Medicare

GOP Threat: Cut Social Security and Medicare or we'll kill the economy. Americans say NO to both.

Roger Hickey — Sun, 06 Jan 2013 19:25:51 -0500

Here we go again. Republicans are very clear about their latest extortion threat to the American people: Unless you cut Social Security and Medicare benefits, within the next two months we will throw the US economy back into recession - by refusing to allow the US raise the debt ceiling and pay our bills - or by pushing the economy over another fiscal cliff of deep spending cuts and tax increases - or by shutting down the government by refusing to pass a continuing budget resolution.

But it is very important for progressives and politicians to remember that most Americans hate what the Republicans are doing here. Who but Right Wing terrorists could support pushing the economy back into recession, throwing millions of Americans out of work? That's what Republicans are threatening. And huge majorities also hate the price Republicans are demanding to prevent their threat of manufactured chaos: the idea of cutting Social Security and Medicare benefits.

Republicans can get their way only if Democrats fail to realize they have the American people on our side. And once Republicans are clear about their proposals, Americans turn against them.

During the election, Paul Ryan's plan to turn Medicare into a voucher was so unpopular that candidate Mitt Romney ran away from his Vice Presidential nominee's proposal. Democrats won the election.

Now, Tennessee Republican Senators Bob Corker and Lamar Alexander have dared to unveil a proposal (called their "dollar-for-dollar plan") that would only allow the debt ceiling to be raised by the amount we allow them to cut what they term "entitlements." How many Americans would embrace these changes?:

They would privatize Medicare by creating competing private options giving seniors greater choice of healthcare plans. Shades of the plan Mitt Romney endorsed and then ran from.
They would also give states more flexibility to cut Medicaid programs.
And they would gradually raise the Social Security retirement age and immediately impose the "chained CPI" formula to cost-of-living adjustments - a cut to retirement benefits of today's seniors.

"Unfortunately for America, the next line in the sand is going to be the debt ceiling," Corker told The Hill, laying out his leverage strategy for negotiations with Democrats. These guys couldn't be more explicit

Over the next two months, everyone who loves our country must rise up and say NO to this Republican nihilistic extortion. We must isolate them, ridicule and shame them. And we must force the Democrats to have the backbone to stand with us and reject Republican extortion and economic terrorism.

President Obama campaigned for reelection on his pledge to repeal the Bush tax cuts for people making more than $250,000, but he backed down and agreed to raise taxes only on people making more than $400,000. In return, he got an extension of unemployment benefits and important low income tax provisions. But he could only get Republicans to postpone for two months the Fiscal Cliff tax increases and spending cuts known as "sequestration." And he failed to get them to give up the threat to destroy the full faith and credit of the United States that their refusal to raise the debt limit ceiling would bring on. Their refusal to support the once-routine legislation insuring we can pay our debts is already causing the Treasury Department to juggle accounts and will reach crisis stage by the end of February.

President Obama has pledged that he will not bow to Republican extortion over the debt limit:

"I will not compromise over ... whether or not Congress should pay the tab for a bill they've already racked up. If Congress refuses to give the United States the ability to pay its bills on time, the consequences for the entire global economy could be catastrophic. The last time Congress threatened this course of action, our entire economy suffered for it. Our families and our businesses cannot afford that dangerous game again."

But remember that President Obama did negotiate the last time Republicans threatened to crash the economy by refusing to raise the debt limit, in September 2011. Obama was willing to offer up Social Security benefit cuts (in the form of a new "chained CPI") and a change in the Medicare eligibility age (from 65, when many people are forcibly retired, to 67). It was only because Republicans refused to accept tax increases that Obama's dangerous offer was not accepted. Instead, in return for Republican votes to lift that last debt ceiling, the draconian fiscal cliff sequestration budget cuts scheme was created (now postponed until early March).

So while President Obama may refuse to negotiate with Republicans over their latest manufactured debt limit crisis, he could end up negotiating to avoid the threat of sequestration. And Social Security and Medicare cuts could be on that table.

A Powerful Coalition Reminding Democrats What Americans Want - And Don't Want.

President Obama and other Democrats need to listen to the voices of the groups who helped get them elected in 2012 - unions, community organizations, groups representing women, African Americans and Hispanics, and online activist groups like MoveOn and the Campaign for America's Future.

On November 8, many of these groups placed an ad in the Washington Post making a set of demands on the President and Congress. These demands have served as unifying principles for a powerful organizing and outreach coalition. Signed by organizations including the AFL-CIO, SEIU, Center for Community Change, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, and the Campaign for America's Future, the ad was accompanied by an open letter to the White House and Congress signed by 146 national organizations.

If the President and the Democrats in Congress listen to these principles - and to these groups who have been communicating with them before and after the election - they will refuse to cut Medicare and Social Security in response to the Republicans' threat reject the debt ceiling and tank the economy. And they will discover they have the vast majority of Americans on their side.

Here what the ad said, in part:

To the President and The Congress.

As you face urgent budget decisions, you must keep the election results in mind and resist budget cuts that slow our economy and hurt families. The best way to reduce the deficit is to put people back to work and get our economy going again. That's why we are calling on national leaders from both parties to stand up for the middle class and demand that any budget agreement:

Asks all Americans to pay their fair share of taxes.

Prioritizes job creation first. It's time to grow--not slow--the economy.

Does not cut Medicare, Medicaid, or Social Security benefits and does not shift costs to beneficiaries or the states. Voters loudly and clearly spoke up for these programs.

Protects the safety net and vital services for low-income people.

Stops the sequester. The scheduled automatic budget cuts threaten our fragile recovery and put huge numbers of people out of work while cutting education, child care, job training and dozens of vital services people and communities need.

The groups involved have helped the American Majority of working families communicate these demands to the President and the Congress. So far, we have kept Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid off the chopping block. We are redoubling our efforts to prevent Democrats from capitulating to Republican hostage-taking and extortion. And we are turning our campaign to opposing conservative austerity - and fighting for jobs and robust economic growth.

Let's Defend SS and Other Entitlements With the 2nd Bill Of Rights

Joseph M. Firestone — Tue, 27 Nov 2012 17:48:50 -0500

The favorite defense of Social Security by progressives harkens back to Franklin Roosevelt who famously said:

”I guess you’re right on the economics. They are politics all the way through. We put those pay roll contributions there so as to give the contributors a legal, moral, and political right to collect their pensions and their unemployment benefits. With those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program. Those taxes aren’t a matter of economics, they’re straight politics.”

So, today progressives echo this even though the SS Tax is a regressive tax, and anything but progressive in its impact on the economy. With the development of the MMT approach to economics, and its emphasis on the government's ability to spend without a solvency constraint on the Federal Budget, it's now clear that SS doesn't need to be funded by a regressive payroll tax; but can be funded out of general revenues and also guaranteed by a provision in law providing for automatic annual funding. Some government “trust funds” are funded this way, including parts of Social Security and Medicare, so there's no economic reason why the primary funding for both programs couldn't be provided for these programs.

But a friend, in an echo of FDR's view, recently said to me in correspondence:

"It seems to me that it is a lot easier to make the case that people are entitled to a government benefit if they have been paying a dedicated tax for 45 years that is described as funding that benefit."

And I replied in the following way.

It is easier; but it's still not easy as we now see; and, on the downside, to defend it that way we have to:

1) support the view that people are entitled to government payments only when they pay for them;

2) then defend against the attack that the entitlement payout greatly exceeds the amount paid in, and has no relationship to what is paid in;

3) accept the idea that SS and Medicare must be self-funding like any business, while also ensuring that they are "solvent" as much as 50 years out unlike any business (that is people are upset now because questionable long term fiscal projections show that full coverage of SS spending can only be projected out for 21 years to 2033, so they are calling for fixes to extend that projected “full solvency” period out to 2075 or 2080);

4) always have a very hard time justifying any increases to entitlements for current recipients, because those oppose entitlements always cry out that the Government is running out of money, and would have to raise SS taxes to pay for it;

5) never bring into the argument the fact that things are very different now than they were when SS was first passed, because we now have a fiat money system which makes many things possible now that weren't possible back then, because THERE IS NO SOLVENCY PROBLEM; and

6) ignore the great argument that our entitlements are the embodiment of an economic bill of rights that ought to apply to all Americans which, of course was outlined by the same FDR in 1944.

In my view, the protestant ethic defense that we're entitled to SS, because we worked for it isn't worth the candle. It makes things easier in the short-run, but it reinforces a skin-flintism which is wholly inappropriate to our modern economy, with its monetarily sovereign fiat currency system, and is largely responsible for the rapidly increasing inequality we've been experiencing over the years, which has now reached a ridiculous and anti-democratic pass.

We can't look at SS and our other entitlements in isolation. We have to fight and win the battle for FDR's economic bill of rights, and for an expansion of all the entitlements in the American social safety net; now the stingiest, most inadequate safety net among modern industrial nations!

FDR's strategy for justifying SS was great for the 1930s, when we were still on the gold standard. But nearly 80 years later it's time to move on to his economic bill of rights as our justification for entitlements, and stop reinforcing the idea that it's only an entitlement if one pays for it. It's time to stand on the over-riding moral argument! It's time to say that when a nation like the United States can afford to implement these rights, as the United States has been able to do at least since 1971, they then are human rights that must be implemented as part of the public purpose. Let us have a Green New Deal with a much stronger social safety net including greatly increased payments for SS and Medicare for All, and a Federal Job Guarantee emphasizing Green Jobs!

Let's fight for that and implement it economically using Modern Money Theory (MMT)-based fiscal policies!

(Cross-posted from New Economic Perspectives.)

Medicare: Battleground of the Bogus Deficit Debate

Isaiah J. Poole — Wed, 31 Oct 2012 10:41:17 -0400

How to win the argument about the big economic challenges facing the American people

NUMBER 6 | October 31, 2012

Medicare: Battleground of the Bogus Deficit Debate
The Challenge	The U.S. has a large budget deficit because the government fought two wars without paying for them; conservatives slashed taxes several times; and then the financial crisis, fueled by deregulated bank gambling, threw millions of middle-class taxpayers onto the unemployment rolls. And now self-proclaimed “deficit hawks” have a solution: cut Medicare benefits for the most vulnerable seniors (and tomorrow’s retirees). And many (including Presidential candidate Mitt Romney) want to drastically change Medicare – by giving seniors a fixed amount of money to buy insurance on the private market. Almost 50 years ago Medicare was created to guarantee seniors affordable health care. It has been an amazing success story, assuring that more than 50 million older Americans and people with disabilities have health care – and are not pushed into poverty by the costs of illness and hospitalization. Now, conservatives are vowing to replace Medicare with a voucher system that would force older people to try to buy insurance from a welter of private insurance companies whose failure to serve seniors made Medicare necessary in the first place. If they are successful, seniors would lose the comprehensive national coverage and financial protection that Medicare offers them no matter which doctors and hospitals they use, anywhere in the country. The Republican plan would force them to pay more for health care seniors now get from Medicare – and jeopardize their access to care. Despite its success, Medicare has been targeted by conservatives who don’t want to take on the real drivers of growing deficits. Instead, they see an opportunity to bolster the profits of private insurance companies, even if this means ignoring the needs of Medicare enrollees. And, for all their talk about deficits, conservatives don’t want to make investments that would put Americans to work and bring down the deficit through an expanding tax base. Calling Medicare an out-of-control “entitlement” whose costs are rising dramatically and unsustainably, they claim we just can’t afford Medicare as we know it any more. They ignore the experience of history that demonstrates private insurance is more costly. They are really making the case for a giant step backward as a nation and as a civilized community. And it would avoid the real causes of deficits.
Make the Case	Medicare enjoys almost universal support. Most working Americans have seen how Medicare takes a huge load of worry off their parents and grandparents because at 65 this national, comprehensive program offers health and financial security. But conservatives first tell us we can no longer afford it; we need to privatize it. Then they promise not to change anything for today’s seniors, imposing cuts on future retirees. Don’t you believe it. Many of the changes that they want to make right away – such as repealing health care reform – will cut the health benefits and raise out-of-pocket costs for your mother or grandfather now on Medicare. But here’s the big flaw in their case: Medicare is actually better at controlling costs than the private health insurance industry. You can find the details here. And cost-control experiments pioneered by Medicare – requiring, for example, that hospitals get paid for health care results and not just for every procedure – have the potential to control costs for Medicare and for every other public and private health insurance plan. (You can find the details here.) It is the inefficient and wasteful private health care system that is driving the costs of Medicare. Conservatives fixate on public plans like Medicare because the federal government pays. But if they get their way and turn Medicare into a voucher program, those costs wouldn’t go down; they would just shift and increase, devastating the savings of elderly individuals and their families. Every other developed country has done a much better job of controlling health care costs without cutting benefits. Economist Dean Baker has repeatedly pointed out that if our system were as efficient as most European countries, America’s private health care costs would flatten out, Medicare costs would stabilize and the long-term federal deficit problem would disappear. Baker’s think tank documents this with new charts here.
Case in Point	♦ Conservatives want to force people in their 60s, 70s and 80s to buy less comprehensive private health insurance with a voucher (a set amount of money each year) the government would give them. Voucher supporters pretend the government would save money because those insurance companies would compete to provide the best coverage at the lowest cost. But insurance companies make their money by finding ways to insure only the healthiest people and avoid the oldest and the sickest. If competition leads to efficiency, why is Medicare far better than private insurance at holding down costs? ♦ The real way these conservative voucher plans would save money for the government is by having the value of the voucher rise more slowly than the cost of health insurance policies. This will shift costs to seniors and their families. Economist David Cutler found the plan supported by Republican presidential candidates Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan plan would raise costs for current seniors by $11,100 and by as much as several hundred thousand dollars for future seniors. This infographic shows how today’s younger workers would fare. Another source is this Kaiser Family Foundation fact sheet. ♦ Some conservatives who don’t want to support vouchers instead propose to put a cap on overall Medicare spending. That would mean that seniors end up paying more out of pocket for their care. ♦ Other conservatives want to raise the age when people can get Medicare, which they claim is fair because people are living longer. But that would saddle older adults with big health care bills for months or years longer, at a time when millions of people are hanging on by their fingernails and many unemployed people are going without insurance until they turn 65 and can get Medicare. Raising the eligibility age means that the next wave of (older) seniors to enroll have more health problems due to postponing doctor visits at that advanced age. That means higher Medicare costs, not lower. And research shows the only people living longer these days are the wealthy. ♦ Beyond the bogus arguments about costs, imagine a 75-year-old senior with multiple health problems having to do battle with a private insurance company to get them to pay for hospital care, tests, or even doctor visits. Imagine being older, on a limited income, and needing a lot of health care. Then imagine having to figure out which private policy would allow you to use the doctors you know and trust and meet your health and financial needs, now and in the unforeseeable future. Medicare is better.
Counterpoint	When they say: Entitlements like Medicare are eating the federal budget alive. With so many Baby Boomers retiring, if we keep the same system they will bankrupt our economy or force us to raise taxes. You can say: The deficit problems that were created after President Bill Clinton balanced the budget have been fueled by 1) President Bush’s tax cuts, 2) two wars they didn’t pay for, 3) the Medicare prescription drug plan, which put insurance companies in charge – and wasn’t paid for, and 4) the financial crisis that plunged the economy into a recession, reducing tax income and increasing public costs for unemployment and welfare. Medicare had nothing to do with the increases in deficits since 2000. These real causes need to be addressed by bold steps to reduce unemployment and spur growth – and by rolling back the tax giveaways President Bush bestowed on the rich. When they say: Even if we grant what you say, Medicare costs are the driving factors pushing deficits higher over the next several decades. You can say: No, Medicare is not the problem. Rising Medicare costs are driven by an inefficient and wasteful private health care system, dominated by private hospital chains, insurance companies and global drug conglomerates that charge much more for drugs here in the U.S. than they do everywhere else. Make those private health care sectors more efficient – like other countries have done – and Medicare costs will stabilize and the long-term deficit problem will disappear. When they say: The Affordable Care Act cut $716 billion from Medicare over the 10 years ending in 2022. President Obama is hurting seniors much more than we would. You can say: Those reforms didn’t cut one dime out of benefits for seniors. In fact, they added benefits (like paying for drug costs), while cutting waste. Most of those Medicare cost reductions were negotiated with hospitals and drug makers that agreed to lower costs in exchange for millions of new paying customers. (More details here.) It is possible to save money by reforming the way our health care system works and rein in costs – but it is the conservatives who would cut Medicare benefits if they could. When (some) say: We don’t want to cut Medicare benefits, we just want to make wealthy seniors pay more – or we want to raise the retirement age because people are living longer. You can say: The 5 percent of seniors with incomes over $85,000 already pay at least 40 percent more for Medicare premiums and some with incomes exceeding $214,000 pay more than three times more. The fairest way to ensure Medicare and other federal programs remain strong is to tax wealthier Americans more across the board. And raising the retirement age IS a benefit cut, reducing the number of years each person is able to be covered – and leaving millions without any health coverage. And delaying the eligibility age would mean people joining Medicare would be sicker and more expensive to keep healthy.
Public Pulse	♦ By a margin of 3 to 1, voters in the swing states of Ohio, Florida and Virginia don’t believe Social Security and Medicare need to be cut to reduce our deficits (The Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation). ♦ Given choices for reducing the deficit, including raising taxes on the wealthy and reducing Medicare benefits, 83 percent of Americans oppose cutting Medicare (13 percent supported those cuts) and 68 percent favored raising taxes on households with incomes higher than $250,000 per year (The Washington Post-Bloomberg News). ♦ An August 2012 Pew Poll finds 72 percent of Americans have heard a lot or a little about a proposal to change Medicare into a voucher. And among those who are aware, the idea remains unpopular; by a 49 percent to 34 percent margin, more oppose than favor the idea. This is virtually unchanged from public reactions a little more than a year ago, when Republicans in the House voted in favor of this proposal as part of the “Ryan plan” (Pew Research Center). ♦ A July poll shows the popularity of Medicare among seniors. The poll found that 89 percent of seniors are satisfied with the coverage they currently have through Medicare. (Richard Day Research for Allsup Medicare Advisor) ♦ 66 percent of Americans, including 45 percent of Republicans and 64 percent of independents, favor increasing income taxes for upper-income Americans, compared with 42 percent of Americans who support making “significant changes” to Social Security (Gallup). ♦ 66 percent of Americans said they were very worried about “not having enough money for retirement,” making it the issue that the largest number of Americans are concerned about (Gallup).
Tweet This	Don’t cut #Medicare benefits. Make drug cos charge same prices in US as in France or Canada. Deficit will come down. #smarttalk @OurFuture Americans love #Medicare. Private insurance costs more. Voucherizers = same people who wrecked our economy. #smarttalk via @OurFuture Tell Congress: Protect #Medicare and health needs of our parents and grandparents, not profits of health insurance and drug companies. Congress, ignore Wall St. Listen to Main Street. Voucherizing #Medicare will hurt today’s seniors & young people when they need it. Pew poll: Medicare Voucher Plan Remains Unpopular http://tinyurl.com/ca2lrv2 #smarttalk via @OurFuture It's the health care prices, stupid. Give #Medicare option to all and health care costs in US will come way down. #smarttalk via @OurFuture RT Sandra Fluke‏@SandraFluke New study on problems with #Romney's #medicare plan. http://tinyurl.com/8h389bl
Learn More	» Health Care for America Now – Medicare and Medicaid page » Economic Policy Institute’s Retirement research page » Center for Economic and Policy Research’s Social Security and retirement issue page » Fixing our Fiscal Health: Budget Deficits and Health Care Costs

"Town Hall" Debate: Will Voters Ask the Medicare and Social Security Questions Reporters Haven't?

Richard Eskow — Sun, 14 Oct 2012 18:23:11 -0400

If you support strong and effective government, then the unfamiliar glow you felt after last Thursday's debate was the satisfaction of seeing your opinions forcefully defended by a national candidate. There hasn't been much of that going on lately. But a deceptive question was asked in the Vice Presidential debate, while other important ones still haven't been asked of any national candidate.

The President's been undercutting his own party's best message and keeps threatening to cut benefits for its signature programs. As for Mitt Romney and his running mate, there's little left to be said: They're both determined to undermine Medicare and Social Security. Even if they're retreating from their most radical ideas now, you know those ideas will be back once they're in office.

If what follows focuses more on the President than on his challenger, its because the Republicans are beyond redemption on this issue. But both candidates need to answer some direct questions on this topic.

This Tuesday the Presidential candidates will meet with voters face-to-face for a town-hall style debate. Let's hope the voters will ask the questions the media haven't.

Joe in the Flow

What you saw that night was a candidate on the Democratic national ticket doing something we haven't seen in a while: representing "the Democratic wing of the Democratic party." It was a pleasure to watch a gifted politician in the 'zone,' that state of maximum achievement sometimes called the "flow state."

But there were shadows over Biden as he spoke his stirring words about these two programs. First there was the shadow of Martha Raddatz's deceptive and scaremongering characterization of these programs, when she posed her question by stating that Medicare and Social Security are "going broke." That statement's simply false, a untruth that's been spoon-fed to careless reporters by billionaire-funded think tanks with a mission to undermine these programs. (And they eat every morsel.)

Hopefully good journalists like Raddatz will eventually be scrupulous enough to review the evidence and stop saying things like that. But either way it's too late to correct the misconception she reinforced in last week's debate.

The President's Promise is Missing

The second shadow was Biden's own equivocation on substance: will a second Obama/Biden Administration program defend these programs from needless cuts or won't it? Biden didn't repeat the unequivocal defense of these Social Security benefits he offered last month. Biden told voters in the Coffee Break Cafe in Stuart, Virginia that he could "flat guarantee" there would be no changes to Social Security if he and the President were re-elected.

But when Raddatz posed her deceptive question last week, the once-resolute Biden tried distraction rather than clarity. He used the same technique employed by other Democrats on the Social Security hotseat: "We will not -- we will not privatize it." That wasn't the question.

Biden's shift can be explained by the third shadow: The President's apparent to throw away the enormous political advantage Democrats can still win for themselves if they stand firm in defense of benefits for seniors. Instead, when he was asked to differentiate himself from Romney on this issue he said this:

"You know, I suspect that on Social Security, we’ve got a somewhat similar position. Social Security is structurally sound. It’s going to have to be tweaked ..."

With those words Obama all but threw away one of his party's greatest assets: its once-reliable reputation as the defender of Medicare and Social Security. Democrats better hope he gets it back - if not for his sake, than for the sake of candidates further down the ticket.

The Fourth Shadow

And overarching all of it is the greatest shadow of all: The President's apparent support for a 'bipartisan' benefit-cutting agenda driven by Wall Street firms and individual billionaires.

The President may still be determined to cut these programs as part of a "Grand Bargain." If so, voters deserve to know that. If they did, chances are they would force him to make a commitment to back down from that idea before they go to the polls. That's exactly what the country needs.

It's also what his party needs. Nobody should be pressuring the President more on this issue than his fellow Democrats. Recent polling shows that the party has regained the advantage on this issue that it lost in 2010 - a decisive factor in its loss of Congress - at least among seniors who trust Democrats more than Republicans by an 18-point margin. But the President himself has a 7-point deficit on this topic.

President Obama's talk of benefit cuts has been wounding him in the polls for for well over a year, and his equivocation in the last debate didn't help him or his party.

Voters Must Do the Reporters' Job For Them

Biden's forceful - and startingly direct - defense of Social Security got almost no coverage last month. Not a single reporter considered it important enough to ask the President whether he agreed with his Vice President about an issue that is personally critical to millions of Americans.

Tuesday's Presidential debate will take place in a Town Hall format. That's a relief, since moderator Candy Crowley has a long history of repeating shallow and unfounded cliche criticisms of "latte-drinking" Democrats. The only questions she might be counted on to ask would be as misinformed and misleading as Raddatz's.

Let's hope these voters will do what the White House press corps hasn't troubled itself to do: ask the President and his challenger some direct questions about Social Security and Medicare. It's not as if the public isn't interested. It is. And it's not as if they don't want these programs' benefits protected: They do, by overwhelming margins.

This is an opportunity for voters to penetrate the media bubble and ask both candidates some real questions about Social Security and Medicare - not about whether they're "going broke," but about whether they'll defend them.

Questions Voters Want Answered

Mr. President: Will you agree with your Vice President that there will be absolutely no changes to Social Security benefits while you are in office?

Mr. Romney: You have retreated from your party's original plan to dismantle Medicare as we know it. But what do you say to studies which show that we would wind up paying much more for health care out of our own pockets under your plan, and that it would put too much of our money in private insurance company's hands?

Mr. President and Gov. Romney: Health care in our country costs much more than it does anywhere else. That, and not benefits, is what's driving Medicare's future cost problems. What are you planning to do about it?

Mr. Romney: Your former company, Bain Capital, bought several companies that then began cheating the Medicare system. Isn't Bain-style high-pressure financing one of the things that's driving our medical costs sky-high? What will you do to fix it?

Mr. President: What will you do to fix our real cost problem, the Bain-style greed factor in our health care system?

Mr. President: When you ran in 2008 you promised us that people under 65 years of age would be able to purchase Medicare (the so-called 'public option'), and that we wouldn't be forced to purchase for-profit insurance under your plan. What happened to that promise, and what will you do to fulfill it in your second term?

Mr. President and Gov. Romney: We've heard all this talk about Social Security "going broke," yet it will continue to collect hundreds of billions every year. Isn't it more accurate to say it will need additional funds sometime in the 2030's? What do you think of this scaremongering, and why aren't we being told the truth?

Mr. President and Gov. Romney: Polls show that most Americans - including most Republicans and most Tea Party members - are against cuts to Medicare and Social Security. Will you promise us - with no ifs, ands, or buts - that there will be no cuts? Will you raise the payroll tax cap instead and ensure that millionaires and billionaires pay their fair share?

If a Commitment Falls in a Coffee Shop and Nobody Hears It, Does It Make a Sound?

The President traded away the Democrats' best issue in the first debate when he said that he and Romney had "essentially the same position" about "tweaking" Social Security. For seniors who rely on these programs, those "tweaks" would feel more like body blows.

Biden says of the GOP, "These guys haven't been big on Medicare from the beginning. And they've always been about (doing for) Social Security as little as you can do."

He's right. Democrats created both programs. They've winning elections for seventy-five years on Social Security, and for fifty years on Medicare. It's time somebody asked the President as his party's leader whether Democrats will "dance with the ones that brung ya" by defending them now.

Tuesday's night's audience will consist of undecided voters, a majority of whom have consistently told pollsters they oppose cutting benefits for these programs. That makes them the perfect folks to ask the questions that our national news media apparently won't.

"Trust your instincts," Biden advises voters. But until the President and Mr. Romney are asked some direct questions, "trust" - and a couple of quarters - will buy you a cup of coffee at the Coffee Break Cafe in Stuart, Virginia.

Mitt Romney: Magic Man

Leo Gerard — Tue, 09 Oct 2012 09:28:38 -0400

"I’m gonna float like a butterfly and sting like a bee;
George can’t hit what his hands can’t see;
Now you see me, now you don’t;
He thinks he will, but I know he won’t." ~ Muhammad Ali

At last week’s presidential debate, Mitt Romney floated like a butterfly and stung like a bee.

He punched and parried, feigning the great Muhammad Ali.

Any likeness between the two is, however, mere illusion. America has seen victory by Muhammad Ali. America worked through disputes with Muhammad Ali. Now America admires Muhammad Ali. And Mitt Romney is no champion. Instead, Romney's a magic man. He employs sleight of hand. He uses smoke and mirrors to confuse and obscure. Unlike President Obama, Mitt doesn't do math. He performs tricks, sorta like Muhammad Ali said in his rhyme – Now you see severely conservative Romney, now you don’t. The GOP nominee asks Americans to engage in magical thinking – to believe his hocus-pocus is not just a stage show but will actually painlessly solve problems.

Last week, Romney promoted his magic show during the debate. He promised his performance as president would be fabulous, stupendous, unprecedented! He bragged:

“My plan is not like anything that’s been tried before.”

Specifically, he was talking about his tax plan. Romney has pledged to reinstate the Bush tax cuts should they expire at year’s end as scheduled, then further slash income taxes by 20 percent for everyone. Also, Romney has vowed to eliminate and cut other federal taxes, including the estate tax.

Here’s the part where Romney promises to accomplish something never done before: he says he’ll slash and burn all these taxes but not add a dime to the deficit or to the tax burden of the middle class. When Ronald Reagan made a similar promise, George Bush I called it voodoo economics. George Bush II tried this magic trick and failed. Bush gave everyone, particularly the rich, tax breaks. Then the federal deficit skyrocketed. To quote a bumbling former Republican presidential candidate, “Whoops.”

Romney says that won’t happen when he performs as president. He’s too good. The illusionist swore to the nation Wednesday night:

“My, my number one principal is, there will be no tax cut that adds to the deficit. I want to underline that: no tax cut that adds to the deficit.”

He hasn’t specified how he’d accomplish that because, as you know, magic tricks are proprietary secrets. He’s offered a couple of enticing tidbits, however.

One is that he’d close tax loopholes and deductions to recoup income lost because of all those tax cuts. But he won’t say which ones because, again, those proprietary magic secrets.

The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center (TPC) analyzed Romney’s proposal and concluded it didn’t add up – even when they gave him lots of breaks because his plan is clandestine. To get back $1 from closed loopholes for every $1 in tax cuts, the TPC determined that Romney would have to eliminate breaks favored by the middle class, such the mortgage deduction. And that means Romney’s plan would cost middle class families an additional $2,000 a year on average, the TPC said.

Still, Romney assured the American people last week:

“I will not, under any circumstances, raise taxes on middle-income families. I will lower taxes on middle-income families.”

Abracadabra!

Romney insists his bag of tricks contains one that will enable him to defy the math of the TPC economists, who served in both Republican and Democratic administrations. One way would be to do what Bush did, just cut taxes and increase the deficit. Romney contends that’s not in his repertoire:

“I won't put in place a tax cut that adds to the deficit. That's part one. So there's no economist can say Mitt Romney's tax plan adds $5 trillion if I say I will not add to the deficit with my tax plan.”

Nobody can say it if Mitt Romney says they can’t! He dismisses pesky economic experts with a wave of his magic wand.

Just as he’d heal the budget, Romney would patch up the nation’s health care system -- with pixie dust.

First, he says he’d repeal Obamacare on day one. Second, he told debate listeners:

“What I support is no change for current retirees or near-retirees to Medicare.”

Logically, or mathematically, or realistically, that won’t work. As of August, 5.4 million seniors had saved $4.1 billion on prescription drugs, about $768 each, because Obamacare closes the Medicare prescription plan donut hole. And, under Obamacare, this year more than 18 million Medicare recipients received at least one preventive service for free. Killing Obamacare would mean seniors would have to pay those costs once again from their own limited funds. This would be a costly change to Medicare for current retirees and near-retirees.

Also, Obamacare extended the life of Medicare by eight years. It did so by reducing payments to medical facilities by $716 billion over a decade, reductions accepted by the providers when the law was negotiated. Romney says he will eliminate the savings to Medicare and give those payments to the medical facilities. That, logically, would snuff out the life of Medicare eight years earlier, which would be a tragic change to Medicare for current retirees and near-retirees.

But, you know, presto-chango, Romney says it ain’t so.

Many aspects of Obamacare are beloved by those who have benefitted, including extending coverage for young adults on their parents’ plans, eliminating coverage caps and instituting rebates when insurers charge too much. But perhaps the most important Obamacare protection was the specification that insurers can’t deny coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.
Repealing Obamacare would eliminate that benefit. Romney’s response at the debate:

“In fact, I do have a plan that deals with people with pre-existing conditions.”

Romney’s plan could exclude millions, however, since it guarantees insurance only if the person with a pre-existing condition has maintained coverage without a lapse longer than three months.

But, no worries. In Romney’s magical world, if we all just clap loudly enough, Tinker Bell won’t die!

Like any good magician, Romney keeps the details of his plans for America hidden up his sleeve. Taking a cue from that Muhammad Ali rhyme, he believes:

Your hands can't hit what your eyes can't see.

Obama, Yes. And Win the House Too.

Roger Hickey — Sun, 09 Sep 2012 18:37:57 -0400

President Obama is enjoying a post-convention bump in job approval (Gallup says 7 percentage points – from 45 to 52 percent) after the negative and divisive Republican convention, followed by the energetic populism of the Democrats in Charlotte. With large leads among women and people of color, and the stark contrast on economic issues building movement toward Obama even among white males in key states, the prospects for Obama winning a second term are starting to look pretty good.

But what about the House? Prospects for Democrats keeping the Senate are looking better, but if the House of Representatives stays in Republican hands, even if President Obama is re-elected his second term will be crippled. Obama can still name good Supreme Court justices, and he can veto terrible legislation – both good reasons to vote for him – but, in the face of Republican obstructionism, he will be virtually powerless to pass economic recovery laws aimed at creating jobs and getting the economy growing and not shrinking.

Obama has repeatedly told voters they have the opportunity to "break the current stalemate in Washington between two fundamentally different ideas on how to create strong, sustained economic growth," – as he said in Cleveland on June 14. A few days later he told a campaign crowd, "What's holding us back is a stalemate in Washington between two fundamentally different visions on which direction we should go, and this election is your chance to break that stalemate."

Obama is right, of course, but only if the voters reelect him AND sweep into office at least 25 Democrats to seats now held by Republicans. You didn't hear much about taking back the House as a goal of Democrats at the Charlotte convention – an indication that they don't want to look like failures if they fall short. But for the same reasons Obama now looks like a winner, Democrats and independent activists now have the possibility of "nationalizing" contests for the House and turning this election into an historic wave election that can truly "break the stalemate" and put the nation on a course of decisive change. How do we do that?

1. Tell voters Republican economics won't just fail--they will kill jobs and plunge us back into recession.
Too many Democrats describe the Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan-Republican economic plans as taking us back to "the failed Bush policies." But they are much worse than that – because they would not only cut taxes for the rich, THEY WOULD KILL JOBS AND PUSH AMERICA BACK INTO RECESSION. Republican candidates Romney and Ryan (and every House member who voted for the Ryan budget) would cut public spending so drastically they would destroy our struggling recovery and throw millions more Americans onto the unemployment rolls. Republicans have voted repeatedly for this kind of European-style austerity. Democratic challengers should call them what they are: job killers. And challenge incumbent Republican Members of Congress to repudiate their votes for the Ryan budget.

2. Oppose outrageously unfair tax cuts for the wealthy.
House Republicans think making the Bush tax cuts for millionaires permanent is very popular with voters – but they are very wrong. All but four House Republicans voted for the Ryan budget containing these tax provisions. Many of them were committing political suicide – if Democrats take them on. Every tax provision in the Ryan budget is wildly unpopular in the minds of the majority of voters who reject the idea of more tax cuts for the super-rich. A June 2012 Peter Hart and Associates poll of likely voters for Americans for Tax Fairness found:

72 percent favor increasing tax rates on household income above $250,000 (rolling back the Bush tax cuts).
68 percent favor ending tax breaks for corporations shipping jobs overseas.
64 percent want to ensure large corporations pay their fair share of taxes.
And 46 percent want to end the low (capital gains) tax rate on income from stocks and bonds.

The take-away: Americans hate the idea of tax cuts for the wealthy – on fairness grounds alone. But Republicans claim tax cuts for the rich are the best way they will create jobs, so the unpopularity of their tax plan (if we expose it) undercuts the entire GOP (so-called) jobs and growth plan as well.

3. Stand up for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid – and expose all GOP incumbents who have voted to destroy those popular programs.
A large number of House Republicans are on record calling for cuts to Social Security benefits or increases in the retirement age. And many support the kind of privatization of Social Security that Ryan called for in his 2010 Roadmap for America's Future, embraced by most of the House Republican caucus. If Democratic challengers are bold enough to declare opposition to Social Security benefit cuts and attack the idea of privatization, they will find they can put their Republican opponents on the defensive, as these damaging changes to America's most important retirement program are unpopular, even to members of the Tea Party.

All but four House Republican incumbents voted for the 2012 Ryan budget, which passed the House only to be defeated in the Senate. Denounced by the U.S. Catholic bishops for its very large cuts to programs aimed at reducing poverty, including Medicaid, the Ryan budget was described by the bishops as "failing to meet the moral test." And the "Nuns on the Bus" have been touring the country, rallying voters against Medicaid cuts.

The Ryan budget would also turn Medicare into a voucher system, which would cost seniors a larger and larger portion of their incomes, as the value of vouchers fail to keep up with the cost of health care. And it would force older Americans to deal with a confusing array of private insurance plans in their retirement years. This Medicare voucher plan, embraced by Romney, is very, very unpopular with seniors and Americans of all ages. Aggressive defense of Medicare by Democratic challengers can turn many a contest into an upset.

For those who doubt Dems can win in tough races, consider the 2011 special election victory of Rep Kathy Hochul, a Democrat running in Jack Kemp's old upstate district, New York 26 – which hadn't elected a Democrat in four decades. A Washington Post article attributed her victory to her opposition to the "House Republicans' budget plan authored by Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan – and, in particular, his proposal to turn Medicare into a voucher program." Hochul's winning message could win almost anywhere this year: "I won't to let them cut Social Security benefits and end Medicare as we know it while giving more tax cuts to the rich." That was, and is, a winning message. Add a plan for jobs, and your opponent is on the ropes by Election Day.

4. Fight for JOBS FIRST--and go after every incumbent who opposed Obama's American Jobs Act.
Republicans won the House in 2010 by pointing to high unemployment and charging the Democratic economic program had failed. At that point Democrats had no new jobs plan to run on. A year ago, President Obama stopped talking about deficit reduction and put the American Jobs Act on the table. Every Democrat running for a House seat this year can accuse the Republican incumbent of blocking that jobs plan, which independent experts have estimated would have produced 1.9 million jobs by rebuilding America's infrastructure and schools and helping states hire, not lay off, teachers and cops and firefighters. Democrats need to campaign as a party with a popular plan to put people to work, grow the economy, and get the private sector growing faster. And it would be great if President Obama would campaign a little bit more like Harry Truman, denouncing Republicans in the House (what Truman called the "do nothing Republicans") for their obstructionism in blocking passage of his jobs bill.

Democratic candidates for the House also need remind voters that the (Romney-Ryan) Republican plan to slash public spending will kill jobs and throw the US back into recession – just as similar radical austerity regimes in Britain and Ireland and Spain and other European countries have caused recession to sweep the continent. We have to expose the Republicans' post-election plans to cut taxes for the wealthy (which won't stimulate the economy) and their plans to slash public investment, which will kill economic growth and increase joblessness.
While acknowledging that we have to get deficits under control in the long term, Democrats must insist that America's first priority must be to get unemployment down and economic growth up. And that means getting voters educated and alerted to Republican plans to impose draconian austerity if they manage to keep the House. In the next 60 days, Democrats must be the champions of full-employment, and get the voters to see Republicans as the job killers that they are.

5. Charge up the Democratic base voters--and give them a reason to get out and vote.
The spectacle of Republicans in Tampa attacking women, welfare-baiting minorities, and doubling-down on tax cuts for the rich has fired up Democratic base voters – even among progressives, who may have problems with Obama, but who know letting Romney and a Republican Congress run the country would be a disaster. The Charlotte convention helped as well: showing off Democrats as both diverse and united – and fighting for a much more progressive vision of our economic future.

President Obama is right when he says this election offers us the opportunity to "break the current stalemate in Washington between two fundamentally different ideas on how to create strong, sustained economic growth." But we all have to work to get him to go beyond a pitch for his own re-election. He should ask voters to "send to Washington a new group of Congressional leaders who will work with me to break that stalemate." As he gets more confident in his own re-election, I hope we can get him to call for throwing out the obstructionists.

However, as we've learned, we can't wait for Obama. It's our country, and we need to save it. So it's our job to get to work in every Congressional district that might produce that swing of 25 seats. We've got to teach the Democratic candidates how to campaign – against the Romney-Ryan job-killing plan, for Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, against unfair tax cuts for the wealthy, and for the Democratic plan for jobs.

As I write this, MoveOn is sending around Nate Silver's new analysis in the NY Times that finds "Obama's chance of victory would be an amazing 91% if everyone who's registered actually votes this year." MoveOn asks for your contribution to raise $600,000 this week to create (with the AFL-CIO's Workers' Voice) the largest independent get-out-the-vote operation in the country. This kind of thing is doable, and you can contribute here, because getting out the Democratic base vote – and giving them good reasons to vote – is going to be crucial in the next two months.

Here's another encouraging sign: Political scientists Jacob Hacker and Nate Loewentheil recently published a paper that summarizes in accessible (and non-political) language, the first four points above. After a blogger conference call to discuss A New Strategy for Prosperity, the legendary Digby and colleagues got the document to progressive House candidates they are supporting, and 16 of them have endorsed the ideas and are running under the banner of Americans for Real Prosperity.

The old optimism from 2008 is coming back – tempered by the realities of the last four years. We should all work for the re-election of Barack Obama, but we should also work to make sure he has a Congress that can help him carry out the big changes that America needs. And we've got to make sure that after the election there is a powerful progressive movement pushing President Obama and the new Congress to do what needs to be done.

Insecurity Separates Middle Class from Romney, Ryan

Leo Gerard — Tue, 28 Aug 2012 11:28:09 -0400

The rich, those born sucking silver spoons like Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan, really are different from the middle class. The wealthy grow up and live their lives wrapped in security. That’s what gives them the arrogance to organize a posse to hold down a fellow prep school student and chop off his hair, mock NASCAR fans’ clothes and ridicule cookies offered by supporters. No matter what, Romney and Ryan will remain rich and secure.

By contrast, those born into poverty or the middle class live lives nagged by insecurity. They know their jobs could be off-shored at any moment. They know their employers may raid their pensions in bankruptcy. Their major asset in life, their home, may have lost a third of its value when the Wall Street-inflated housing bubble burst. Rich would be great, but those born without trust funds work hardest just to attain a little security.

Last week, the Pew Research Center issued a report detailing how insecurity has increased for the middle class since 2000. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) published a report predicting increased insecurity for the middle class if Congress takes no action on taxes and budget cuts within the next four months. A third report released last week, called Prosperity Economics, describes how to revive the economy and broaden security.

A true democratic republic, where the majority rules, would reverse the past decade’s trend against the middle class, forestall the CBO prediction, and increase security for the masses. The silver spooners seeking the Oval Office have given no indication, however, that they intend to ease the uncertainty of the plastic spooners.

The Pew Research Center looked at how the middle class fared since 2000. In a word, it’s badly. This is what Pew called its findings: “The Lost Decade of the Middle Class: Fewer, Poorer, Gloomier.” Here’s how the center sums it up:

“Since 2000, the middle class has shrunk in size, fallen backward in income and wealth, and shed some – but by no means all – of its characteristic faith in the future.”

Over the past 40 years, the percentage of adults in the middle class shrank from 61 to 51. Also, the rich seized a greater portion of the nation’s household income. Their cut rose from 29 percent to 46. Almost all of that came from the middle class, whose share fell from 62 percent to 45.

Similarly, the middle class suffered a 28 percent drop in wealth over the past decade, much of that in housing value.

The losses intensified middle-class insecurity. Those interviewed by the Pew researchers expressed pessimism. For America, which sees itself as the land of opportunity, this survey result is dispiriting: 29 percent of the middle class said hard work and determination no longer guarantee success for most people. The American Dream is dying.

Middle-class insecurity and gloom will worsen if Congress allows the country to fall off the fiscal cliff – if it fails to renew at least some tax cuts set to expire at year’s end or temper scheduled budget cuts. The CBO, in its Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: Fiscal Years 2012 to 2022, said if Congress does not change its current tax and spending plan, the United States will descend into recession again next year and unemployment will rise to 9 percent.

The budget cuts were demanded last year by House Republicans, led by Ryan, who refused to raise the nation’s debt ceiling until they got a deal guaranteeing the budget slashing. President Obama has repeatedly sought money for infrastructure improvement and other job-creating projects to relieve unemployment and prevent a double dip recession, but Republicans have rebuffed him. They also have rejected his plan to renew middle class tax breaks while terminating the massively larger breaks for the rich.

Republicans like Ryan have decided relieving the deficit is more important than relieving uncertainty for the middle class. The perfect symbol of that is Ryan’s plan to voucherize Medicare. Social Security and Medicare are beloved by the middle class because of the security they provide in retirement. Ryan’s vouchers would end that security because they would dramatically increase costs for senior citizens. Ryan and his followers demand austerity for the middle class and tax cuts for the rich.

Austerity is not necessary, according to two Yale researchers. They offer an alternative, Prosperity Economics.

Jacob Hacker, a Yale professor and director of the Institution for Social and Policy Studies, and Nate Loewentheil, a Yale law student, describe how to create a dynamic economy and foster a society “marked by greater health, broader security, increased equality of opportunity, and more broadly distributed growth.”

They believe in resurrecting the American Dream. While the middle class is losing faith, Hacker and Loewentheil say it doesn’t have to be that way.

In their plan, everyone benefits, not just the silver spooners. It’s not, however, a strategy likely to be adopted by austerity advocates Romney and Ryan, who have never experienced the pain of economic insecurity suffered by the plastic spoon class.

Romney, Ryan Don’t Get the Average Joe

Leo Gerard — Tue, 21 Aug 2012 09:39:18 -0400

GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney foolishly revived the dust up about his income tax secrecy last week. He claimed he paid at least 13 percent, an assertion easy enough for him to prove by releasing his tax documents.

But he’s refusing to do that. He called the concern about his tax rate “small minded.” Much more important issues overshadow it, he contended.

Maybe so. But the American people, the Average Jane and Joe, do care whether Romney used tricks and loopholes and offshore accounts to manipulate the tax system and pay nothing. And they’re not “small minded,” as Romney accused them of being, for wanting to know.

For them, a quarter billionaire who paid nothing or paid a rate lower than the middle class lacks the principles they like in a president. The vast majority of voters aren’t going to dissect the budget proposed by Romney’s running mate Rep. Paul Ryan, but they will vote based on the values it reveals. Romney’s ability to rattle off technical details won’t decide the election. Morality, or Jane and Joe’s perception that Ryan and Romney’s policies lack it, will.

Other millionaires have led the nation. In fact, the majority of those in the past presidents club were millionaires. But some of the nation’s wealthy presidents had spent time with America’s Average Janes and Joes and understood their dreams and struggles and were sympathetic to them.

Though raised on an estate, Franklin Delano Roosevelt knew suffering firsthand after being cut down by polio as a young man. He spent long periods with working men and women in Southern recuperation centers as he tried in vain to get his legs to work again. Immediately on his election to the presidency, he launched programs to aid the impoverished.

By contrast, Romney and Ryan, both raised in privilege, have demonstrated remarkable insensitivity to everyday Americans.

Romney, scion of a Detroit car company executive, said as GM and Chrysler struggled in the midst of the Great Recession, “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt.” He’d have countenanced an uncontrolled bankruptcy for the two corporations, costing tens of thousands of middle-class workers at assembly plants, car dealerships and auto part manufacturers their jobs, their homes and their hopes. He’d have done nothing and let them all suffer. There’s a certain carelessness, a heartlessness to that. Those aren’t values many middle-class workers cherish in a president.

Ryan also grew up without worry about money, in a small town where his family owned a construction business and his father was a lawyer. Because his father died when Ryan was 16, Social Security helped him pay for college. Ryan’s plans, however, imperil Social Security for future generations, for the next decade’s 16 year olds who lose fathers.

Ryan sponsored legislation during the Bush administration to privatize Social Security, allowing the fund to be weakened by the draining of untold billions that would be risked on Wall Street, on the very stock market that crashed during the last year of Bush’s reign, sucking the value out of private pension funds. Many middle-class workers don’t find gambling with their retirement security attractive in a president.

Ryan and Romney are in trouble with America’s Average Janes and Joes over their tax proposals as well. Romney says he wants to cut income taxes by 20 percent for everyone, which he claims he would pay for by ending tax deductions. He has declined to specify which ones, however. Here’s what the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center said about his plan: it would cost the wealthy like Ryan and Romney less and the Average Jane and Joe more.

That’s right. Specifically, the plan would reduce taxes each year for the nation’s wealthiest 5 percent, ranging from a cut of $1,800 for the least rich to nearly $250,000 for the most rich. For the other 95 percent of taxpayers, the nation’s middle class, Romney’s “tax cut” would mean a tax increase averaging $500 per household because, the Tax Policy Center said, tax breaks that the middle class depends on, like the one for mortgages, would disappear. The center said it was a fantasy for Romney to suggest he could fund his plan by eliminating only tax breaks for the rich.

The Average Jane and Joe may not read the entire report. But they do understand this one key fact: The Romney tax plan will cost them more and Romney less. Many will find the injustice of that to be unattractive in a president.

Similarly, Ryan’s budget “Roadmap” would also lower Romney’s tax rate. Ryan would require him to pay less than 1 percent. That’s because the vast majority of Romney's $21 million income in 2010 came from capital gains, interest and dividends, and Ryan would eliminate all taxes on capital gains, interest and dividends.

Most middle-class household income, all of $50,000 a year and declining, comes from wages, not capital gains, interest and dividends. So those families would be paying rates way higher than 1 percent. In fact, the Tax Policy Center determined that Ryan’s budget would raise taxes on the bottom 30 percent of wage earners.

The Average Jane and Joe may not memorize all those facts and figures. But they will recall that Ryan wants quarter billionaires to pay 1 percent and them to pay way more. That’s just galling. Far from what the middle class finds to be a desirable trait in a vice president.

When a reporter asked Romney about his tax rates last week, the Republican candidate had just finished lecturing the ensemble on the intricacies of his Medicare plan using a white board.

What Romney can’t comprehend is that for the middle class, it’s not the numbers.

What the Average Jane and Joe will recall is that Romney and Ryan plan to privatize Medicare, to destroy a beloved program on which the middle class depends. What they’ll know about Romney and Ryan is that their proposed policies show they don’t have a clue what it’s like to struggle. And don’t care. Carelessness is not a quality the middle class finds desirable in the occupants of the Oval Office.

The Phony "Generational War": It's Like the Hunger Games, But With Old People

Richard Eskow — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 12:42:55 -0400

Millions of people have read the Hunger Games stories, about a depraved future society where young people are forcing to fight each other for scarce resources while elites in the Capital plunder the nation's wealth.

Now take a look at our world, where Washington's elites are laboring to pit the young against the old in in a similarly ritualized battle: Generational War. Like the Hunger Games, this spectacle only distracts us from the real economic injustices in our society.

In an economy where most people's lives have been harmed by bank recklessness and massive wealth inequality - that is to say, by the diversion of an ever-increasing lion's share of our national income to the richest of the rich - these instigators and those who follow them want everybody to worry about a different predator instead:

Grandma.

Introducing the Effie Awards

Every ritual battle needs someone to act as its cheerleader, promoter, propagandist, and recruiter. In the Hunger Games it's the relentlessly cheerful Effie Trinket, who recruits young people for brutal combat and near-certain death while chirping upbeat sayings like "Welcome to the Games!" and "May the odds ever be in your favor!"

Rather than pitting kids against each other like the Hunger Games, this false "Generational War" pits the young against the old. Call 'em the Younger Games, and there are plenty of Effies out there hunting for recruits.

Some Effies, especially those funded by billionaire Pete Peterson's anti-Social Security and Medicare campaign, are engaging in classic big-lie tactics: Repeat your falsehoods over and over and people will begin to believe them. Others may just be parroting the latest cocktail-party chatter.

We therefore announce the "Effies," a periodic review of generational-war literature in which we rate our contestants for the effectiveness of their "greedy geezer" propaganda. The weakest efforts get one "Effie," while as many as five of them can be awarded to those pieces of Gen-War Lit which prove worthy of any sci-fi dystopia.

Let's meet this week's contestants.

David Frum

Frum's attack on seniors starts with a truly cheap shot: They don't drive very well. Frum lingers on old people's driving for several paragraphs, long enough to have some readers thinking as they drive to work: That old jerk's going fifteen miles an hour in the left lane and I'm paying for his Medicare!

(Hey, when I was growing up in upstate New York we thought people from New Jersey drove badly. It was a major theme of the Friday night brawls between Jersey and New York teens at the Rainbow Bar and Grill in Suffern. But even the worst hooligans among us never considered starving the entire state.)

Driving is only a setup, however, for the main point embedded in Frum's title: "... we need to say no to the elderly." He writes:

Whether we can ever learn to say no to the elderly is the great political question hanging over all modern societies, in Europe as much as in the U.S., as we face a 21st century of diminished economic opportunity and staggering government debt.

Got it? Saying no to all people is the great political question hanging over all modern societies. Not a great political question, the great political question. And not some modern societies. All of them.

Truth time: We had more than enough money to pay for Social Security when the payroll tax cap (currently $106,000) ensured that 90 percent of our national income was being taxed. That's how it was designed by the Greenspan Commission in the 1980s. Since then the ultra-wealthy have captured so much more of our national income that this number has dropped substantially, leading to a relatively mild (25 percent) shortfall in a couple of decades. That's easily fixed by lifting the cap, along with one or two other adjustments (a financial transactions tax, gradual small increases in the payroll tax rate, etc.)

But these solutions, which polls show are politically popular, aren't being discussed much in Washington these days - or in the opinion pages, for that matter. That's because the truly great political question for all modern societies is saying no to the wealthy.

Frum, of course, doesn't tell you that.

Frum goes on to discuss the supposed "disdain" older Americans feel for the young, when there's no evidence to suggest anything of the kind. The real disdain comes from those like Frum who would sell young people on "generational war" as a way to cut benefits, because those cuts would harm young people far more than they would hurt anyone who is retired or approaching retirement today.

Rag on their bad driving to get you steamed up, then take away their benefits. Propagandists manqué, take note: That's how you turn the public against a whole class of people.

David Frum's score: Four Effies.

David Leonhardt

The award-winning Washington bureau chief for the New York Times begins with the jaw-dropping statement that "one dividing line (among Americans) has actually received too little attention ... the line between young and old." Too little attention? It's been the topic of endless commentary.

It doesn't get any better. Leonhardt meanders through a few paragraphs about the shifting opinions among generations before making the same statement we've seen so many times before: "If there is a theme unifying these economic and political trends, in fact, it is that the young are generally losing out to the old."

Unfortunately, Leonhardt never gets around to proving his case. He acknowledges that seniors who receive Social Security have paid for it throughout their working lives, and this intellectual honesty undercuts his thesis. And while it's true that Medicare costs more than its normal funding sources provide, Leonhardt makes a fatal omission: He doesn't explain why it costs more. For-profit healthcare has driven our medical costs, and our rate of cost increase, far above those of any other developed nation.

That means the solution isn't to restrict benefits. That would impoverish oldsters who can't afford care, or force them to go without needed medical treatment. The real solution is to restrain the profit motive that's making healthcare unaffordable for everyone in this country.

Leonhardt also says this: "Over all, more than 50 percent of federal benefits flow to the 13 percent of the population over 65. Some of these benefits come from Social Security, which many people pay for over the course of their working lives. But a large chunk comes through Medicare ..." (Leonhardt doesn't tell us what the percentage of Federal benefits is without Social Security.)

Medicare is insurance which pays for medical care, and it's designed for older people who need more medical care than younger people. To suggest that's unjust is like saying my auto insurance plan is unjust because all the payouts go to the privileged few who have had accidents.

Leonhardt tries manfully to push the generation-war theme, but it's as if his heart isn't in it. Maybe an editor assigned this piece, or he felt compelled to write it for another reason. But tit doesn't cohere, either logically or as generational-war lit. Maybe it was that intermittent, yet troublesome, intellectual honesty. We don't know. But it seems as if he wasn't feeling it, and we sure weren't.

David Leonhardt's score: Two Effies.

Ezekiel Emanuel, M.D.

Dr. Emanuel has come up with a Rube Goldberg-like policy contraption. Remember Rube Goldberg? His inventions executed a lot of complicated, rickety, and diverting processes - lifting little mechanical hands, compelling a toy monkey to clash his cymbals together - in order to do something trivial, like drop a ping-pong ball into a cup. They were creative, labor-intensive - and pointlessly made an easy task into something complicated.

Dr. Emanuel's latest construction is worse than pointless. It's destructive. His latest contribution to the Younger Games comes in the form of a New York Times editorial called "Share the Wealth," in which he notes that poverty for children is on the rise while poverty for elderly Americans has declined.

There are many things terribly, terribly wrong with this argument, not the least of which is the dishonesty with which Emanuel cherry-picks the facts to create the illusion that the elderly are getting rich at the expense of the young. But Emanuel's real Hunger Games flourish is in the unstated premise behind his use of these statistics: that the right way to address poverty isn't by eliminating it, but by distributing it more effectively among competing groups.

"Growing up in poverty is bad," Dr. Emanuel helpfully informs his readers.Then come statements like this: "The rising standard of living among older Americans is largely a result of the tens of thousands of dollars each collects from Social Security and Medicare." (Actually, the standard of living for most older Americans is most likely declining, not rising.) "... This huge transfer of wealth," Emanuel continues, "is harming our children."

Except, of course, that there is no "transfer of wealth" between young and old. Social Security is entirely self-funded, by law. And every proposal to "save" the program from future actuarial imbalances involves taking much more from today's children than they would lose even if the program weren't changed at all.

Like his fellow Effie winners, Dr. Emanuel never discusses the real transfer of wealth that's endangering our fiscal security and leading to that long-term shortfall - the transfer of national income to the wealthiest among us. High unemployment is another contributor to the program's long-term shortfall, but Effies aren't permitted to mention that either.

Medicare will be in serious financial trouble in coming decades, but the problem isn't that older Americans are demanding too much medical care. The problem is runaway greed in our healthcare economy - greed which encompasses for-profit hospitals, physician practice management companies, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and diagnostic imaging providers, to name but a few.

Emanuel proposes creating a "Children's Opportunity Bequest and Fund," where "old Americans could agree to forego Social Security and Medicare for one to three years." The money could be directed to "their very own grandchildren" or "any specific child identified by their Social Security number." He never mentions the many ways grandparents can already give cash and gifts to their grandchildren, so we'll help him out: They have names like "trust fund," "savings account, "Hanukah gelt, "Communion gift ...."

Why should government resources be used to create yet another vehicle for this purpose?

Ezekiel then meanders into some convoluted "we could also" ideas, including a "Children's Opportunity Fund" that a "would support the early childhood education of a randomly chosen newborn from a family below the poverty line."

Hunger Games fans will immediately see the parallels between this proposal and the system which allowed young people to collect credit points by increasing their likelihood of being chosen as a sacrifice. Why does Ezekiel propose such a redundant and foolhardy contraption? Either he's not thinking very clearly or he's deliberately befuddling the public. (We do know he's a serial misleader on the subject of retirement benefits - see Dean Baker for an example).

Phony arguments? A government system which encourages oldsters to sacrifice themselves for youngsters - and even uses their Social Security numbers? All presumably accompanied by propaganda campaigns encouraging seniors to give up their benefits and stigmatizing those who don't? Congratulations, Doc! That's real Hunger Games material.

Ezekiel Emanuel's score: A winning Five Effies.

What are we to conclude from this relentless wave of false generation-war propaganda? If you're not a senior yet, it means you still have the chance to become the star of somebody's dystopian science-fiction novel. In the meantime, here's a final word to you from all of our contestants:

May the odds ever be in your favor!

Dammit, Chris Matthews! You Were Doing So Well 'Til You Said "Simpson Bowles"

Richard Eskow — Mon, 04 Jun 2012 23:52:45 -0400

At the June 18-20 Take Back the American Dream conference, we'll organize to stop Simpson-Bowles from passing Congress in the December "lame duck" session. Hear Robert L. Borosage, Van Jones and Melissa Harris-Perry on "Winning in November – So We Can Win in December and Beyond" and hear Rep. Jan Schakowsky, Damon Silvers and Molly Katchpole offer "An Agenda to Win in November–and Prevent a Train Wreck in December." Click here to register.

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Chris Matthews had something of a scoop on MSNBC's Morning Joe program today. He indicated that yet another Democratic leader in Congress has succumbed to the austerity-based political fever that's decimating that party on Capitol Hill.

He didn't put it quite that way, of course, but that's the gist of it. The headline could read something like this:

Yet another Democrat stricken with the dreaded "Simpson Bowles virus." The subhead could be, "Plague claims latest victim during private conversation with broadcaster. Number of cases may reach epidemic proportions, say experts."

Springtime in Washington: You can count on austerity fever to strike this town before the last cherry blossom sheds its petals.

That Matthews Magic

Now, I know that the progressive Internet likes to give Chris Matthews a hard time, and not altogether without reason. But I find the guy very likable, warts and all, so I'm not going to go all ad hominem on him. (Hopefully that's not our style anyway.)

Fact is, Chris was doing great for a while this morning, forecefully and eloquently laying down exactly the kind of advice that President Obama and his party leaders need. Sure, Matthews and the rest off the Joe Scarborough panel slung their fair share of cliches - "Friday was a game change," that sort of thing - but Matthews was nailing it.

"This election's going to be about the guy on the mound," he said, noting our lagging growth rate and terrible job numbers. "He's not performing out there," said Matthews, "not the way the voters score this thing. if he can't change the economic numbers, which he can't, he's got to talk about … what he's up against … how he's brought back the auto industry, and how he has to do a lot more in public sector investment."

Then Matthews really hit his stride, saying of the President:

I don't understand why he thinks small. Why doesn't he say "Look, we brought back the auto industry. Why don't we bring back the highways? Why don't we do what Eisenhower did - upgrade what he did in the fifties? Why is Europe ahead of us on fast rail, the chunnel, the bullet trains …. Why is everything falling apart? Why don't we invest in our public sector while interest rates are practically zero and there are all these unemployed people out there?"

Matthews added:

"This is a good time to do stuff. Instead he has this pusillanimous highway bill up there on the Hill, and this so-called jobs bill that I don't even know what's in it. If they're going to say no to spam, make 'em say no to steak. Have a big program, let Congress say no to it, alongside a good debt reduction program down the road."

Wow, Chris. We don't think you've been reading us, but you're playing our song.

"He doesn't seem to have anything on his plate right now," Matthews added, "and that's his main problem as pitcher. You don't think of him as out there pitching." He even inspired the Republican Scarborough to offer up a riff or two. Scarborough added:

You run straight into the fire, and everywhere you go you say, "You know what. Things aren't great right now. But if we didn't do what we did your ATMs would have stopped working. If we didn't do what we did Detroit would've stopped working"

The host concluded with the reasonable observations that "Democrats seem to be afraid to tell people what they believe and what they did." To which Matthews responded, "How about this? (The President) should say 'My way is the highway. We're gonna do it the way Eisenhower did it.'"

I never thought I'd say these words, especially in response to a suggestion that Democrats start kickin' it Eisenhower style, but: Amen, brother. Amen.

The Dream Is Over

Then Matthews pivoted to policy specifics. "You go over the steps," he said. "Why didn't he back Simpson/Bowles?"

Damn it, Chris Matthews! You were doing so well!

The President, said Matthews, could say that Simpson Bowles "does things I hate, but it goes somewhere. Matthews continued:

(The President could say) "It does stuff I don't like. I hate it, I hate it. But we gotta start somewhere. I got eleven votes (for the Simpson Bowles proposal, which failed to pass within the Deficit Commission). I wish I'd gotten fourteen, but damn it, I don't care how many votes you got. You got my vote."He coulda done that."

Then came the anonymous Congressional leader, of whom Matthews said:

I talked to a leader in Congress yesterday, a Democrat - a moderate Democrat - and he said "The number one thing we could do for the market, for confidence, for the consumer, for the investor, for the retiree, the about-to-be retiree, is a long-term debt reduction plan agreed to by this government. That means the Republicans in the House, the Democrats in the Senate, and the President agree to a deal that we're going to stick to to reduce the debt.

Finally we heard the closer on Matthews' Simpson Bowles pitch:

it seems to me that this would be … the greatest gong out there, we'd all hear it and say, "Dammit, those guys can do their jobs." I know it's going to be hard before the election. But the President ought to be out there saying 'I'm first, put me down first, I'm John Hancock, I'm signing on." And (he should) lead the way on debt reduction, long term, and short-term job creation. Everybody knows what they want done. They want jobs now, and long-term debt reduction.

They do? Let's think about that for a moment.

By Popular Demand

As US News reported in March, "A Harris Poll found only 12 percent of the public want to see a cut in Social Security, 21 said they want to cut federal aid to education and 22 said they favor cuts federal healthcare programs."

Simpson Bowles would do all three.

An April poll showed that 79 percent of voters thought it was important to address the jobs crisis, as opposed to 73 percent who thought the deficits were important. And more importantly, when asked by Gallup in January what worried them most, only 16 percent said the deficit. 26 percent said jobs, 10 percent said our continuing economic decline, 6 percent said outsourcing, and 3 percent said Medicare and Medicaid.

When asked in March what they worry about "a great deal," 71 percent said the economy, 60 percent said the availability and affordability of healthcare, 55 percent said unemployment, and 48 percent said the Social Security system. 60 percent said "Federal spending and the government deficit."

When you stack up Simpson Bowles against the things it would hurry, that's 60 percent in favor and 234 against. "Everybody knows what they want done," all right, and Simpson Bowles ain't it.

Let Us Count the Ways

Matthews quoted his unnamed Congressional Democrat as saying "The number one thing we could do for the market, for confidence, for the consumer, for the investor, for the retiree, the about-to-be retiree, is a long-term debt reduction plan." How would that work out for the parties he listed?

The Market: In a little-noted (except by us) development, the stock market actually tanked the last time there was deficit reduction deal. Why? Because government cuts means a smaller GDP and therefore less consumer spending. And less consumer spending means less profits - unless you're a bank.

The Consumer: Conservative economists believe in a theory which says that government debt discourages spending, because people know that those debts will someday lead to higher taxes so they'd better save their money. But for some reason they don't believe that people will hold on to their money once they realize the government plans to cut their Social Security and Medicare, which is deeply embedded in the Simpson Bowles proposal.

And they don't think that consumers will be discouraged from spending, or have their confidence shaken, by the adoption of a plan which will cost the economy a projected 4 million jobs.

The Investor: People are seeing their 401k's get hammered because there's no consumer confidence. People aren't spending - either because they don't have jobs, or because they're in an underwater home, or because their wages have stagnated, or because they're fearful for the future. Often it's a case of "all of the above."

As we noted earlier, investors got the living daylights beaten out of them after the last deficit deal. They'd get hurt just as badly when this one was announced, too - and every time another jobs report came out after that.

Retirees and soon-to-be retirees: Simpson Bowles proposes radical cuts to Medicare, and insists on cutting Social Security rather than contemplate raising taxes on the wealthy. Think this'll turn 'em on? Talk about a Social Security deal, along with the Medicare reimbursement cuts, help the Democrats lose Congress in 2010.

If this plan becomes law, will people really say "Dammit, these guys can do their jobs"? Or with they say, "Dammit, I just lost mine"?

Strange Medicine

The fact is, the Simpson Bowles plan does nothing to build jobs except delay its draconian cuts by ten months. There's no stimulus spending in it. And what kind of political naiveté would lead insiders like Matthews and his unnamed House leader (probably Steny Hoyer) to think that Republicans will back any kind of job creation plan?

In practical terms, a sentence like "jobs in the short-term, deficits cuts in the long term" is meaningless when applied to Simpson Bowles. That plan would briefly avoid any direct action to cost the country more jobs, but then would begin to trigger a wave of increased unemployment.

Saying "jobs now, then Simpson Bowles" is like saying "We'll fix your broken leg today and then amputate it tomorrow." It makes no sense.

The Wrong Problem

"Long-term debt reduction" isn't our most urgent problem by a long shot. Our government debt's been this high before (as a percentage of GDP) - specifically, it was higher during the World War II and postwar years. Those are the years that finally ended the Depression, and paved the way for those Eisenhower accomplishments that had Chris Matthews waxing so lyrical.

And you know what's even crazier? Right now they're paying the Federal government for the privilege of lending it money. That's right: The Federal government can borrow at negative interest rates, because the world's investors have so much confidence in the security of an investment in the US Treasury. So why aren't we borrowing the money we need to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, educating our kids, and pull ourselves out of this economic quagmire?

We can pivot to debt concerns once our economy's moving again, and once they've stopped paying our government to borrow.

The Sting

When the Simpson Bowles proposal isn't serving the interests of the wealthy with crackpot logic, it stoops to outright fraud. Its much-vaunted "tax increases," for example, involve eliminating the kinds of tax breaks that are keeping many middle-class families afloat (like employer health and mortgage interest deductions).

The Simpson Bowles plan to "save Social Security" involves cutting benefits for recipients in 2080 as much as they'd be cut if Congress did nothing at all. Why? To deflect the idea of eliminating the payroll tax cap. (Simpson Bowles merely raises the cap slowly until it reaches 90 percent of all US income - a level it had reached twenty years ago, before income inequality put most of our economic growth above the cap's reach.)

The Simpson Bowles plan doesn't increase taxes for the wealthy - unless you believe that Congress will cut unnamed "loopholes" so much that it more than makes up for SB's most outrageous feature: It actually lowers the top tax rate for wealthy individuals and corporations.

Simpson Bowles offers only bogus "savings" measures for Medicare. It's only concrete proposal is to cap spending growth at GDP plus 1 percent - an artificial formula that would soon have seniors stripped of medical care under current health inflation rates. Why didn't they offer concrete cost-cutting proposals? Because those would require limiting the runaway corporate profits that are devastating our health economy.

Like we were saying: Fraud.

A Party Under the Influence

How did Chris Matthews and his unnamed friend get it so wrong? Self-perpetuating Clinton-era economic blunders are a big part of it. The half-billion dollars that Pete Peterson has spent promoting ideas like this in the last three years along can't have hurt either. That pays for a lot of ideologically-driven economists - many of them with Democratic pedigrees - peddling nonsense at a lot of seminars, "summits," and dinner parties.

That's how the world ends: Not with a bang, but with a whimper - and plenty of hors d'ouevres.

Whatever its source, the Fantasyland Democrats are inhabiting will soon collide with reality - just as it did in 2010, when Republicans ran to their left with a bogus "Seniors' Bill of Rights."

Chris Matthews had a scoop, all right: Democratic leaders on the Hill have come down with the same contagious self-deception that's sabotaged their party so many times before. Once again, the fever's running high along the Potomac. The folks on the Hill are dropping like flies.

And, frankly, Chris old friend, although we sorta love ya, you're looking a little peaked there yourself.