Tag: Medicare

One of the reasons that the Republicans lost so badly in 2006 and 2008 and the reason the Democrats took such a dive in 2010 was the economy. Since then the job approval rating of Congress has plummeted with the Republicans fairing worse than the Democrats but only slightly. In regards to the economy the public in general doesn’t think that President Obama is doing such a great job, either. People are worried about jobs, good jobs not deficits. Deficit and the national debt are not what is holding back the economy, it’s jobs.

The Republicans in the House seem to be intent on killing more jobs with its latest suicide pact that would cut everything from taxes for the wealthy, food stamps, destroy Medicare, and spending cuts. As Roger Hicky in his Huffington Post article point out, the Republican budget clearly rejecting what the American public wants.

The only thing that could save Republicans would be if Democrats, like Oregon Senator Ron Widen or House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer, persuaded their party to ignore American public opinion and join with the GOP in destroying Medicare, cutting Social Security, and slashing public spending in a way that cripples the economy and rewards the wealthy. That’s what the Ryan Republican budget would do, and Democrats — and Americans who believe in majority rule — need to explain the extreme nature of this budget to the American people. [..]

So, the brand-new Ryan Republican budget, so very like last year’s Ryan budget, is already unpopular with the American majority, in all of its major elements. Progressives and Democrats should immediately publicize its many unpopular pieces so the public knows about them all. We should immediately demand to know whether the Republican candidates for president embrace it. And we should keep a wary eye out for Democrats who are willing to give the Republicans cover. When the Paul Ryan Republicans — enemies of everything the American majority believe in — are putting a gun to their heads and are about to pull the trigger, progressives should get out of the way and publicize the results — from now until the November elections.

It is obvious from the results of these kinds of cuts in Europe, austerity budgets don’t work. The Occupy Wall Street movement changed that conversation six months ago.

If Obama and the Democrats are smart, they’ll listen to the American public, sit back and let the Republicans pull the trigger.

Up Date: Ezra Klein, writing in the Washington Post, sums up Ryan’s latest version of a “budget plan” in one sentence:

Ryan’s budget funds trillions of dollars in tax cuts, defense spending and deficit reduction by cutting deeply into health-care programs and income supports for the poor.

The last I checked that isn’t going to win them any elections but you never know when the Democrats will ride into save the day. Calling Ron Wyden.

No holiday vacation for you, Mr. President.

Speaker John A. Boehner, who had urged his members on Saturday to support the legislation, did what appeared to be an about-face on Sunday when he said that he and other House Republicans were opposed to the temporary extension, part of a $33 billion package of bills that the Senate easily passed Saturday. In addition to extending the payroll tax cut for millions of American workers, the legislation extended unemployment benefits and avoided cuts in payments to doctors who accept Medicare. The measure would be effective through February.

In an interview with NBC’s “Meet The Press” , Mr. Boehner said the two-month extension would be “just kicking the can down the road.”

“It’s time to just stop, do our work, resolve the differences and extend this for one year,” Mr. Boehner said. “How can you have tax policy for two months?”

He said that Republicans wanted to extend the payroll cut for a year, but that it would have to be financed with cuts in the existing budget. When Congressional aides announced the deal on Friday, they said the items it contained were fully paid for.

If you can stand to watch the Orange Man, from Meet the Press (I’ll spare you the entire 15 minutes):

   Boehner: Well, it’s pretty clear that I, and our members, oppose the senate bill. … How can you do tax policy for two months? So, we really do believe it’s time for the Senate to work with the House, to complete our business for the year. We’ve got two weeks to get this done. let’s do it the right way.

   Gregory: So your suggesting start over, make this a one year extension. Should the Senate start from scratch?

   Boehner: No, what I’m suggesting is this. The House has passed its bill, the Senate has passed its bill. Under the Constitution, when we have these disagreements, there could be a formal conference between both chambers to resolve the differences.

Speaker Boehner is reneging on a bipartisan deal the was negotiated with the Senate and passed with a large majority of 89 votes that included 39 Republicans. The Senate has adjourned until after the holidays, so the likelihood of a conference committee at this point is not happening.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has said that he won’t call the Senate back to negotiate on Mr. Boehner’s demand to negotiate an extended payroll tax cut, unemployment insurance and a doctor’s fix on Medicare reimbursement rates until after the House passes the two month stop gap bill. David Dayen at FDL has this statement from Reid’s office::

Senator Reid has been trying to negotiate a yearlong extension of the payroll tax credit with Republicans for weeks. He is happy to continue negotiating a yearlong extension as soon as the House passes the Senate’s short-term, bipartisan compromise to make sure middle class families will not be hit by a thousand-dollar tax hike on January 1.

It’s not like this bill was negotiated in a vacuum, Mr. Boehner was part of the discussion with both Reid and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and he had asked for a compromise:

The Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, said that Mr. Boehner had asked him and the minority leader, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, to work out a compromise on the tax cut and that it had been agreed to by both political parties.

“Neither side got everything they wanted, but we forged a middle ground that passed the Senate by an overwhelming bipartisan majority,” Mr. Reid said in a statement. “If Speaker Boehner refuses to vote on the bipartisan compromise that passed the Senate with 89 votes, Republicans will be forcing a thousand-dollar tax increase on middle-class families on Jan. 1.”

If the House leadership thinks that this tactic is going to help the GOP chances of holding the House and taking back the Senate and White House from the Democrats, I have a couple bridges I’d like to sell him.

The deadline for the bicameral Super Committee to come up with a deal on deficit reduction is a week away. While many American’s don’t think that the committee will meet the deadline thus triggering large mandated budget cuts to defense and entitlements, we have President Obama warning the committee not to “cheat” by changing the law so that those cuts, particularly to the Defense, would not go into effect should the committee fail. Meanwhile, the committee’s Democratic members are proposing a $2.3 trillion tax-and-cut proposal “that includes $400 billion in Medicare and Medicaid reductions,” but only if Republicans compromise by putting new tax revenues on the table that in the end would only amount to $350 billion in new tax revenue.

The other really unacceptable proposal that the Democrats have put on the table to get the Republicans to agree to a paltry $350 billion in tax revenues, is making the Bush/Obama tax cuts permanent, even though the White House has said that President Obama would veto any bill that made those cuts permanent. Perhaps they are counting on Obama doing his usual last minute capitulation and he would sign the bill.

The Democrats are scrambling to try to make this look like a good deal but it’s not. Letting the Bush/Obama tax cuts expire would solve more of the deficit problem than anything that this committee or Congress has proposed by increasing tax revenues $1 trillion over the next 10 years. To their credit though, the Democrats have rejected the Republican offer that would cut all the tax rates across the board by 20%, lowering the top tax bracket to 27% from 35% assuming the Bush tax cuts would be extended. This would reduce tax revenues by $200 billion in just one year.

This is a muddled mess that is not really a crisis at all and in the long run won’t create any jobs but deepen the economic crisis that has been created by the burst of the housing bubble, job killing foreign trade agreements, unfair tax codes and the lack of banking regulation.

John Aravosis at AMERICAblog nails what has exacerbated much of problem: the Democrats negotiating techniques, or rather, the lack of them. The Republicans negotiate while the Democrats come to the table and offer their bottom line, so there is nowhere to go but to cave to Republican demands:

Note how the Republicans are still skewing their proposals towards large budget cuts and little tax increases, whereas the Democrats are offering 50-50 budget cuts and tax increases. That means that if both parties make concessions as they move to the “middle” – which is highly unlikely, the Dems will cave while the Rs will stay put – the “middle” will be a point at which there are more budget cuts than tax increases. Why? Because the Democrats, as always, are making their final offer – half tax increases, half budget cuts – first, so there’s nowhere to go but down.

This had been the Democratic approach since 2006 when the party gained control of both houses of Congress. It’s no wonder that voters are disgusted with both parties and that the Democrats lost the House in 2010. By gutting our social safety networks to protect the wealthy and appease the Republicans, the Democrats could well lose more in 2012 if they don’t start listening to the demands of the American people.

h/t to DCblogger at Corrente

 David Dayen may have hit the nail on the head when he wrote about the latest Super Committee’s wrangling over using Social Security to pay for the 1%’s tax cuts:

I don’t have to tell you about how Social Security never contributed one penny to the deficit. It holds a surplus of $2.6 trillion, and the elites just don’t want to pay off the trust fund because that might mean higher taxes on rich people. A bargain was made 30 years ago to build up the trust fund and pay for the baby boomers’ retirement, and now they want to renege on that deal and take the money out of the hides of old pensioners.

I assume that the effort here is to move to chained CPI, which will lead to a reduction in benefits. It’s also a regressive tax increase. If the leaders in Washington think that a public already out in the streets over inequality, Wall Street greed and corporate control of government will meekly accept that, they’re just wrong.

Of course, members of Congress won’t really have to worry about their benefits getting cut. That’s because they’re mostly fabulously wealthy and won’t be burdened as much as the other 99% by a more meager Social Security check every month.

The front page article in the Washington Post that got everyone’s dander up this week is so blatantly wrong that is a bold faced lie that has been debunked numerous times. Economist Dean Baker was much kinder saying that the “Washington Post Discards All Journalistic Standards In Attack on Social Security”:

The basic premise of the story, as expressed in the headline (“the debt fallout: how Social Security went ‘cash negative’ earlier than expected”) and the first paragraph (“Last year, as a debate over the runaway national debt gathered steam in Washington, Social Security passed a treacherous milestone. It went ‘cash negative.'”) is that Social Security faces some sort of crisis because it is paying out more in benefits than it collects in taxes. [The “runaway national debt” is also a Washington Post invention. The deficits have soared in recent years because of the economic downturn following the collapse of the housing bubble. No responsible newspaper would discuss this as problem of the budget as opposed to a problem with a horribly underemployed economy.]

This “treacherous milestone” is entirely the Post’s invention, it has absolutely nothing to do with the law that governs Social Security benefit payments. Under the law, as long as there is money in the trust fund, then Social Security is able to pay full benefits. There is literally no other possible interpretation of the law.

Dean rips apart the proposal by former Senator Alan Simpson and Morgan Stanley director Erskine Bowles that emerged form President Obama’s failed Cat Food Commission I:

Actually the plan put forward by Bowles and Simpson would have implied large cuts for most low-income workers who would not have met the work requirements needed for the higher benefit. The cut would have taken the form of a 0.3 percentage point reduction in the annual cost of living adjustment. This cut would be cumulative, after 15 years of retirement a beneficiary would be seeing a benefit that is roughly 4.5 percent lower as a result of the Bowles-Simpson plan. The plan also phased in an increase in the age for receiving full benefits to 69, which is also a benefit cut for lower income retirees.

For lower income retirees Social Security is the overwhelming majority of their income. This means that the benefit cut advocated by Bowles and Simpson would imply the loss of a much larger share of their income than the end of the Bush tax cuts would for the wealthy. However, the Post has never described the ending of these tax cuts as a “modest” or “small” tax increase.

Now the current version of the Cat Food Commission, the Congressional Super Committee is about to use cutting Social Security as a publicity stunt to show how serious they are about cutting the deficit. The cuts are on the table because, as Jeff Madrick points out, the stupid Democrats think that their Republican counterparts on the committee will agree to raising taxes. In his article makes it very clear that the burden of these “deficit reducing proposals” will fall on the backs of the most vulnerable in our society, the elderly:

So let’s be clear. The Social Security Administration projects that benefits will rise by one percent of GDP from five percent to six percent over the next 20 years or so and then stabilize or even fall a bit due to the rising elderly population. One percent. That’s what all this is about.

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Let me also remind us that Social Security is not very generous. The average payment is $14,000 a year. It is getting less generous. It used to replace 55 percent of retirement income, but benefits were reduced in the 1980s. It now covers on average 41 percent of retirement income. In 2031, it will cover 32 percent of retirement income.

We have already reduced the program’s generosity. Yet, Social Security provides nearly all income for one quarter of the elderly and more than half the income for more than half of the elderly.

The Super Committee will say it simply wants to make the inflation calculation more accurate. It will reduce benefits. But government research suggests elderly costs rise faster in price than the traditional measures of inflation.

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What will drive future budget deficits is Medicare and Medicaid, not Social Security, and for the umpteenth time, the reason is that overall health costs are expected to rise quickly. This means we have to reform our uniquely inefficient healthcare system. Congress is, as usual, diverting us from the real issues. No wonder Americans like Occupy Wall Street.

In his speech Monday, President Barrack Obama actually started to sound like a president. His threat to veto any deficit cutting legislation that did not include revenue producing tax increases was praised by everyone left of Attila the Hun as “progressive”. It gave these critics some kind of new “hope” that Obama had finally drawn a line in the sand with the “my way or the highway” tea party Republicans.

Really? Were any of them listening to what he did say? What did most everyone from Michael Moore on Rachel Maddow’s show to Markos Moulitsas and Move-On.org miss? Anyone with half a functioning brain can see that what Obama offered was just more of the same insanity, piled higher and deeper that and was being covered with his new found veto power.

What should have caught their attention was what Jon Walker at FireDogLake pointed out:

In fact,  in his only veto threat Obama made it clear he would accept Medicare benefit cuts if they were accompanied by new tax revenue from the rich by saying, “I will veto any bill that changes benefits for those who rely on Medicare but does not raise serious revenues by asking the wealthiest Americans and biggest corporations to pay their fair share.” That “but” is a very important clause that means there are scenarios in which Obama would sign a bill that significantly cuts Medicare benefits.

Hello? Did anyone besides a very few of us on the left not hear this?

Obama’s communications director, Dan Pfeiffer said, “we are entering a new phase.” And just what “phase” would that be? “Chief Negotiator” to “Chief Hostage Taker” to get his right wing Republican agenda past this extremist congress?

Obama is now using the social safety network that protects our most vulnerable citizens to con the electorate that he has changed and to reelect him.

What bilge.

Yes, the Republicans are partly correct in saying that the President’s newest proposal to increase revenues by adjusting the tax rates on top earners to make sure they pay their fair share is class warfare:

WASHINGTON –  Republicans on Sunday decried the notion of a new minimum tax rate for millionaires as “class warfare,” saying the proposal by President Obama may be intended to portray Congressional Republicans who resist it as being callously indifferent to the hardships facing many Americans.

They just have the wrong class on whom that war has been declared:

WASHINGTON – President Obama on Monday will call for a new minimum tax rate for individuals making more than $1 million a year to ensure that they pay at least the same percentage of their earnings as middle-income taxpayers, according to administration officials.

With a special joint Congressional committee starting work to reach a bipartisan budget deal by late November, the proposal adds a new and populist feature to Mr. Obama’s effort to raise the political pressure on Republicans to agree to higher revenues from the wealthy in return for Democrats’ support of future cuts from Medicare and Medicaid.

Mr. Obama, in a bit of political salesmanship, will call his proposal the “Buffett Rule,” in a reference to Warren E. Buffett, the billionaire investor who has complained repeatedly that the richest Americans generally pay a smaller share of their income in federal taxes than do middle-income workers, because investment gains are taxed at a lower rate than wages.

Mr. Obama will not specify a rate or other details, and it is unclear how much revenue his plan would raise. But his idea of a millionaires’ minimum tax will be prominent in the broad plan for long-term deficit reduction that he will outline at the White House on Monday.

Sure, Obama may look like he’s being more “confrontational” with Republicans but the reality is he is still selling out the most vulnerable of our citizens.

Memo to the President and the Super Committee: Hands off of our social safety nets

From Jeralyn Merritt at TalkLeft:

The SuperCommittee Henchmen meet today. Raising medicare eligibility to age 67 is on the table for discussions. The Democrats have submitted a memo with various proposed changes and a discussion of each. Here’s the memo(pdf). Raising the eligibility age appears on page 7.

   President Obama proposed raising the Medicare eligibility age as part of the debt-ceiling agreement, but Democrats are hardly united behind the policy.

The Democrats note that it’s not going to be a money saver — it’s just going to shift who pays the money

Once again in his speech before Congress, President Obama kept the door open for cuts to the social safety net, calling for “reform” but saying that “modest reforms” to Medicare and Medicaid won’t mean cuts for “current beneficiaries.” To the presidents ardent supporters, it’s always “but, but, he didn’t say that”. Well maybe not last night, but he has over the summer:

To the chagrin of many in his party, this summer Mr. Obama proposed changes in Medicare and Social Security that once would have been unthinkable for a Democratic president during his unsuccessful talks with the House speaker, John A. Boehner, for a “grand bargain” on cutting deficits. In return for the Republicans’ agreement to raise taxes after 2012 for the wealthy, Mr. Obama indicated that his party would support slowly increasing the eligibility age for Medicare to 67 from 65 and changing the formula for cost-of-living increases in Social Security to a less generous one that some economists consider more accurate.

It is never about what this president says as it is about what he doesn’t say, as Ms. Merritt says in her article today about the president’s speech, “Obviously, that excludes those of us on the precipe of eligibility” and tax cuts be damned:

I could care less about a $1,500 tax break when it’s going to be funded by delaying Medicare eligibility. For a paltry $1,500, he’s ensuring I will have to continue to pay $15,000 a year in insurance premiums and deductibles for an extra two years (65 to 67), even though I held up my end of the bargain and paid my required share in medicare and social security taxes for 45 years. And these are the premiums for healthy people — they are age driven. For those two years alone, he’s offering me $3,000. but costing me $30,000. What a deal. And it’s not an entitlement he’s denying, it’s money I’ve already paid in which the Government always told me I could count on receiving back in the form of Medicare at age 65.

And what if we get disabled between 65 and 67? Disability policies end at 65 (probably because that’s when people start receiving Medicare)and even though some policies can be extended, the premiums for doing so this late in the game are so exorbitant, it makes little sense. If we become sick or disabled and unable to work at age 65, and we have no Medicare or disability insurance, how do we survive? On social security? That’s a laugh. I’d rather Obama asked me to donate $1,500. to someone already needy and left Medicare alone. I would have been glad to do it.

Ouch.

To add insult to injury, President Obama has also called for the Super Committee to cut more than the $1.5 trillion from the budget than it was tasked to do. House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid signed on to President Obama’s call to cut more than the $1.5 trillion that the committee has been tasked to do:

“Yes, I want them to go bigger than that,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said Wednesday when asked whether he thought the group should shoot for more than $1.5 trillion in savings. “I’m not going to set a number, but I’d like it to be more than the minimum.”

House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said at his weekly pen-and-pad briefing that he, too, would like the committee to act with the “courage and conviction to adopt essentially the plan, the premise and the proposals” of the previous deficit-reduction commissions. He also noted that he had spoken with all of the supercommittee members except for Sens. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) and Max Baucus (D-Mont.).

So how does anyone think that goal will be achieved? The private contract bloated military budget? By increasing revenues through tax reform and letting the Obama/Bush tax cuts expire?

Dream on

So now we’ve heard Barry’s big “jobs speech” and it turns out to be the exact opposite of what is needed to rescue the crumbling nation.  No surprise there.

Obama’s so-called “jobs plan” is huge cuts in the payroll tax that are designed to manufacture a real future shortfall in Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, which will then be used as the rationale for imposing deep cuts on, or even the elimination of, all three programs.  Corporate tax cuts will drain even more revenue from the treasury, which will make extending unemployment insurance for the unemployed who currently qualify, not to mention infrastructure repair, highly unlikely.

The former vice chair of the Federal Reserve and member of the President Obama’s Deficit Commission (aka Cat Food Commission), Alice Rivlin joined  a panel discussion about what should be included in the Obama’s jobs initiative.

Most of what she has suggested will not create jobs and will just put our social safety nets at further risk of being cut or completely dissolved. The idea that a one years payroll tax holiday for both employers and employees is ridiculous on its face. Not only have tax cuts not produced jobs over the last eleven years but this particular tax cut will put Social Security at even further risk. Nor will the idea that so-called “reform” of Social Security  and Medicare would “grow the economy”.

Economist Dean Baker examines President Obama’s “widely hyped upcoming speech on jobs after the Labor Day weekend.” He states:

At the top of the list of job-creating measures is extending the 2 percentage-point reduction in the social security payroll tax. This provides no boost to the economy, since it just keeps in place a tax cut that was already there, but if the cut is allowed to end at the start of 2012, it will be a drag on growth.

As it stands, the social security programme is being fully reimbursed for the lost tax revenue, but there is always the possibility that Republicans will use this as a basis for attacking the programme. Given President Obama’s willingness to support cuts to social security, it is understandable that this part of his jobs agenda doesn’t generate much enthusiasm.

snip

There are also reports that President Obama may propose some sort of tax subsidy for job creation. Such a subsidy can be bad or not so bad. One of the proposals, temporarily eliminating the employer side of the payroll tax, is a great plan – if your intention is to give still more money to business and undermine social security.

There is extensive research showing that increases in the minimum wage of 15-20% have no measurable impact on employment. If raising the cost of labour by 15-20% doesn’t reduce employment, then we can’t think that reducing the cost of labour by 6.2% as a result of temporarily eliminating the payroll tax will increase employment. (Sorry, Mr President, logic can be cruel.)

(emphasis mine)

Nor will the creation of an infrastructure bank:

This would allow the government to treat long-lived infrastructure investment as capital expenditures depreciated over their expected lifetimes, rather than expenditures to be paid for in full in the years the construction takes place. This is good policy and accounting (it is the same approach used by both private businesses and state governments), but it is not going to create many jobs and certainly not in the next couple of years.

The there are all those trade agreements with Panama, South Korea and Colombia, that as Baker says, “even their supporters can’t claim with a straight face that they will generate any noticeable number of jobs.”

We so screwed.

This article was authored by our neoliberal Democratic saviors on the new and improved Cat Food Committee (h/t digby). We are so screwed:

Together We Can Beat the Deficit

By PATTY MURRAY, MAX BAUCUS AND JOHN KERRY

Our country has long been a beacon of light in the world because the American people always come together when times are tough. Over the past few months, in debating the debt ceiling and deficit reduction, that light of common cause has appeared to flicker at times in our nation’s capital. As appointees to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction-12 members of Congress charged with finding $1.5 trillion in deficit reduction over the next decade-we hope to remedy that.

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   Make no mistake, this is an important moment for our country. Millions of Americans are still hurting, working overtime to pay the bills, struggling to find a job and a way forward for their families. Trillions of dollars in private capital are sitting on the sidelines because businesses are not yet confident enough in our economy or in their lawmakers to invest in the future. These families and businesses are demanding that this new committee work together to overcome the partisanship and brinksmanship of recent months and put our fiscal house in order.

   The Standard & Poor’s downgrade of America’s credit rating was an unprecedented wake-up call for those who have for too long acted as if overheated rhetoric and dysfunction in Washington has no consequences for Main Street and working families. The shockwaves that roiled financial markets after the downgrade was a condemnation of Congress’s inability to address the unsustainable trajectory of our current fiscal policies.

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   None of us ran for office arguing that the United States should see its credit rating downgraded. Nobody ever campaigned in favor of mountains of debt or championed the idea that every American’s interest rates should go up. And no one has ever gone into a debate pledging that China and India should own this economic century because we can’t make our democracy work here at home.

   This moment demands leadership, but it also demands consensus. The Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction was set up to require bipartisanship, and we are going to work hard to achieve it. We know that each of us comes into this committee with clear ideas on the issues and what our priorities are for our nation. But a solution can only be found by merging these priorities across party lines and finding a solution that works for the American people.

   We know that our goal is to reduce spending. But we also know that America faces not just a budget deficit but also a jobs deficit. Nobody on this committee would be happy if we reduced the budget deficit but even more Americans end up losing their jobs.

   So we are ready to get to work with our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to report out a balanced plan, with the shared sacrifices this moment requires. One that moves past the partisan rancor, puts our nation back on strong fiscal footing, and allows us to continue shining bright in the world in this generation and for generations to come.

Like digby said: “Confidence Fairy, “shared sacrifice”, “balanced approach”, China bashing, the whole nine yards.”

Then there is Obama’s less than inspiring not a plan yet and the Chamber of Commerce clamoring for “for “reform of entitlement programs” like Medicare and Medicaid (which means cutting spending on these programs).”

The stocks of the maker of Preparation H may just save the tanking stock market