;)
What Caused the Budget Deficit?
David Leonhardt wote a great article breaking down the sources of the budget deficit. Leonhardt works for The New York Times, so they didn’t see fit to illustrate his article with a pie chart but Matthew Yglesias did.
— “The first category — the business cycle — accounts for 37 percent of the $2 trillion swing.”
— Second, Bush-era legislation “like his tax cuts and the Medicare prescription drug benefit, [that] not only continue to cost the government but have also increased interest payments on the national debt.”
— Third, “Obama’s main contribution to the deficit is his extension of several Bush policies, like the Iraq war and tax cuts for households making less than $250,000 [...] 20 percent of the swing.”
— Fourth, “About 7 percent comes from the stimulus bill that Mr. Obama signed in February.”
— Fifth, “only 3 percent comes from Mr. Obama’s agenda on health care, education, energy and other areas.”
In other words, the very high deficits are not Obama’s fault according to any normal way of assessing political blame. That said, large deficits aren’t a moral failing that we need to hold someone accountable for. Rather, they’re a potential future practical problem that will have to be solved. Doing that will probably require a mixture of higher taxes, somewhat more hard-core health care reform that is likely to pass in 2009, and reductions in defense and possibly Social Security outlays. I don’t really find it especially surprising or alarming that nobody wants to vote for any of those things in 2009. After all, nobody who has to stand for election really wants to do any of that stuff. And the deficit isn’t a problem in 2009 and almost certainly won’t be in 2010. The main issue is whether Congress will be prepared to take tough measures when and if doing so actually proves necessary. Meanwhile, the health reforms being debated in congress will get us some of the way to where we need to be, and also hopefully lay the groundwork for further measures if the best hopes about what’s currently on the table don’t wind up materializing. The simple fact of the matter, after all, is that nobody really knows what the impact of something like comparative effectiveness research will be. It could save a lot of money, or it might not—we might just get healthier while spending a similar amount of money. But if we get it in place sooner rather than later, we’ll know and be in a position to act.
The Town Hall Mob
If you read one thing today, read this:
Ehkzu
Palo Alto, California August 7th, 2009 11:36 am
My fellow Democrats: We're in for the fight of our lives. I know more about what we're up against than most Democrats, because I'm married to a staunch Republican, attend a church that's 90+% Republican, and have many friends among them. I'm also a sociologist by training and a debater by practice.
Based on all this, here's some heartfelt advice:
1. Don't call them racists.
It's a Rovian trap to do so--one set by the Republican leadership and their healthcare denial industry paymasters. They never, ever say "We hate Obama because he's black," even if everything they do would make it reasonable to think so.
But when you call them racists, you've just changed the topic from healthcare reform to a territory they can defend. And while you're trying to prove they're racists, the RNC will be rubbing its hands, as the topic of healthcare is forgotten.
2. Don't let them call Obama and the Democratic Party and you socialists.
And they will. Count on it. I usually say: "Socialism means ownership of business by government. Democrats don't want to own it. We just want to regulate it. We tried business without regulation twice in the last century. It got us the Great Depression and now the worst recession since that. But help me out. Republicans seem to want ownership of government by business. What do you call that?"
And as Krugman points out, they don't want "socialized healthcare" but they're often on Medicare.
The other advanced countries--all democracies--have everything ranging from heavily regulated private systems to mostly socialized ones. All of them are far cheaper than our system; all of them have better health outcomes than our system. And not one of those countries' electorates have ever shown the slightest interest in adopting our system.
Guess why? They don't want to die while some for-profit insurance company denies your request for a new kidney, hoping that if they slow-foot your claim you will in fact die before they're forced to honor it.
And by the way...cops and firemen are "socialized safety."
3. They'll say most Americans are happy with their current healthcare.
I say wait 'till you or a loved one gets really sick. After all, if you ran a health insurance company, and your only goal was profit, what would you do when a customer got really, really sick?
You'd get rid of him, using your army of bureaucrats whose main job is to find excuses for recission--that's cutting off someone's insurance by saying you didn't dot an "i" somewhere on your application.
That's why I call these companies the "Healthcare denial industry." Very few people who've actually had catastrophic illness are happy with their healthcare insurance. And even those who say they're happy may not have noticed how their healthcare premiums have doubled in the last few years, because it's why you didn't get a raise--it's often hidden in your overall compensation.
4. They'll say they don't want the government telling them when to die, and as Krugman points out, even Republican congressmen are saying this.
People this far gone can rarely be reached, but I just say "The people you think are on your side are actually vampires sucking your blood; the people you think are out to destroy you and America are actually trying to save you--and you're throwing away the life vest they've thrown you because the predators pretending to be your friends told you it's a bomb."
Bottom line: the Republican healthcare plan is the alternative to the Democrats' attempt at healthcare reform. What's that plan, you say? Easy. It's the healthcare reform plan Congress passed during the 12 years the Republican Party controlled Congress and the six years it controlled all three branches of government:
[nothing]
That's right, folks. That's their healthcare reform package. Nothing. Excuse me if I don't include their pharmaceutical industry giveaway that masqueraded as Medicare drug assistance. Other than that phony plan that ordered government agencies to pay whatever price the drug companies chose to charge...nothing.
The healthcare denial industry has grown to swallow up 1/6 of the entire American economy, gutting our competitiveness on the world market, through keeping things exactly as they are. Without healthcare reform the current system will take up 1/3 of the entire economy in a few years.
It's unsustainable. You think Medicare and Social Security are headed for trouble? That's nothing compared to this.
Most of all, the Republicans want their rank and file to think we Democrats are their enemy; that we want to turn America into some alien place they won't recognize.
And they want Democrats to treat Republican rank and file as their enemy, so we'll never realize we both have the same enemy: the bloodsucking billionaires who pull the strings in the shadows. They're practising divide and conquer. And they're very, very good at it.
So remember who the real enemy is.
http://www.blogzu.blogspot.com
The Hypocracy of the Anti-Socialism/Anti-Healthcare Argument
This morning I was awoken by my alarm clock powered by electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the U.S. Department of Energy. I then took a shower in the clean water provided by the municipal water utility. After that, I turned on the TV to one of the Federal Communications Commission regulated channels to see what the National Weather Service of the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration determined what the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the National Aeronautics and Space Adminsitration. I watched this while eating my breakfast of U.S. Department of Agriculture inspected food and taking drugs which have been determined safe by the Food and Drug Administration.
At the appropriate time, as regulated by the U.S. Congress and kept accurate by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the U.S. Naval Observatory, I get into my National Highway Traffic Safety Administration approved automobile and set out to work on the roads built by the local, state, and federal Departments of Transportation, possibly stopping to purchase addition fuel of a quality level determined by the Environmental Protection Agency, using legal tender issued by the Federal Reserve Bank. On the way out the door, I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school (if I had any).
After work, I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and fire marshal's inspection, which has also not been plundered of all it's valuables thanks to the local police department.
I then log onto the internet which was developed by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Administration and post on freerepublic.com and Fox News forums about how SOCIALSIM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right.