Saturday, January 8, 2011

Republicans Will Break Their Own Rule Immdiately

This is the official "common sense" article of the week, where Bruce Bartlett says, "Somebody needs to explain to Republicans that cutting the budget is a complicated business that can't be done with a hatchet and a good supply of dogma." But the part I will highlight is how Bartlett explains that Republicans will break the only common-sense rule they came into this Congress sporting on almost their very first vote:
Moreover, CBO director Doug Elmendorf has been a lightning rod for Republicans. Many hold a grudge against him for attending a White House meeting in the summer of 2009 on health care reform. In a July 23, 2009, report, the Wall Street Journal implied that Elmendorf had been pressured into changing the CBO’s score on health care reform. It called the meeting “extraordinary and inappropriate.”

Subsequently, the CBO scored the health legislation as reducing the deficit in both the short-run and the long-run – a view that every Republican finds incredible and factually wrong. They all believe that ACA increases the deficit, which is why they plan to vote on its repeal next week.

Interestingly, CBO was not asked to score the cost of repeal by its sponsors, which is normally required for all bills that affect spending. However, it did so anyway. Yesterday, CBO estimated that ACA repeal will increase the deficit by $230 billion over the next 10 years. Keep in mind that repeal would not only reduce spending for new benefits, but also reverse all of the cost savings that paid for them. Undoing those savings means increasing Medicare spending by about $500 billion. That’s why Republicans had to bend their own rules to permit a vote on ACA repeal in order to get around their promise never to increase entitlement spending without offsetting it with entitlement cuts.
Anyway, read the whole article. You will learn about the complicated issues at play in the process of cutting budgets... the forces that work against the cuts, the rules and regulations, the reverbarative effect of those cuts, and the general impossibility of the Republican approach with regard to making cuts.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

This should surpirse no one,but it does,obviously with all the moronic mutterings of 'hey,you said you were going to...'.sure they did and you are surprised they are not going to now,you dummies?.when will 'we the people' realize that the politicians are little more than puppets doing as they are told? 'we the people' tolerate the lies and bullshit stories time after time forgetting why/how the USA was founded.and then acting accordingly.

tasij said...

If You Believe Obamacare Will Save Money, You’ll Believe Anything, It uses 10 years of taxes to fund six years of subsidies. Social Security and Medicare revenues are double-counted to the tune of $398 billion. A new program funding long-term care frontloads taxes but backloads spending, gradually going broke by design. The law pretends that Congress will spend less on Medicare than it really will, in particular through an automatic 25% cut to physician payments that Democrats have already voted not to allow for this year.
Of all the claims deployed in favor of ObamaCare, and there are many, the most preposterous is that a new open-ended entitlement will somehow reduce the budget deficit. Insure 32 million more people, and save money too! The CBO budget gnomes are required to “score” what’s on paper in front of them, no matter how unrealistic, and that’s the method its Congressional masters prefer. The political class makes believe that CBO’s forecasts are carved into stone tablets through divine revelation, but all they really show is that politicians have rigged the budget rules to hide the true cost of entitlements,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704415104576065723458609678.html?mod=rss_opinion_main there is a better way http://www.roadmap.republicans.budget.house.gov/

Jil Wrinkle said...

Here is a Newsweek Article explaining in detail about how Healthcare Reform will save money.

http://www.newsweek.com/2010/03/20/how-health-care-reform-reduces-the-deficit-in-5-not-so-easy-steps.html

Now, yes, we have competing links. But ask yourself this: Which source do you think is likely to be most honest: (1) n opinion piece in a business-focused newspaper about legislation that will vastly reduce profits on certain major businesses, (2) a study by the political party steadfastly opposed to healthcare reform, or (3) an actual news article in America's second largest magazine? I'll leave that determination up to you... but I'm sure you know what I think.

Anonymous said...

Do not believe any of it.news magazines need to sell mags,have advertisers to appease.political parties represent affected professions.business's?same-same...America is broke and it is that way because of the people who have profitted by ruining it,all the while playing on the same old themes,emotions:Patriotism,fear,guilt...So down the drain it goes,it is past the point of being salvaged.Too bad,a once great country ruined in 8 short years.

Anonymous said...

Who has the best military in the world?
Now ask yourself who has the best healthcare, life expectancy, education system, economic equality etc etc. You'll probably get a different answers if you're sane. Now should I build a stealth bomber or a new hospital nah fuck it stealth bombers are rad lets build some more of those. Why is it the other western nations can spend less on health care for better results than the US? No we aren't all communists btw. Over reach is so stupid but lots of empires have done it so the US isn't alone if that's any consolation. Just some random thoughts in no particular order.

tasij said...

your article doesn't mention anything about the over 200 companies (and growing)who are getting waivers from participating in obamacare, nor does it mention where congress gets the authority to make us buy healthcare, nor did it mention how you add 32 million to healthcare and not raise costs, that the one that really doesn't make sense, and what I don't really understand is how you can call yourself a libertarian and a small government fiscal conservitive and still defend this massive government take over? explain that one to me

Jil Wrinkle said...

Here you go: I've been very consistent over the years on my healthcare views.

http://junglejil.blogspot.com/search?q=healthcare+libertarian

Here I wrote about the purchase requirement:

http://junglejil.blogspot.com/2010/03/healthcare-bill-and-purchase.html

tasij said...

thanks for clearing that up, i have only been following you since last july when i came home from my vaction in Jasaan, i remember seeing you walk tyson past our house, and i realize that you were the americano living in the house my wife and daughter both like(not a fan of living in upper Jasaan)i thought you were a lib(not meant as an insult), as for me i was influenced early in life by Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged, and fountainhead, (not a big fan of Ayn through) anyway as for how the government can make you pay for medicare and unemployment they are both taxes, which the congress has the authority to levy,(auto insurance is not needed unless you drive, also a state thing) now the dems are in a little bind, this mandate the only way they can levy it legally is call it a tax, but if they do that then obama breaks his no tax on people making less then 250,000 let's see what justice kennedy says cause he will be the one to decide it, here a article from someone kind of moderate http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/opinion/07brooks.html?_r=2&ref=davidbrooks which was in a the ny times not a right wing paper.
In 1965, Medicare was projected to cost $12 billion by 1990. Its actual 1990 cost: $110 billion — roughly nine times the original estimate. (The comparable figures for Medicare’s first decade, 1966-75, are: $2 billion and $14.8 billion, respectively — seven times the original estimate.)
a little more recent Romneycare in Massachusetts cost 20 percent more than projected in its first full year, Britain's National Health Service cost 38 percent more than projected in its first year, and again I ask do you really believe you can add 32 million people to healthcare and LOWER costs? How is that possible?

Jil Wrinkle said...

How can you add 32 million people to healthcare and lower costs?

It's very easy: Look at the second link I provided ("healthcare-bill-and-purchase"). Where is the government paying anything to provide those 32 million people health insurance? Nowhere: The people are going to be forced to pay for it themselves. And if they don't? The government gets $2,000 a year in taxes from them.

Part of being human is getting sick. Now, very few people without health insurance, when they get to the point where illness is really clobbering them, fail to go to a doctor... and when they are at death's door, they most certainly go to a doctor whether they want to or not.

And whether doctors want to or not, whether hospitals want to or not, they are forced to do something with these patients: either pass them on to other hospitals, or provide treatment themselves. Regardless, those people without insurance eventually wind up costing some hospital money... assuming that the vast majority of people without health insurance also cannot afford to pay $1,000, $5,000, or $25,000 medical bills.

And who pays for those medical bills if the people without insurance do not? Most certainly not the hospital at the end of the day. Most certainly not the insurance companies either. The American public (of which the government is the arm that reaches in the pocket and grabs the wallet) pays the cost of caring for those people without insurance.

So: Forcing 32 million people who are most certainly going to get sick eventually to pay for the cost of their healthcare — either by paying for insurance, or paying taxes so that the government can pay for their healthcare — is how you lower costs.

(Even the never-enacted "public option", where the government would have provided low-cost insurance to the uninsured people would have saved money because — say it with me now — the 32 million uninsured people of America would have been paying something for their healthcare, where as now they are, again, paying nothing at all.)

Understand? Seems pretty straightforward when you think about it that way, doesn't it?

Now ask yourself this? Which is the socialist option and which is the conservative option:

Option 1: Repeal the bill that forces uninsured people to pay for the services they consume, and let them go back to getting free healthcare.

Option 2: Keep the bill that forces uninsured people to be responsible (either by paying taxes or by buying insurance) for their own healthcare.

If you were a socialist, which one would appeal to you? If you were a conservative, which one would appeal to you?

I think I rest my case.