets. He has put forward bold plans for dismantling Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Congressman Ryan is prepared to tell tens of millions of workers that they can no longer count on a secure retirement and decent health care in their old age. In Washington policy circles, this passes for courage.

Outside of Washington, people have a different conception of bravery. After all, over the last three decades the policies crafted in Washington have led to the most massive upward redistribution in the history of the world. The richest 1 percent of the population has seen is share of national income increase by close to 10 percentage points. This comes to $1.5 trillion a year, or as Representative Ryan might say, $90 trillion over the next 75 years. That’s almost $300,000 for every man, woman and child in the United States.

This upward redistribution creates the real possibility that many of our children will be poorer than we are. If Representative Ryan and his followers really cared about future generations, then we might expect him to push for policies that reverse some of this upward redistribution.

For example, we could break up the large banks (e.g. Goldman Sachs and J.P. Morgan) that operate with implicit government protection. This allows them to borrow money at below market interest rates and undercut their smaller competitors. By my calculations, the size of this subsidy to the largest banks is close to $35 billion a year, almost half the size of the long-term Social Security shortfall that concerns Mr. Ryan so much. If Mr. Ryan could man up a little, maybe he would have the courage to tell the big Wall Street banks that they will have to compete in a free market without this subsidy from the government.

It’s not only the big banks that make Representative Ryan cower. He’s also scared of the pharmaceutical industry. As a result of government-enforced patent monopolies, we spend close to $300 billion a year on drugs that would cost us around $30 billion a year. The potential savings of $270 billion a year is about three times the size of the projected Social Security shortfall.

Representative Ryan is a big fan of Medicare vouchers, however his voucher system does nothing to address our broken health care system while virtually guaranteeing that most seniors will not be able to afford decent health care. How about a voucher system that gives Medicare beneficiaries the option to buy into the more efficient health care systems in Europe and Canada, with the taxpayer and beneficiary splitting the savings? Well, that one could hurt profits of the insurance industry and major health care providers, so Mr. Ryan is against it.

MORE:   Dean Baker: It’s Time for Representative Ryan to Man Up.

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April 4, 2011 · 7:42 pm

Robert Reich: Why We Must Raise Taxes on the Rich

As usual, Robert Reich is the voice of reason calling from the wilderness…

It’s tax time. It’s also a time when right-wing Republicans are setting the agenda for massive spending cuts that will hurt most Americans.

Here’s the truth: The only way America can reduce the long-term budget deficit, maintain vital services, protect Social Security and Medicare, invest more in education and infrastructure, and not raise taxes on the working middle class is by raising taxes on the super rich.

Even if we got rid of corporate welfare subsidies for big oil, big agriculture, and big Pharma — even if we cut back on our bloated defense budget — it wouldn’t be nearly enough.

The vast majority of Americans can’t afford to pay more. Despite an economy that’s twice as large as it was thirty years ago, the bottom 90 percent are still stuck in the mud. If they’re employed they’re earning on average only about $280 more a year than thirty years ago, adjusted for inflation. That’s less than a 1 percent gain over more than a third of a century. (Families are doing somewhat better but that’s only because so many families now have to rely on two incomes.)

Yet even as their share of the nation’s total income has withered, the tax burden on the middle has grown. Today’s working and middle-class taxpayers are shelling out a bigger chunk of income in payroll taxes, sales taxes, and property taxes than thirty years ago.

It’s just the opposite for super rich.

The top 1 percent’s share of national income has doubled over the past three decades (from 10 percent in 1981 to well over 20 percent now). The richest one-tenth of 1 percent’s share has tripled. And they’re doing better than ever. According to a new analysis by the Wall Street Journal, total compensation and benefits at publicly-traded Wall Street banks and securities firms hit a record in 2010 — $135 billion. That’s up 5.7 percent from 2009.

Yet, remarkably, taxes on the top have plummeted. From the 1940s until 1980, the top tax income tax rate on the highest earners in America was at least 70 percent. In the 1950s, it was 91 percent. Now it’s 35 percent. Even if you include deductions and credits, the rich are now paying a far lower share of their incomes in taxes than at any time since World War II.

More:  Robert Reich: Why We Must Raise Taxes on the Rich.

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April 2, 2011 · 5:21 pm

The End of Compassionate Conservatism

The House Republicans have done the almost impossible:  Made George W Bush look good compared to themselves…

Most Progressives, like me, always thought the concept of Compassionate Conservatives was Public Relations BS.  And it was…

But we obviously had not anticipated this heartless bunch of new GOP House members…

And of course the Democrats don’t now how to fight this- either in Congress or with a coherent message strategy.

The good news is I think the GOP over reach will eventually be their undoing.  At least for a while…

We will just have to hope they don’t kill too many people in the meantime….

From the New Republic:

House Republicans want to cut funding for health programs abroad and for community clinics here at home. And although the projected savings are small, at least relative to the size of the federal budget, the philosophical shift they signal is big. This is the end of compassionate conservatism.

You remember compassionate conservatism, don’t you? It was George W. Bush’s slogan, going back to the late 1990s, when, as a candidate, he told audiences that “Prosperity without purpose is just materialism” and vowed to “rally the armies of compassion in our communities to fight a very different war against poverty.”

Cynics saw it as empty rhetoric or, worse, a deliberate distraction from policies that were actually quite harsh to the nation’s least fortunate. The cynics had a pretty good point. Bush raided the treasury, in order to give wealthy people huge tax cuts, and the resulting budget crunch has forced all sorts of cuts to vital programs over the years.

Still, Bush never gave up the rhetoric of compassion. And on at least a few occasions he lived up to it. Community clinics were one example: As president, he doubled their funding. According to an account by Kevin Sack in the New York Times, that led to the creation or expansion of more than 1,200 clinics around the country. “This is a really good use of the taxpayers’ money,” Bush said at the time, noting that good primary care helps keep people out of the emergency room

AND

Today, by contrast, Republican leaders are perfectly content to walk away from these programs and many others without so much as acknowledging the consequences, let alone addressing them. Poor people in the U.S. might not be able to get basic medical care? Victims of HIV abroad might lose their life-sustaining drugs? If Republicans have paused even a moment to think about these things, they sure haven’t shown it.

 

via House Republicans Turn Out The Lights On President Bush’s Compassionate Conservatism | The New Republic.

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April 2, 2011 · 5:07 pm

CEO Pay Soars While Workers’ Pay Stalls

The heads of the nation’s top companies got the biggest raises in recent memory last year after taking a hiatus during the recession.

Is anyone surprised anymore?

From USA Today:

At a time most employees can barely remember their last substantial raise, median CEO pay jumped 27% in 2010 as the executives’ compensation started working its way back to prerecession levels, a USA TODAY analysis of data from GovernanceMetrics International found. Workers in private industry, meanwhile, saw their compensation grow just 2.1% in the 12 months ended December 2010, says the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Two years of scaling back amid tough economic times proved temporary as three-quarters of CEOs got raises in 2010 — and, in many cases, the increases were substantial.

The sizable pay hikes came even though the economy’s recovery remains frail, unemployment is high and corporate profits last year were roughly flat, up 1.5%, from where they were in 2007 when the stock market peaked.

Says Kevin Murphy, professor of finance at the University of Southern California, “We have the recipe for controversy over CEO pay: big increases in CEO pay that show up following run-ups in stock prices coupled with high unemployment rates.”

via CEO pay soars while workers’ pay stalls – USATODAY.com.

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April 2, 2011 · 9:38 am

What Does John Boehner Do for a Living? Less Than Half in Poll Know

This is actually better than I thought it would be…

I’m convinced if Democracy ultimately fails in America, it will be because of ignorance and inattention…

That thought was re-enforced by last year’s election of so many Republicans so soon after they nearly destroyed the world economic system…

From Poll Watch:

Most Americans know that “No Child Left Behind” has something to do with education, that Hillary Clinton is Secretary of State and that Moammar Gadhafy is the leader of Libya, but when it comes to Congress, less than half of the public knows that John Boehner is the Speaker of the House or that the Republicans now have a majority in that chamber, according to a Pew Research Center survey conducted March 17-20.

In its regular News IQ quick, Pew found that 80 percent correctly identified “No Child Left Behind,” 73 percent knew what Hillary Clinton did for a living and 71 percent could name the country where Gadhafi has ruled for more than 40 years.

But only 43 percent knew that Boehner was the top House Republican and just 38 percent were aware that the GOP had a majority in the House. Republicans in the survey were predictably the most aware of their good political fortune with 50 percent knowing Boehner was Speaker and 49 percent knowing their party was a majority. Forty-two percent of Democrats knew who Boehner was and 33 percent knew the GOP controlled the House. Forty-one percent of independents correctly identified Boehner’s job and 39 percent knew the Republicans had a House majority.

Nineteen percent thought that Democrat Nancy Pelosi was still the Speaker.

However, Boehner is slowly but surely getting better known. In November, Pew said 38 percent correctly identified Boehner as the speaker-in-waiting. A Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll conducted in February said 37 percent did not know his name or were not sure of their opinion of him, which was an improvement over the 44 percent in that category last November right after the elections, and 52 percent in October 2010, just before Election Day.

via What Does John Boehner Do for a Living? Less Than Half in Poll Know « Poll Watch Daily.

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April 1, 2011 · 6:42 pm

Florida Republicans upset Democrat said ‘uterus’ on state House floor | The Raw Story

No Comment….

I’ll let this speak for itself…

For some Republican lawmakers in Florida, uterus is a dirty word.

During a debate over a bill that would prohibit governments from deducting union dues out of a worker’s paycheck last week, Florida state Rep. state Rep. Scott Randolph (D) argued that Republicans seem to only be against regulations when it comes to big business.

In his speech on the state House floor, Randolph even suggested that his wife could “incorporate her uterus” if it would stop the GOP from passing more restrictive abortion laws.

Republican leadership scolded the Democratic congressman, telling him that talk about body parts was unwelcome.

“The point was that Republicans are always talking about deregulation and big government,” Randolph told The St. Petersburg Times Thursday. “And I always say their philosophy is small government for the big guy and big government for the little guy. And so, if my wife’s uterus was incorporated or my friend’s bedroom was incorporated, maybe they (Republicans) would be talking about deregulating.”

“It’s not like I used slang,” he added.

He said Republicans told him they were concerned about young pages hearing the word.

“I think it’s a sad commentary about what we think about sex education in the state,” Randolph said.

via Florida Republicans upset Democrat said ‘uterus’ on state House floor | The Raw Story.

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April 1, 2011 · 6:36 pm

Prosecutors Weighing Whether to Indict Edwards

The latest news in the on-going Soap Opera….

From Taegan Goddard’s Political Wire:

Prosecutors investigating John Edwards spent several hours re-interviewing his former aide, Andrew Young, “suggesting they are weighing the strength of their chief witness before deciding whether to indict the former candidate,” the AP reports.

“The prosecutors could be interested in taking a closer look at Young to see how he’ll hold up as a witness, since his credibility could be problematic.”

via Prosecutors Weighing Whether to Indict Edwards.

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April 1, 2011 · 6:34 pm

Can Obama Lose?

Interesting article from Matthew Dowd at the National Journal…

He also makes the point that only 1 Democratic president has lost his re-election campaign-Jimmy Carter.

So what combination of factors in this complex system of politics must come together to cause a catastrophe for Obama politically that would result in his defeat?

I see three, and all have to be in place and reinforce each other for Obama to lose. First, the economy in 2012 has to be either stagnant or in decline in the 10 or so key electoral states (especially the ones in the Midwest) as he heads into the election. This would mean that the economy is creating very few net jobs in 2012 and that prices (including food and gas) are still rising.

Second, no new major international crisis arises that causes people to rally behind Obama because of his competent handling of it. And I emphasize the words “new,” “major,” and “competent.” Afghanistan and Iraq devolving again into a problem will not help Obama, and actually may hurt him because our country has basically moved on from the situation in both places.

Third, a Republican nominee has to emerge who is charismatic; is a very good communicator; is in touch with the country’s economic and social needs; and is a new brand of GOP leader whom many younger voters can connect with. Think of what it took in 1980 to defeat the Democratic incumbent—Ronald Reagan and crises galore.

All three factors must converge for Obama to lose, and two of them are needed to drive his job approval down to a place, as I have written before, that makes it difficult for him to win. As one can see, these three elements don’t include how much money the Democratic National Committee and Obama have at their disposal; how much cash the Republican National Committee or the Republican nominee raises; the quality of each campaign staff; the legislative machinations of Congress; or the use of modern technology in the campaigns (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc.). Those are all tactical factors that, ultimately, will have little influence on whether Obama wins or loses.

Two of these factors—the economy and an international crisis—are basically out of the GOP’s hands (in many ways, they are out of the Obama campaign’s control as well). Republicans should only be concerned with nominating the candidate who can give them a shot at winning if the two other factors are in place. And note that I didn’t add longtime political office-holding to the qualifications. Experience is nice, but it isn’t necessary in this environment.

Understanding the factors that could cost Obama the election allows us to not get distracted by the much-hashed-over details that matter little, such as money and technology. Focusing on what’s really important is a very good lesson for politics—and life.

via NationalJournal.com – Can Obama Lose? – Friday, April 1, 2011.

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April 1, 2011 · 6:14 pm

The Next America

Some very good news from the National Journal…

Not just for President Obama’s re-election, but for all of us…

I’m tired of rich white GOP men and crazy white GOP women- with an outrageous sense of entitlement -thinking they should run everything…

It’s time for more diversity in Government – and we sure won’t get that from the GOP.

The faster our government representation becomes multi-cultural, like our society is, the better.

The next America is arriving ahead of schedule. And it could rattle assumptions about the coming presidential election.

Last week’s release of national totals from the 2010 census showed that the minority share of the population increased over the past decade in every state, reaching levels higher than demographers anticipated almost everywhere, and in the nation as a whole. If President Obama and Democrats can convert that growth into new voters in 2012, they can get a critical boost in many of the most hotly contested states and also seriously compete for some highly diverse states such as Arizona and Georgia that until now have been reliably red.

“One of the strengths of our candidacy in 2008 is, we had a broader battlefield; what these numbers suggest is that those same opportunities are there [for 2012], and there are new ones to consider,” David Axelrod, who is expected to be Obama’s senior campaign strategist, told National Journal.

via NationalJournal.com – The Next America – Friday, April 1, 2011.

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