Paul Ryan, at the GOP meetup with Obama: Mr. President, the demagoguery only stops if the Leaders stop it. [GOP attendees give standing ovation]
Paul Ryan, immediately BEFORE said meeting: it’s Obamacare itself that ends Medicare as we know it. Obamacare takes half a trillion dollars from Medicare — not to make it more solvent but to spend on this other government program, Obamacare. And then it creates this 15 panel board of unelected, unaccountable, bureaucrats starting next year to price control and ration Medicare for current seniors.
Paul Ryan on Morning Joe: The president and his party have decided to shamelessly distort and demagogue Medicare
Paul Ryan, 2009: [the ACA will] take coverage away from seniors, […] raise premiums for families, [… and] cost us nearly 5.5 million jobs. [… It’s] a government takeover of healthcare [that will] lead to rationing [and a] European social welfare state.
Lemkin: Paul Ryan, serial liar and ruthless demagogue. And considered the Serious Adult of the GOP. A real policy wonk, that one…
Tag: serious person
To the ChristieChopper!
Turns out getting Chris Christie to little league games is a National Security Issue:
Gov. Chris Christie arrived at his son’s baseball game this afternoon aboard a State Police helicopter […] the 55-foot long helicopter buzzed over trees in left field, circled the outfield and landed in an adjacent football field. Christie disembarked from the helicopter and got into a black car with tinted windows that drove him about a 100 yards to the baseball field.
I guess we should be happy the car didn’t take him to another, smaller chopper that could land on the dugout or somesuch.
As for the chopper, it’s one of two $12.5 million helicopters purchased for the state police. The intention was to use them for “homeland security duties and transporting critically injured patients.”
GOP: trusted on the economy and National Security. Who among us doesn’t rest assured that the GOP is always taking the common sense line on spending and the appropriate limits of government. Thank FSM that folks like Christie are out there on the ramparts, Defending Freedom with Our Tax Dollars.
Keep in mind, this is the guy the GOP Commentariat are begging to get into 2012. Need more helicopter fuel? Chris Christie suggests we cut Medicaid or dump infrastructure projects. These are, after all, the only reasonable, Serious Person approaches to funding the truly important things in life.
We have a plan. It’s called Medicare.
Nancy Pelosi, once and future Speaker of the House, reprising her prior quote on Social Security.
This is exactly where the Democrats need to be: stating clearly that there will be no significant benefit cuts to Medicare. We will achieve cuts and reduce costs through implementation of the ACA and reforms to existing money-holes like Medicare Part D; this is, in fact, the only durable way to deliver spending reduction: by lowering the overall per-person cost of medical care in the United States.
The next nearest developed country spends about ⅕th what we do per person on healthcare and gets better results by almost any metric you care to use. You control costs by controlling costs and the rate of their growth, not by setting an arbitrary benefits value that you will pay forevermore.
Note to the MSM: healthcare costs and the rate of cost growth are the issues in federal deficit and debt discussions. Why are these never, ever mentioned or asked after? If you’re truly a Serious Person when it comes to deficits, this is where you should be starting and finishing.
This is exactly where the Democrats need to be: stating clearly that there will be no significant benefit cuts to Medicare. We will achieve cuts and reduce costs through implementation of the ACA and reforms to existing money-holes like Medicare Part D; this is, in fact, the only durable way to deliver spending reduction: by lowering the overall per-person cost of medical care in the United States.
The next nearest developed country spends about ⅕th what we do per person on healthcare and gets better results by almost any metric you care to use. You control costs by controlling costs and the rate of their growth, not by setting an arbitrary benefits value that you will pay forevermore.
Note to the MSM: healthcare costs and the rate of cost growth are the issues in federal deficit and debt discussions. Why are these never, ever mentioned or asked after? If you’re truly a Serious Person when it comes to deficits, this is where you should be starting and finishing.
I think every one of these Republican candidates running for the House is going to have a Democratic opponent who’s going to run an ad you can write today. It’s going to start [with] “even conservative Newt Gingrich, the former leader of the Republicans in the House, says ‘It’s radical, it’s social engineering.’”
[…]
Reagan had the 11th commandment, ‘Thou shalt not attack fellow Republicans.’ This is a capital offense against the 11th commandment. He won’t recover.
Charles Krauthammer, making some sense on disgraced former Speaker Newt Gingrich. Broken clock, blind pig, and etc…
Disgraced former Speaker Gingrich never had much of a chance to begin with, but taking at least four positions on the individual mandate and the Ryan plan, many of those positions within one day and all easily available on the television would seem to cap it.
However, I don’t believe for one second that The Democrat would actually use disgraced former Speaker Gingrich in this way for messaging purposes. Shrill. Better to assume that voters know all about the GOP plan to destroy Medicare and but also leave a program in existence called Medicare. Talking about that sort of thing is just rank demagoguery. Any Serious Person will tell you so.
Disgraced former Speaker Gingrich never had much of a chance to begin with, but taking at least four positions on the individual mandate and the Ryan plan, many of those positions within one day and all easily available on the television would seem to cap it.
However, I don’t believe for one second that The Democrat would actually use disgraced former Speaker Gingrich in this way for messaging purposes. Shrill. Better to assume that voters know all about the GOP plan to destroy Medicare and but also leave a program in existence called Medicare. Talking about that sort of thing is just rank demagoguery. Any Serious Person will tell you so.
If you replace a system that actually pays seniors’ medical bills with an entirely different system, one that gives seniors vouchers that won’t be enough to buy adequate insurance, you’ve ended Medicare. Calling the new program “Medicare” doesn’t change that fact.
Paul Krugman, reflecting on the Village Edict that Democratic claims that the GOP plans to “end” Medicare are misleading.
The stupidity of our discourse truly knows no bounds. Yes, a program called Medicare exists in the Ryan Plan. But that is where the similarities end. That realizing this requires reading even an executive brief of said Ryan Plan is why the Village will never, ever come to know this.
The stupidity of our discourse truly knows no bounds. Yes, a program called Medicare exists in the Ryan Plan. But that is where the similarities end. That realizing this requires reading even an executive brief of said Ryan Plan is why the Village will never, ever come to know this.
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!
On Dana Milbank
First they came for the welfare mothers, but I did not speak out, because I was a member of Skull & Bones.
Then they came for middle-class manufacturing unions, but I did not speak out, because I had to get to a party at Marty Peretz’s.
Then they came for the upper middle class people who didn’t have columns in the Washington Post, but I did not speak out, because Dennis Kucinich is short.
And then they came for me…and I was STILL so fucking stupid that I spent my time making fun of the House Progressive Caucus.
Beating a Dead Hobby Horse
[…]Challenged to produce an actual plan, Obama produced rhetoric.
As opposed to Ryan’s plan and its magical unicorns based solutions? Honestly and specifically please detail exactly which programs and federal initiatives Ryan is specifically cutting to get spending to 3% of GDP? Are you aware that current military spending is all on its own consuming about 3% GDP? It’s no coincidence that the only specifics in Ryan’s plans are the tax cuts to the wealthy and the functional elimination of Medicare and Medicaid. That’s all he cares about. Deficits don’t even enter into it; that’s why the plan so brazenly doesn’t even bother to pretend it’s really lowering deficits. Only the math addled beltway media seems to think it will do anything but increase deficits. Instead, Ryan’s plan is all about undoing a social contract that’s been in place for nearly a century. Anything else that happens, any outcome for good or ill is simply window dressing and utterly unintentional. The elder poor will kindly go die in the streets, as the plutocrats need that money.
[…]
Obama is different president than I expected him to be. I expected him to be a pragmatic crusader, but he’s not really that. Were he a crusader, he’d better exploit his bully pulpit.
Clinton, I think, was driven by power. Obama doesn’t seem that interested in power … he’s more interested in importance. Or rather, I think Obama wants to feel important. Wielding power is one way to feel important, but so is talking about wielding power. And lest you think that talk isn’t important, remember that our warmongering President won a Nobel Peace prize as a result of his talking. I think that prize was terrible psychologically for our President, in the same way that our election was terrible for him too. He was elected without actual achievement, and he was given a Nobel Prize without actual achievement … naturally, he’s learned that actual achievement isn’t that important. That’s not a good lesson for a President to learn.
Sorry, but this is simply horseshit. Obama won a Peace Prize because of his talking? I’m fully aware that he has no negro dialect, but Barack Hussein Obama won a Peace Prize because he’s a black man who was elected President of the United States of America, which only 150 years ago fought a war over the “states’ rights” to allow its citizens to own other human beings who just so happen to share an ethnic background with Obama. He furthermore won that election by means of the first non-plurality (e.g. true majority election) that’s occurred in this country in decades. This apparent non-achievement was deemed utterly impossible and was the subject of utter “no Serious Person can believe this is possible” derision as recently as 20 years ago when Jesse Jackson was running regularly. But, yeah, total non-event.
And, oh my stars, a Peace Prize recipient is presiding over killing and wars! To the fainting couch! I’m sure they’ll get around to the W Bush statues in our new and wonderful Peace Spring Eternal Middle East any day now.
All that aside, maybe it’s escaped your memory that Obama was also elected a United States Senator. Now that’s suddenly not an actual achievement? I guess ACORN rigged it up for him then too. But which high national office did George W. Bush hold before being elected President? Clinton? Jimmy Carter? Gerald Ford? I must be forgetting all their reams of national-level elected experience before landing the top job.
Finally, and most importantly, anything Obama proposes as “deficit policy” is actually unnecessary. While his plan includes specifics, why even bother? Leaving aside that the GOP House will simply shitcan his stated preferences as a starting point (even if said stated preferences are/were the GOP priorities of that morning), please do recall that doing nothing at all will largely solve this issue in short order. Thus Obama can sit back, veto extensions of the Bush tax cuts and watch the budget come into balance. Period. Or, using parts of the Bush tax cuts as leverage, he can perhaps shape some sort of policy compromise that suits his desired outcome.
And that’s the key. His desired outcome. If we’ve learned anything about this President, it’s that Obama is interested in outcomes. He could care less about tilting at preferred policy windmills, plaudits, power, and most problematic of all: the credit for any of it. For example, Obama has lowered taxes and reduced the size of government, but seems to be going out of his way not to tell anyone. Most polls show people believe the opposite is true on both counts. Even more importantly, though, his administration managed to pass the ACA, which likely will prove to be the single most important legislative achievement of my lifetime when all is said and done.
But, yeah. He’s not achieved anything.
I’d advise you to get some new hobby horses. These are very tired indeed. Maybe try “where’s the long form!?!” on for size.
Rightward Lurch
And so it begins:
Obama will not blaze a fresh path when he delivers a much-anticipated speech Wednesday afternoon at George Washington University. Instead, he is expected to offer support for the commission’s work and a related effort underway in the Senate to develop a strategy for curbing borrowing. Obama will frame the approach as a responsible alternative to the 2012 plan unveiled last week by House Republicans, according to people briefed by the White House.
Just as we predicted a few days ago, your choices, the entire extent of the debate will be between a center-right proposal (Simpson-Bowles) and a far-right proposal (Ryan plan). Where do you think the Serious Person “sensible middle ground” will be in that fight? Left unsaid will be any discussion of the true driver of deficits: individual healthcare costs. Left unsaid will be: if we had individual health costs of any other Western democracy we’d be facing surpluses and not deficits. Limit rate of growth in healthcare and you fix everything we’re currently fighting over, and without doing it on the backs of the poorest.
It’s now down to just how much of Medicare we will eliminate (er: “privatize”) and what percent of older Americans still get access to it. Then, a couple of years down the road: fewer. In a few more years: gone, because it only serves the poor and they don’t vote. Legislative inertia is literally the only chance that program has for survival.
The old will kindly go die in the streets.
I don’t think the [Ryan] plan goes too far. I think it’s disingenuous and fraudulent. And the reason I think that is that I have actually done the math.
Paul Krugman, responding to the “those who oppose it think it ‘goes too far’” nonsense the Serious People love to trot out when fellating Ryan and his plan.
Lemkin 