You Can’t Do Anything Without Money
NYT article hints at some thin reeds of agreement between Democrats and Republicans on health care:
While Republicans generally oppose any new entitlement or tax increase, they do have some areas of potential agreement with Democrats. They agree, for example, on the need to emphasize wellness and preventive health programs; to provide more transparency for price and quality data on doctors and hospitals; and to speed the approval of lower-cost generic versions of high-cost biotechnology medicines.
I think political reporters need to stop treating Republican opposition to tax increases as the kind of thing that goes in a subordinate clause of a sentence. For one thing, this is a very fundamental principle of the modern conservative movement—it’s not something you can trade-off or logroll in favor of something else. For another thing, without the revenue that comes from tax increases, you can’t do much of anything else. The situation has only been made worse by the fact that lately the right doesn’t advocate cutting particular programs either. Instead of detailing things they’d like to see cut, conservative politicians advocate arbitrary broad “caps” and then turn around and insist that their own pet programs should be spared.
14 Responses to “You Can’t Do Anything Without Money”
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February 9th, 2010 at 2:19 pm
But you can do the things they propose without new revenues.
February 9th, 2010 at 2:23 pm
Just an example of deficit related b.s. from Republicans. A few years back, Leonard Lance was a State Senator in New Jersey who constantly hounded Corzine on the budget and pressured him to make all kinds of cuts. Corzine proposed a variety of cuts, including elimination of state responsibility for clearing deer carcasses from roadways. How do you think Lance, who represented an area densely populated with deer (though that can be said for almost all of NJ) reacted?
February 9th, 2010 at 2:25 pm
I do hate to link to Politico at all, but this article offers some nice juxtapositions:
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0210/32429.html
February 9th, 2010 at 2:32 pm
Deficit chickenhawks.
February 9th, 2010 at 2:34 pm
Nuts. I thought I had a cool new phrase, but it’s been around over 2 months.
February 9th, 2010 at 2:40 pm
Seems like Ryan’s budget advocates cutting both Social Security and Medicare. Whether the rest of the GOP will admit that, or admit that’s what they support, remains to be seen, but Ryan has honestly put it out there.
What worries me, and what Josh Marshall wrote about this afternoon, is that they might fog up what they stand for just enough to win support from the formless mass of malcontent, and Americans will have voted to overturn what little welfare state we have without even knowing that’s what they did. We could actually end up going backwards in the name of “liberty” and “tax relief.”
February 9th, 2010 at 2:42 pm
At least in the 20+ years I’ve been paying attention, the right has never been serious about cutting programs to save money. Cutting programs to advance a particular ideology? Sure (e.g. welfare, Dept. of Education). But I can probably count on one hand (without using all my fingers) the times that a Republican elected official has said “I want to cut $X billion in spending”, and then actually outlined $X billion in spending cuts.
February 9th, 2010 at 2:50 pm
pk, it is within the realm of possibility that the Republican Party could win a narrow majority in the House in November. But to actually enact anything that the Republican Budget proposes, they would need veto-proof majorities in both the House and Senate, which is not mathematically possible.
Liberal Americans certainly have a lot of things to worry about, but I think we can put Social Security and Medicare on the “totally safe” shelf through 2012.
February 9th, 2010 at 2:54 pm
The Republicans’ fiscal irresponsibility continues to amaze me. They should behave like responsible politicians and propose real funding solutions, such as imaginary spending cuts in the distant future, wealth transfers disguised as non-price-discrimination rules, and price controls imposed through government buying power.
(Actually, what’s sad is, my litany of exaggerated horribles really is substantially more responsible than anything that’s come out of the Republicans lately. Gah.)
February 9th, 2010 at 3:29 pm
What amazes me is that Republicans think money going to health care and retirement is a waste.
February 9th, 2010 at 3:38 pm
In Colorado, when the Republicans were told to identify spending cuts or STFU about eliminating the tax breaks for candy, soda & junk mail(!!), they came up with $150 million of cuts against a deficit of more than $1 billion. When criticized about their mathematical incompetence, the Republican leader responded that Brown won in Massachusetts by 52% to 48% so nyah, nyah !
February 9th, 2010 at 3:56 pm
Matt,
As an olive branch, conservatives will absolutely fund more health insurance for the poor, if we offset those costs with cuts in public employee compensation.
http://biggovernment.com/mwarstler/2010/02/08/a-formula-for-real-economic-growth-13915481000000-2/
February 9th, 2010 at 4:16 pm
Wow, Morgan, considering your high-paying gig as a rocket scientist, maybe I should quit my pubic sector job and come work for you.
On the other hand, if you had even the faintest idea what you were talking about, you would know that public sector employees already make less than their private sector counterparts. I’m holding a salary survey in my hand showing that my salary would be 17.4% higher if I got off the public dole and got exactly the same job in the private sector.
Further, here in California, state employees have already had their compensation cut by 12%. People are losing their healthcare, childcare, their houses. And I don’t know if you noticed this, but 20% is a lot more than 12%. What if Brietbart comes to you tomorrow and says, Sorry Morgan, I’ll have to take back one out of every five dollars I paid you last year.
But hey, you’re right. If we don’t like it, us lazy public employees can just transition to the private sector, where we’ll make more a lot money anyway. Then we can hire some elephants to staff the fire department. I hear they work for peanuts. We’ll get a team of trained monkeys to patrol the border.
And all those enlisted personnel who don’t get to quit their jobs when they get a 20% pay cut, well, they were idiots for signing a contract with the U.S. government anyway, right?
February 10th, 2010 at 7:04 am
Insurance companies have a data base that runs mega data 24/7 gloaming data that is reliant on decisions made by the industry. One example is obesity in our culture. The thought that they should take responsibility for the treatment that this will cause is monumental. Factor the cost and one could sense that this would break any insurer. No different than data that indicates that a driver who is developing a DUI profile. Health care will rise dramatically if they were to be required to insure those at risk.
Yet, 35 years ago there was a new product on the horizon that was revolutionized called “Nutri Sweet” made by Searle Pharmaceutical that was to be used mostly as a coffee substitute and was held up by the FDA until further testing.
Belonging to “Common Cause” there was a lot of controversy in the publication on the pressure on the FDA became immense to get this approved. Focusing on this coffee substitute for sugar seemed innocent enough, however, the FDA wanted more testing.
A man losing his position when Ford lost to Carter was a Washington insider during the Nixon/Ford era was Hired by Searle as a CEO with not one bit of business experience. Donald Rumsfield took over and with in months got the “Nutra Sweet” through the FDA Approval.
For the last 35 years of testing this substitute that made it way into every conceivable food product may just be a product that contributed to the state of health of this nation. 35 years that the Watch Dog group “Common Cause” tried to point out how corrupting influence is damaging this nation’s Democracy and the health of a nation by special interest, not one thing has changed.
35 to 100 years from now we will never heal from the Iraq war.
When the health of a nation is influenced by special interest Lobbyist we man never be able to heal from their effects of today.