The progressive Democrats came out with TENTATIVE numbers from CBO scoring of the latest shake of their budget kaleidoscope. House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) was positively giddy over the $940B cost over the coming decade and alleged $138B projected deficit "savings" (and the "real" story--maybe even another trillion over the coming decade). Yeah, right, Virginia--there is a Santa Claus, and his real name is Barack Obama.
Let's, for the moment, ignore the deficiencies (e.g., model simplifications) of CBO scoring. Let's ignore the fact that the Senate bill doesn't score the famous "doc fix" (more than $200B over 10 years), which will almost certainly worsen with increasing Medicaid/Medicare coverage. Let's ignore the Medicare cuts, which Democrats always insisted in the past were the equivalent of hurting health care for senior citizens, are unrealistic. Let's also ignore the likelihood that the program costs are grossly understated, just like they have been in every single state that has attempted on its own to address health care reform (pick your poison--Massachusetts, Tennessee, Oregon, etc.) Let's ignore the unintended consequences of tax hikes (e.g., adverse impact on hiring), about $500B of them over the coming decade (the revenue amounts of which almost always fall short of projected targets). Let's ignore that the program will replicate the pattern of almost any other program (including defense projects), which blow way past the deceptive low-ball project bid (anything to win the business), and then, after biding its time, the innocent-looking vendor comes forward like Oliver, bowl in hand: "Please, sir: may I have some more?" Do you expect the Democrats, on their own, to declare the program broken and terminate it, refusing to throw good money after bad? Do we really believe that the Congress in the future is going to cut benefits, limit eligibility, or raise premiums if and when program costs blow past projections? The progressive Democratic snakes will tell you exactly what the rattlesnake told the Cherokee boy when he bit him and the dying boy protested over the snake not keeping its word: "But you knew what I was when you picked me up!" What assurances do you have, based on past experience, that the progressive Democrats, whom are well on their way to trumping even last year's $1.4T deficit, are going to do anything more than spend more of the people's money, writing yet another check on the back of upcoming generations? That's what they have done persistently for DECADES. They didn't balance the budgets before losing control of Congress in 1994, and they haven't balanced the budget since resuming power after the 2006 elections.
The GOP as the "Party of No"? When the other side is projecting trillion dollar deficits as far as the eye can see, there is a solemn VIRTUE in saying, "No, you can't spend money on shiny new toys until you've earned some money. You already have plenty of toys in your room to play with."
But getting past all these issues, here's what we know: we have a $38T unfunded Medicare mandate. Back in 1997 there was a rule put into place that when Medicare costs go over budget, relevant doctor fees are automatically cut. Progressives respond to the problem by saying, "Okay, we'll just scrap the rule." We conservatives basically say, "Not so fast: Show us the money. When costs go over budget, if you are not going to cut doctor fees, where are you going to cut?" When Bret Baier of Fox News asked Obama in yesterday's interview raised the issue of the doc fix, Obama was clearly irritated and snapped back that the doc fix problem is not really his problem but has been a problem for years. But the point is we are talking about $900+B of spending (new insurance subsidies, etc.) for roughly 6 years, being paid for roughly with 10 years ($500B) of tax increases. Let's simplify the numbers somewhat: $900B/6 years=$150B a year program costs. $500B/10 years=$50B a year. So you have $50B - $150B = (100B) cost deficit per year, which adds up to $1T in deficits over 10 years. Okay, where do you get this money? Well, since they don't spend 4 years of benefits, they get back $600B. That leaves $400B to cover. So the Congress decided that they are going to get it out of Medicare spending.
Technically these are not part of federal operations per se. Medicare and social security are supposed to be self-financing programs; payroll taxes and Medicare premiums are used to pay retirement checks, doctor and hospital payments, prescription drug costs, etc. Any residual funds effectively are LOANS to federal government operations. If outflows exceed inflows, the trust funds must redeem Treasury IOU's. If federal operations inflows (i.e., taxes, tariffs, etc.) cannot make up the difference (and even when we were running budget surpluses, we were still running operations deficits), it must issue public debt--effectively a shift from intergovernmental holdings to public debt. This is worse that it sounds, because if federal operations continues to run deficits, it can't depend on captive loans from the trust funds--it must also add to the public debt. And if the appetite for public debt is satiated, we will have to lower bond prices/increase interest payments to attract domestic or foreign investors--this increased cost goes directly to federal expenditures and exacerbates the operations deficit.
Now Congress decides--okay, we're going to cover the remaining $400B by whacking $500B out of Medicare costs. But Obama says that we have an anticipated $200-odd billion doctor "fix" is irrelevant. Say what? Let's be clear about this. The reason we have a doctor fix is because Medicare costs are going past budget. Keep in mind that we aren't even necessarily increasing doctor fees; while doctor expenses are going up, doctors, who are paid 20 to 40% below market to handle Medicare or Medicaid patients to begin with, find their payments are further reduced because Congress hasn't had the stomach to address Medicare reform? Strange: I don't think the President and Congressmen find their own checks automatically reduced when they fail to balance the federal budget. And so when you see the fact that the Congress has had a constant "doc fix" problem since 1997, we are supposed to believe all of a sudden the progressive Democrats have gotten religion and are not only going to fix the Medicare budget, but they are going to find enough money to pay for subsidies for other Americans--Americans whom aren't currently eligible for Medicare.
You can argue, OK, we are going to generate a Medicare program surplus, adding lots of Treasury IOU's to the Medicare trust fund--and that money is going to be used to fund the new entitlement. I could just as easily say, hey, that money isn't coming from intergovernmental transfers but from public debt, i.e., money is fungible. But the idea that Congress is going to find sufficient slack from Medicare, never mind the much bigger problem in resolving an unfunded $38T mandate (not great when you consider federal revenue in a good year is $2.5T), is a stretch.
Finally, I have not checked other blogs to see if they've independently coined these progressive Democratic shenanigans the same way: "kaleidoscope budgeting" or perhaps "shake 'n bake budgeting". Add this, reduce that, etc., and resubmit it to the CBO. The way they keep tweaking things until they get numbers they like is not serious public policy. The CBO wonks simply generate numbers using simplified modeling; they don't attest to the reliability or validity of model assumptions. I've mentioned a well-known information technology acronym: GIGO ("Garbage-In, Garbage-Out").
The Zombie bill clearly raises some interesting analogies to the famous "Night of the Living Dead" story lines. We thought after Scott Brown's resounding victory in January's special election for US Senate from Massachusetts, largely based on his opposition to the corrupt Senate bill, we would see the Democrats reset and finally move towards a smaller-scale, lower-cost bipartisan reform measure. The Democrats, finding themselves blocked from normal bill reconciliation by Scott Brown being vote #41, decided instead to engage in an unprecedented abuse of the budget reconciliation. But the House strongly objected to the Senate bill. So now you have Speaker Nancy Pelosi potentially resorting to yet another unprecedented abuse, deem and pass, to avoid a direct vote on the Senate bill. And now we're hearing that the Senate Democrats are not happy with some of the House changes, and it looks like this defective bill is going to continue to come back time and again. (The fact that progressive Democrats are emerging from the cemetery of failed policy ideas, going after conservatives, is only natural; after all, we have the brains.)
The Biden/Clinton Tirade: Amateurish Obama Administration Foreign Policy
Well, let's add Israel to Turkey on the short list for Obama's next apology tour: this time dealing with his own inept foreign policy.
The kerfuffle deals with an apartment construction project (1600 homes) in a Jewish neighborhood (Ramat Shlomo) in East Jerusalem, coincidentally announced (independently of Prime Minister Netanyahu) during the Veep's recent visit to Israel has been blown out of context and out of proportion: Joe Biden responded by purposefully showing up late to dinner with the PM some 90 minutes. Hillary Clinton said, "It was not only an insult to Biden, but an insult to the United States." She demanded confidence-building measures, a cancellation of the Ramat Shlomo project and/or other construction projects in the disputed East Jerusalem area, and more substantive talks.
It's embarrassing to this country that we have grossly incompetent politicians like Obama, Biden, and Clinton running foreign policy and unnecessarily creating a rift in years with our closest ally in the Middle East. Let me get this straight: the Palestinians set conditions for talks--not the Israelis; the Palestinians still don't recognize the right of Israel to exist (in particular, the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip). But a plan to build 1600 homes in east Jerusalem--in an existing Jewish neighborhood, with some 180,000 Israelis already existing in east Jerusalem neighborhoods--THAT is an insult to the United States? The fact is that Netanyahu never promised to Obama that he was going to freeze all projects in east Jerusalem--this commitment was for the West Bank.
The public rebukes did little more than validate the Palestinian Authority's counterproductive actions and positions. The rebukes were childish, unprofessional, undiplomatic, disproportionate, and counterproductive. They were unworthy of any person representing the United States.
I openly apologize to the Prime Minister and people of Israel for the irresponsible actions of the current administration. We American citizens are committed to the historical special relationship with the state of Israel and her unalienable right to exist in peace with her neighbors.
The kerfuffle deals with an apartment construction project (1600 homes) in a Jewish neighborhood (Ramat Shlomo) in East Jerusalem, coincidentally announced (independently of Prime Minister Netanyahu) during the Veep's recent visit to Israel has been blown out of context and out of proportion: Joe Biden responded by purposefully showing up late to dinner with the PM some 90 minutes. Hillary Clinton said, "It was not only an insult to Biden, but an insult to the United States." She demanded confidence-building measures, a cancellation of the Ramat Shlomo project and/or other construction projects in the disputed East Jerusalem area, and more substantive talks.
It's embarrassing to this country that we have grossly incompetent politicians like Obama, Biden, and Clinton running foreign policy and unnecessarily creating a rift in years with our closest ally in the Middle East. Let me get this straight: the Palestinians set conditions for talks--not the Israelis; the Palestinians still don't recognize the right of Israel to exist (in particular, the Hamas government in the Gaza Strip). But a plan to build 1600 homes in east Jerusalem--in an existing Jewish neighborhood, with some 180,000 Israelis already existing in east Jerusalem neighborhoods--THAT is an insult to the United States? The fact is that Netanyahu never promised to Obama that he was going to freeze all projects in east Jerusalem--this commitment was for the West Bank.
The public rebukes did little more than validate the Palestinian Authority's counterproductive actions and positions. The rebukes were childish, unprofessional, undiplomatic, disproportionate, and counterproductive. They were unworthy of any person representing the United States.
I openly apologize to the Prime Minister and people of Israel for the irresponsible actions of the current administration. We American citizens are committed to the historical special relationship with the state of Israel and her unalienable right to exist in peace with her neighbors.
Political Cartoon
Dana Summers makes a play on words on the alternative phrasing of "deem and pass" [Slaughter rule], apparently Speaker Pelosi's attempt to sidestep voting directly on the unpopular Senate bill. Democrats resorting to desperation tactics to avoid a bipartisan compromise on health care should start worrying about a different vote this fall.
Quote of the Day
A lifetime of happiness! No man alive could bear it, it would be hell on earth.
George Bernard Shaw
Musical Interlude: "One" Songs
Bee Gees, "One"
Three Dog Night, "One (is the Loneliest Number)"
Elton John, "The One"
Orleans, "Still the One"
