Tag: Ryan

I was struck last night by a comment that I heard made by Speaker Ryan, where he called this [Affordable Care Act] repeal bill ‘an act of mercy.’ With all due respect to our speaker, he and I must have read different Scripture…The one I read calls on us to feed the hungry, to clothe the naked, to shelter the homeless, and to comfort the sick. It reminds us that we are judged not by how we treat the powerful, but by how we care for the least among us. There is no mercy in a system that makes health care a luxury. There is no mercy in a country that turns their back on those most in need of protection: the elderly, the poor, the sick, and the suffering. There is no mercy in a cold shoulder to the mentally ill. This is not an act of mercy. It is an act of malice.

Joe Kennedy III (D. MA) doing it the right way

Rock Bottom

In other settings the media normalization of the coming shit storm might be charming or even amusing.

First, we have the “that will never get 60 votes in the Senate” crowd. People, there will be no filibuster when the new Congress convenes in 2017; the only possible hope for a retained filibuster is that Mitch McConnell cynically enjoys power more than actually governing and wants a safety hatch of “someone to blame” (namely: Democrat minority in the Senate) for the outcomes of GOP policy decisions.

Similarly, we have the “what might they do” thought pieces. People, we know what they’ll do. They have an incurious leader that has repeatedly expressed his complete lack of interest in the policy details of even his own policy proposals. Assuming Ryan remains Speaker, we know what he’ll do. He’s been talking about it for years in explicit, legislative terms.
One notable example, “Medicare,” as a name for a program will still exist, but it will be converted to a fixed payment with which program recipients can attempt to go buy insurance on the open market. From Day One of the program, said payment will be insufficient to actually, you know, buy coverage on the market, but you can rest easy in the knowledge that the payment will never increase. But: Medicare is still there, folks! Nothing to see here, and I fully expect it to be reported in exactly those terms, because it’s been reported in exactly those terms every time he’s talked about it. Again, this is not a secret. It’s right there in the Plan for America.

Ryan’s broader proposed budgets actually contains no non-military discretionary spending at all, so the fact that Medicare will at least remain in name only is going to be characterized as a big liberal victory, I guess.

As far as Obamacare (or, really, the ACA): also toast. All the media assurances about “but the GOP will have to do the hard work of coming up with a replacement before repealing coverage” for the ~20M folks that were uninsured pre-ACA: Again, super-funny in other circumstances, media elite. The GOP has had the better part of a decade to suggest a replacement for the ACA and has offered nothing. If anything, they will drop in a high risk pool plan with capped lifetime benefit limits. The more likely outcome is the ACA is replaced with nothing. Is it any wonder that drug company stocks spiked on news of the election?

What a Democratic party should do: there’s no stopping most of it (see: filibuster, lack of), but the better long range strategy is to induce the healthcare death spiral. The community rating and associated benefits of the ACA are extremely popular. With heavy heart the Democrats should offer to gut the unpopular parts of the ACA, namely the mandate and the “Obamacare” portion, which actually subsidizes coverage for people unable to afford it on their own. We need to face the fact that the poors are in for quite the kicking over the next four years, no matter what, and but also work to keep the massively popular parts of ACA in force. The GOP, ever attracted to bad policy like cats to catnip, will be unable to resist, because: hey, popular! And so the Democrats shall have ushered in single payer health care, courtesy of the poison pill; briefly, the community rating forces coverage but eliminating the mandate allows people to buy healthcare only when they really need it, thus slowly burning the medical insurance establishment to the ground. Once there is no functional insurance infrastructure, the only remaining option is single payer. Good thing we still have that Medicare name sitting around and largely going unused.

Mostly, The Democrat needs to be planning based on gaining some seats in 2018, but then creating a wave election in 2020. You’re not going to be in control of any lever of govenment until at least 2018. Plan accordingly. Make small changes around the edges that, longer term, create a death-spiral situations to which your policy provides a positive (and ultimately the only) answer. They’re going to destroy most of the ACA no matter what, you can at least work to keep the popular parts that also happen to inexorably drag our healthcare system towards single payer.

There is zero doubt that this sort of approach creates real pain and suffering in the short term. But we’re going to get that pain and suffering no matter what. May as well make it worth something.

The trouble with moderate Republicans

John Chait looks at “moderate” Republican apologists and doesn’t like what he sees:

[Michael Gerson] wants a specific assurance that Ryan doesn’t plan to roll back government at the expense of the poor and vulnerable? We already have a specific, written assurance that it will come at the expense of the poor and vulnerable. That assurance is called “the Ryan plan.” It details absolutely enormous cuts to programs for the poor. And it’s not like Ryan was backing away from those cuts in his speech. The Ryan poverty speech was about how throwing poor people off their government-funded nutritional assistance and health care would force them off their lazy butts and make them go get a job, plus private charity something something.

It is remarkable how Republicans have managed to hold together a coalition of not only voters but leading public intellectuals who simply refuse to face up to what their party actually stands for.

Not only do the Serious People refuse to face up to their own blind spots; that would be bad enough but ultimately tolerable…just don’t bother reading them. Far worse, though, these self-appointed Serious Ones are group that provides the political oxygen for the increasingly right wing nutjobs that are standing for office around the country by painting them with an air of reasonability and acceptability.
If (to name but one example cited above) they would face the harsh, detailed in black and white reality of the Ryan Plan, and then call these folks out early and often on this kind of nonsense, it would end. You wouldn’t be able to talk about it in Serious company, because you’d know you would be called out nationally, explicitly, point-by-point, and painstakingly made to defend it all. Or, perhaps, the nation would collectively decide “yes, that’s what we want.” But this crap of pretending none of it exists, that there is no factual proof that this is the plan, or intimating that it isn’t what they’d really do when given the chance is the worst of all possible worlds. And, most infuriatingly of all, these fuckers self-aggrandizingly think of themselves as the Serious People in the room. They are nothing of the sort. They are, perhaps, the least serious people in all of American thought.

Intellectual honesty. Empirical reality. Rigor. None of these things are hallmarks of David Brooks, Michael Gerson, or any of these so called moderates. When are we or they planning to do something about that? Looking at you, New York Times.

The trouble with moderate Republicans

How Biden can win the vice presidential debate

“Did Romney call for well-off Americans to contribute nothing to deficit reduction — or for hard-working high school graduates to be deported, though they were brought here as children – or for millions of poor workers to be stripped of basic health coverage – because he really believes in this pinched vision of America? Or did he do it because he thought that’s what it took to win the nomination?

“I have no idea, my friends. And neither does anyone else.

“That’s the point. It’s impossible to know Mitt Romney’s real values. But it’s entirely possible to understand the conservative forces Romney has pandered to and empowered in his thirst for office. They’re the same extremists who will be calling the shots if you send him to the White House.

Just some of Matt Miller’s speaking suggestions to Joe Biden. Probably best to forward this to Biden’s boss as well. Read the whole thing

How Biden can win the vice presidential debate

Shocking News about Gang of Six

A bipartisan effort to rein in the national debt stalled Tuesday, as members of the Senate’s so-called Gang of Six signaled that an agreement is unlikely to come this week in time for the start of White House-led budget talks.

Also unlikely to come in the weeks following the start of White House-led talks. And in the months and years after that. And, you know, forever. Just like the Baucus-led Gang of Whateveritwas on healthcare reform, these talks were never going anywhere. Ever. They were solely an attempt to get >50% of the Ryan plan and then stamp it with the Broder-approved Seal of Bipartisanship. And then demand another 20-30% on top of that “bipartisan” plan when the mess hit the floor. Period. That is all that was ever going on in there. All that is going on in there.

Though never mentioned in the mainstream media, there is one party, the GOP, that has categorically ruled out any revenue increase from any source and intends to “balance” the budget by eliminating Medicare, fundamentally ending Medicaid, and then passing those “savings” on to the very rich in the form of more tax cuts. And then, of course, raise the debt ceiling to pay for it by borrowing ever-more. This is their plan. Magically, they also plan to reduce all government spending to levels below what just the military consumes today. And this all seems likely to the Serious People. Sensible and courageous, even.

Notable that Tom Coburn, one of the vanishingly few people with ® after their name that actually accepts revenue probably has to increase, has suddenly left town. Shocking. I’m sure it’s truly pressing business back home.

Can we finally be done with time-wasting and air-sucking idiocies such as the Gang of Six and, for that matter, all these other “Gangs of” now and forever? I know Serious People love their Gangs, but there simply is no middle ground, or anything approaching “middle ground” between Ryan and the status quo. There just isn’t. And though Serious People will never, ever accept it, sometimes doing nothing is indisputably the best way forward when faced with intransigent and unthinking opposition such as that presented by the modern GOP.
In this case, doing nothing fixes at least half of our budget problem. But let’s not talk about that. Everyone knows that Medicare has to go away. Anything less would destroy America.

All I have to say is: All hail gridlock!

Shocking News about Gang of Six