Bush, as one last middle finger to the GOP who has slavishly worshipped him, has offered up a budget chock full of election year treats for the already down on their luck Republicans:
Lawmakers and lobbyists are dismissing the possibility that Congress will go along with massive cuts the Bush administration is planning to propose in the Medicare and Medicaid programs when it unveils its fiscal 2009 budget proposal Feb. 4. A senior administration official said Thursday afternoon that the cuts would total some $200 billion over five years, $178 billion in the Medicare program.
Medicare is “still growing at a rate higher than inflation,” the official said. The budget plan “slows Medicare’s rate of growth from 7.2 percent to 5 percent.” The official added that the plan would reduce by nearly one-third the “unfunded obligation” in Medicare over 75 years. Medicare is funded through premium payments and automatic payroll deductions, but also by yearly outlays from general revenues.
President Bush said in his State of the Union address Monday night that the nation must begin confronting the rising cost of entitlement programs. “Everyone in this chamber knows that spending on entitlement programs — like Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — is growing faster than we can afford,” he said.
But even before the news broke Thursday that the proposed cuts would approach $200 billion, lawmakers and lobbyists who reacted to an earlier report that the cuts would total some $100 billion were emphatically predicting that the reductions would go nowhere.
“This budget will be dead on arrival,” Rep. Pete Stark , D-Calif., Chairman of the House Ways and Means Health Subcommittee, declared. Frederick H. Graefe, a Washington hospital lobbyist, insisted that the plan is “dead before arrival!” he insisted. “You can quote me on that — please!”
All those years licking Bush’s boots, and this is what you get in return- attempts to cut Medicare during an economic downturn during an election year where Republicans poll lower than herpes and Ann Coulter is promising to campaign for Hillary over McCain. Anymore compassionate conservatism and the GOP will be relegated to permanent minority status, with nothing but a few religious nuts, a couple warmongers, and Hugh Hewitt. Wouldn’t that just be terrible?
Actually, it would be precisely what needs to happen- the GOP needs to be utterly destroyed, and that has been my goal for several years. I am really looking forward to slipping in that last knife.
Jake
If he wants to cut entitlement programs he can start by putting the squeeze on any contractor in Iraq.
Stupid fucker.
cleek
the worst part of the GOP’s troubles is that they’re not caused by anything the Dems have done – it’s all self-inflicted. the Dems are up by default, not by merit.
what a shitty sicheeashun.
4tehlulz
And yet, they will go for one more taste of the show leather; enough of them did on S-CHIP.
Dennis - SGMM
“The Medicare Prescription Drug Plan, which I pushed and which was enacted by a Republican Congress has nothing to do with increased entitlement spending,” the President added.
jack fate
Along with the DLC, imo.
I dunno, there’s a little merit due for not wanting to destroy the government and economy for the benefit of a few campaign contributors and assorted friends.
Zifnab
Why do you hate our troops? You should be suggesting cut backs in the VA if you really want to support our Terrible War Against Terror (TWAT). After all, soldiers will fight harder and work smarter if they know there’s no magical socialized medicine safety net to catch them just cause they took a little shrapnel to the spine.
p.lukasiak
the worst part is that while Medicaid cuts are obviously designed to balance the budgets on the backs of the poor, something really does have to be done with regard to Medicare.
The most salient fact is that between 30-50% of an average individuals healthcare costs are incurred in the last six months of that person’s life. The closer someone is to dying, the more agressive our medical care becomes — and the demand for expensive, high-tech treatments will rise exponentially as our population ages.
Of course, the odds of confronting this crisis in a timely fashion are pretty much non-existent. The demand for expensive, end-of-life care isn’t going to come from the elderly themselves, but from their middle-aged children who will refuse to “let go” (even as they tell their own adult children that they don’t want any extraordiary means taken to save their own lives.)
Jake
PotFD
MBunge
Have we ever had two Presidents, back-to-back, that were able to so completely command the loyalty of their respective parties while at the same time being incredibly harmful to the political fortunes of that party? Without Clinton, the Dems might have been able to trundle on for another decade or two as the dominant force in U.S. politics. If some Rep other than Bush had been in office post-9/11, he might have been able to turn the GOP into 21st century version of the FDR coalition that dominated U.S. politics for nearly 40 years.
Mike
Z
Amen to that P.luk!
Dan
The GOP definitely needs to be completely and thoroughly destroyed, so that something a wee bit more coherent and rational might have a chance of growing up in its place.
As long as we’re handing out ponies, the Democratic party needs to go away too. I’m certainly digging Obama, but I can’t remember ever being as angry at Congress as I have over the past year.
And with every capitulation to a weak, venal, and probably treasonous administration my contempt for the the national democratic party only grows.
Wilfred
Isn’t that what it is now?
Philip the Equal Opportunity Cynic
What Wilfred said. You need to mind your tense there, John.
Actually one of my fondest political dreams is our two lapdog Senators from Alabama becoming very senior and powerful in the GOP (or, as it will be renamed by then, the “Dixie Caucus,” pissing off Utah who reminds us that their voters are dumber than bricks too!) and lording over their contingent of about ten Senators. They can hang a Confederate flag over their desks in the Senate chamber, ostracize everyone else in the Senate lunchroom, and just in general be kings of irrelevancy because no one outside a few lunatic states and even then few voters under 35 will take them seriously.
That’s a dream that’s quickly coming true.
JGabriel
John Cole:
Yeah, actually, it would be.
I’m pretty much a lifelong Democrat. Even so, I recognize that the Democrats aren’t going to win every election. Also, I don’t want to live in a one party state.
A principled, sane, opposition party is necessary to the long term health of the country.
The degradation and corruption of the Republican party over the last 90 years — from the Teapot Dome and Harding cronyism to the deregulation that led to the 1929 stock market crash , from Nazi war funding to the House Un-American Activities Committee and Blacklisting, from civil rights opposition and Goldwater extremism to Watergate and the bombing of Cambodia, from Reaganomics and deficit ballooning to Iran-Contra, from the Iraq war to the borrow and spend economy and Bush cronyism — has been a moral and fiscal disaster for the republic, over and over again.
So, yes, a continuation of the Republican Party distilling itself into the party of religious nuts, warmongerers, business cronies, and Hugh Hewitt, would be just terrible.
NonyNony
Yeah – what JGabriel says. Since our silly system of government seems to be stable only with two political parties in opposition to each other, I’d like both parties to be at least somewhat reasonable.
Having one off-the-deep-end insane party and another party of moderates more interested in compromise, “getting things done”, and gathering donations for their next election run is not conducive to anything resembling good governance – let alone protecting the liberty and treasure of its citizens.
I’m hoping this insanity can be excised from the GOP and they’ll start moving toward the center (as the Dems did when they were spanked and sent to the political hinterlands). Unfortunately, I see the GOP deciding that their problem is that they “aren’t conservative enough” and getting more extreme – and the nutters will still be embedded deeply when the next corruption scandal hits the Dems and voters are looking for an alternative.
Philip the Equal Opportunity Cynic
@JGabriel:
Why don’t you think that a sane, centrist-conservative party would rise up to take the Dixie Caucus’s former place?
As a Libertarian I wish I thought the LP was up to it. While there may well be a good plurality of people who are broadly pro-small-gov’t, the purists in the LP will continue to get their way and make sure it functions as a debating society rather than an active political force. So it won’t be us.
But I think a party of “John Cole conservatives” will one day do quite well, actually. Meanwhile, liberals and conservatives can all have a good laugh as the dingbats of the Dixie Caucus die out, persistent in denial, thinking they still matter to the rest of the world.
TenguPhule
Let Der Furher live like other men. If he wants protection from the masses, make him pay out of his own pocket.
Philip the Equal Opportunity Cynic
I’m hoping this insanity can be excised from the GOP and they’ll start moving toward the center
Not I. I’m hoping they run that party so far off the cliff that no sane conservative will ever use the terms “Republican” or “GOP” again.
They need to be punished, and not just by a four-year “time out.” They’re pro-death penalty, after all.
Philip the Equal Opportunity Cynic
Just to clarify so I don’t get visits from the Secret Service, I’m referring to the death of their party, not advocating violence against individuals (although I think the jurisprudence system should be allowed to play its part in cleaning up this mess).
LiberalTarian
Heh. When I saw that headline yesterday I just had to laugh. Then laugh some more. My schaudenfreude is all that is helping me keep my figurative head above water these days.
GW Bush–all for making tax cuts for the rich permanent and destroying entitlement programs that 97% of the people who voted for him actually need.
Meanwhile, last week 5 people from NorCal were arrested in the Central Valley (and these are desperately ill people) for buying medical marijuana (federal arrest, medical marijuana is state-wide legal in CA). What’s the correlation to the topic at hand? If he really wanted to cut government spending and raise revenue he would make marijuana legal (end the drug war, allow hemp to take over as the country’s largest crop) and tax the shit out of it.
But no, that ain’t gonna happen because people like GW Bush think suffering is punishment from God and luxury is God’s boon to the the wealthy for their righteousness.
Well, it ain’t God destroying the Republican party. Heh. And that is what is making me smile during the midst of all this bullshit.
MNPundit
I agree, they need to put them out to pasture. Maybe a new Constitution or Libertarian party or something but the GOP even as a brand, needs to be put away.
JGabriel
PEOC: “Why don’t you think that a sane, centrist-conservative party would rise up to take the Dixie Caucus’s former place?”
That might happen, and it would be good. But the only attempt at that right now seems to be Bloomberg’s equivocations over a third party run. And, frankly, that’s a vanity project. Bloomberg wants to be President, he’s not looking to start a third party.
To the extent that Bloomberg’s candidacy is in any way realistic, it depends on NOT being a credible alternative party – you can’t run as non-partisan, as above the partisan fray, while also promoting an alternative party at the expense of the others.
Finally, what makes you think that the Democrats aren’t the sane, centrist-conservative, party? Maybe the Greens could become a center-left party while the Democrats continue their center-right migration.
Yeah, I know, American Greens can be pretty flaky. But there’s the potential there to become the American equivalent of Europe’s social democrats. Anyway, it doesn’t have to be the Greens – my point is that maybe we already have the center-right party that we need, and that the alternative needs to come from the left.
Philip the Equal Opportunity Cynic
@JGabriel:
That’s fine with me, provided the Dems become less and less attached to nanny state fiscal policies.
Actually the scenario you describe is quite viable, if you consider that younger voters trend well left of older voters.
Chris Johnson
I like the idea of the Democrats becoming the center-right too. If there was a chance of not electing rightwing maniacs I’d vote to the left of Democrats on many issues. I voted for Nader once so it’s not idle talk. Our problem is the lack of something like approval voting- punishing people for not voting defensively.
Jake
Maybe this is what happens when you violate Commandment 3.5:
Thou shalt not use the Lord God’s name to convince the rubes that war is peace and freedom is slavery. I mean it, knock it off thou pricks. OK, thou asked for it.
Birdzilla
Talk to a liberal demacrat about making buget cuts and talk to sheetrock you,ll get more action from the sheetrock