I’ve just about had it with the GOP’s demagoguing about deficits.
The party of fiscal responsibility, of low taxes and small government, of controlled spending and personal responsibility – that party – seems to have rediscovered its roots of late, with strident calls for fiscal restraint, an end to wasteful government spending and strict adherence to pay-as-you-go guidelines.
This from the party that added over $9 trillion to the deficit the last time they passed a health care bill.
Let’s return, for just a moment, to the early and mid oughts, the halcyon days of the Bush Administration, when the entire government was under the firm control of the fiscally prudent.
Here’s what those wise stewards of the nation’s wealth did.
Point One
Pass Medicare Part D with no funding – short term, long term, any term. Hell, they would’ve been more fiscally prudent if they’d included a few hundred million to bet on the horses. At least that would have shown some desire to pay for the thing. But no, the GOP decided to NOT set aside funds, or raise taxes, or cut other programs; they just passed Part D, committed to paying for it out of ‘general funds’ and to hell with the future.
The latest Medicare Actuary report indicates the GOP-passed Part D program has contributed $9.4 trillion to the $38 trillion Federal healthcare deficit. (page 126)
The Bush-era GOP makes President Obama, Pelosi, Reid, and the rest of those spendthrift Dems look like a bunch of cheapskates; even a GOP analysis finds “the new reform law will raise the deficit by more than $500 billion during the first ten years and by nearly $1.5 trillion in the following decade.”
Point Two
Prevent CMS from basing reimbursement on effectiveness. As I said a couple months ago, “‘the Republican Congress and Administration was responsible for preventing Medicare from considering any cost-benefit criteria in determining whether and what Medicare would pay for procedures, drugs, treatments, devices, etc. Yep, these deficit hawks thought it was just fine for we taxpayers to be forced to pay for procedures with very little efficacy. (Medicare Modernization Act)
Hmmm, wise stewards indeed…
How’d the GOP get away with this? Simple. The Republicans suspended Congress’ PAYGO rules, the requirement that any bill that spent more money had to be offset by more revenue or cuts elsewhere.
By the way, those PAYGO rules? The Dems reinstated them.
From all the caterwauling from the GOP side of the aisle, you’d think that Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Newt Gingrich et al were well practiced in the art of controlling spending, of not spending what you don’t have.
And you’d be wrong.
According to the Wall Street Journal, speaking about a recent effort to extend unemployment benefits, McConnell said “The principle Democrats are defending is that they will not pass a bill unless it adds to the deficit,” McConnell voted for both Part D and MMA.
Speaking about the health reform bill a couple months ago, Rep. Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, “the top Republican on the Budget Committee, said “Hiding spending does not reduce spending. We all know this bill is a budget Frankenstein. It is a house of cards. It is going to give us a huge deficits now and even larger deficits in the future.” Ryan voted for Part D and MMA.
Here’s party leader Newt Gingrich: “Republicans, I think, are going to draw a very firm line against any kind of tax increase that would kill jobs, and that’s very hard for liberal Democrats to live with because all of their plans require bigger spending, higher deficits and more taxes, and it’s a fundamental disagreement about the nature of the world.”
I could go on, but you get the point.
What does this man for you?
I’ve had, and voiced, deep concerns about the health reform bill and its associated costs. What makes me, and should make you, really angry is the demagoguing by elected officials who’ve done exponentially more to damage our fiscal future than even the most pessimistic assessment of the health reform bill.
Jul
7
Joe,
How about this one from the other side of the aisle?
(I have not confirmed this statement)…
Our Congress at work:
Democrats Vote Down 5 Percent Rule:
In a bid to stem taxpayer losses for bad loans guaranteed by federal housing
agencies Fannie May and Freddie Mac, Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn) proposed that
borrowers be required to make a 5% down payment in order to qualify.
His proposal was rejected 57-42 on a party-line vote because, as Senator
Chris Dodd (D-Conn) explained, “passage of such a requirement would
restrict home ownership to only those who can afford it.”
Mark Twain summed it up aptly:
“Let’s suppose you were an idiot; and let’s suppose you were a member of Congress…but I repeat myself.”
OK Joe. So both parties are crooks. What’s new?HOw about supporting a third party e.g. libertarian. We still need to solve this $$ problem and stopblaming Bush or Clinton or Roosevelt or Andrew Jackson. What’s your solution??
Michael
This is patently false on two counts, which you would have known instantly if you’d googled the headline.
1. Dodd never said that. The quote was made up by a satirist.
2. According to FactCheck, “Corker’s amendment also would have stripped out a requirement that mortgage packagers keep a financial interest in the mortgage securities that they sell to others — an idea Dodd said was aimed at discouraging lenders from making loans to people who can’t repay them.”
Makes sense to me.
This has been thoroughly debunked by several organizations including factcheck.
http://www.factcheck.org/2010/06/satire-alert-dodds-quote-on-mortgages/
You may want to check these quotes before passing them on. Or not.
Dan –
1. it is critically important that voters understand who drove the deficit. The Republicans who now claim to be the solution are in fact a major part of the problem. Unfortunately their supporters and the great uninformed masses are easily misled.
2. Libertarians? you mean the people who would let oil companies drill anywhere without safety regulations and pharma companies introduce any drugs without testing and insurance companies kick people out if they get sick and employers pollute without penalty? those libertarians?
3. I’ve written often and at length about solutions here on MCM. use the search function on the home page for specifics.
Well, what the cynic sees as hyporcrisy, the more hopeful might view as a capacity for growth.
More seriously, hypocrisy is hardly a partisan trait in Washington. While Republicans have suddenly discovered fiscal austerity, the same people who were appalled at the squandering of the Clinton surpluses now seem amazingly indifferent at deficits treble those of the Bush administration. While trillion plus dollar deficits are excused on the basis that they were necessitated by the Bush caused recession, one might point out that the heightened projected deficits continue beyond the foreseeable future and that the recent gimmickry regarding budget reconciliation was appalling.
The increased deficits have hastened a potential catastrophe already looming due to demagraphic realities. Indeed, while you single Paul Ryan out for criticism, I would point out that, whatever his past sins, he is one of the few people on either side of the aisle to offer a serious solution. Unfortunately, Republicans will run from Ryan’s proposal after making the political calculation, while Democrats will demagogically attack it while offering no workable alternative. Such is the gamesmanship in Washington, which makes Nero’s fiddling look constructive by comparison.
Republican fiscal sanity may be driven by hypocrisy and political opportunism. Frankly, given the path we are heading, I’ll take what I can get.
MCO –
The more hopeful, or perhaps the less realistic. There’s a well-researched discussion of the GOP’s demagoguery at http://crooksandliars.com/node/33788/print.
Here are a couple comments.
1. A capacity for growth? That’s…interesting. The recent rediscovery of fiscal restraint by the GOP is patently politically motivated, as was their passage of Part D. “The Bush White House, which flip-flopped on adding a prescription benefit within the Medicare program in order to win over elderly voters as the 2004 campaign neared, put last minute pressure on the caucus to back the program. President Bush touted the AARP’s backing for a 678-page bill his administration duplicitously claimed would cost $400 billion over 10 years. ” [op cit]
2. The budget Barack Obama inherited was already $1.2 trillion in the red when he took office in January. the “heightened projected deficits continue into the foreseeable future” in part due to the cost of Part D, which was undervalued as a result of the well documented political machinations of the Medicare Actuary’s figures by Bush et al.
3. Gimmickry re reconciliation is appalling? I’d suggest it is child’s play compared to Delay’s (how ironic is that name!) manuevering on the Part D vote. To quote CandL, ” Under heavy pressure from President Bush and Republican Congressional leaders, lawmakers backed the [part d] legislation by a vote of 220 to 215, sending it to the Senate, which is expected to act in the next few days. The vote, which ordinarily takes fifteen minutes to record, was kept open for an extraordinary three hours as Republicans struggled to switch votes and obtain a majority.
And what happened during those three hours was a new low, even for Tom Delay…the House Ethics Committee later reprimanded Delay for trying to buy votes for the Medicare bill:
After a six-month investigation, the committee concluded that DeLay had told Rep. Nick Smith (R-Mich.) he would endorse the congressional bid of Smith’s son if the congressman gave GOP leaders a much-needed vote in a contentious pre-dawn roll call on Nov. 22.”
Joe, perhaps you should not have put so much into my “capacity for growth” remark, given that it was immediately followed by the words, “More seriously….”
You seem to have taken my comment as an apologia for the Republicans, which really it was not. My sense of anger is just more bipartisan than yours. That being the case, the argument that Mr. Delay’s tactics were even more appalling than the recent budget reconciliation tactics does not really amount to much of a defense.
Oracle – Unfortunately, one of the limitations of the written word is nuance is often missed.
While there’s plenty of room for disappointment with the Dems, the hypocrisy of the Rs coupled with their irresponsible management of the country’s financial condition and willingness to throw trillions of dollars at an entitlement program in an effort to win senior votes is, indeed, far more troubling.
The same people who added over ten trillion dollars to the deficit (part D and Iraq) now decry a health reform plan that their own economists think adds $750 billion.
I didn’t, and don’t, support the new reform plan. At least the Dems have been honest about it, didn’t suspend PAYGO, and didn’t threaten to fire the Medicare Actuary. You can have a bipartisan sense of anger, as long as you allocate your anger according to the transgressions of the offenders.