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You are here: Home / Politics / Media / Justify This Column

Justify This Column

by John Cole|  February 10, 20109:33 am| 22 Comments

This post is in: Media, Assholes

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I’d love to hear Hiatt justify why Michael Gerson gets a paycheck:

During his question time at the House Republican retreat, President Obama elevated congressman and budget expert Paul Ryan as a “sincere guy” whose budget blueprint — which, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), eventually achieves a balanced budget — has “some ideas in there that I would agree with.” Days later, Democratic legislators held a conference call to lambaste Ryan’s plan as a vicious, voucherizing, privatizing assault on Social Security, Medicare and every non-millionaire American. Progressive advocacy groups and liberal bloggers joined the jeering in practiced harmony.

The attack “came out of the Democratic National Committee, and that is the White House,” Ryan told me recently, sounding both disappointed and unsurprised. On the deficit, Obama’s outreach to Republicans has been a ploy, which is to say, a deception. Once again, a president so impressed by his own idealism has become the nation’s main manufacturer of public cynicism.

Couldn’t the WaPo save a lot of money by just having the RNC pay Gerson’s salary?

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22Comments

  1. 1.

    robertdsc

    February 10, 2010 at 9:36 am

    which, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), eventually achieves a balanced budget

    Over 50 years, but what’s a few decades between deficit hawks?

  2. 2.

    El Cid

    February 10, 2010 at 9:38 am

    I remember when Rush Limbaugh used to say, over and over, “I AM balance”. Hiatt would in reality just simply love to spread as much right wing economic and war hawk propaganda he can fit in, and would likely say that he is simply doing what he can to fairly represent the concerns of a lot of Americans and the political party not in power and also it’s really fascinating because there’s drama and conflict, and also all the rest of the media are liberal O-bots and how boring it would be if there weren’t even a tiny bit of dissent.

  3. 3.

    dmsilev

    February 10, 2010 at 9:39 am

    What Gerson conveniently forgot to mention is that it achieves balanceness precisely *by* being a “a vicious, voucherizing, privatizing assault on Social Security, Medicare and every non-millionaire American”. To the GOP and the conservative movement, that’s a feature, not a bug. However, they know that the public at large wouldn’t like that, so they go to vast lengths to pretend that it isn’t so.

    -dms

  4. 4.

    John Quixote

    February 10, 2010 at 9:40 am

    Paul Ryan’s budget proposal is a giant FUCK YOU to anyone under the age of 55 who was stupid enough to not be sired by the rich. I imagine it is going over like gangbusters with the Boomers and Brokaw’s rotten Greatest Generation.

  5. 5.

    John Quixote

    February 10, 2010 at 9:43 am

    @robertdsc:

    Over 50 years, but what’s a few decades between deficit hawks?

    It would also take another 30 years to get to financial solvency.

    It’s the biggest pander to Boomers and the Greatest Generation I’ve ever seen.

  6. 6.

    scav

    February 10, 2010 at 9:43 am

    um, it’s already right-justified. there are those little buttons up there if you want to change it.

  7. 7.

    General Winfield Stuck

    February 10, 2010 at 9:44 am

    What Gerson conveniently forgot to mention is that it achieves balanceness precisely by being a “a vicious, voucherizing, privatizing assault on Social Security, Medicare and every non-millionaire American”.

    I think Hoyer said it deserves debate. I agree. Put in on billboards across America. Let Obama mention it every time he steps up to a microphone. Watch seniors come after the idiot wingers with pitchforks and granny hatchets. But I know, Obama is a SS sellout for not stomping on it right out of the schute.

  8. 8.

    Dork

    February 10, 2010 at 9:48 am

    eventually achieves a balanced budget

    Yes, and if I too design a budget that seeks to cut spending $1 a year, I will likewise balance our budget eventually, in several trillion years.

  9. 9.

    Napoleon

    February 10, 2010 at 9:49 am

    @robertdsc:

    And that is only when it is scored with Ryan’s direction to do so using certain assumptions. That can not be emphisised enough. It was not a clean scoring of his plan.

  10. 10.

    Wilson Heath

    February 10, 2010 at 9:52 am

    Outreach to the GOP on the deficit when they have no ideas that will help the deficit? Who the Foxtrot cares? If they promise to stop repeating “tax cuts” like a kid asking “are we there yet?”, well then maybe, if they promise to be quiet, they can be allowed a seat at the adult table.

  11. 11.

    kay

    February 10, 2010 at 9:54 am

    Obama wanted their ideas so he could contrast them with his own. I’m not sure it was an evil trap.
    That’s how debates work. They were attacking everything he put up, and they refused to put up anything of their own.
    The debate is, in fact, over privatizing Medicare and Social Security. Conservatives do, in fact, want to do that.
    Obama’s idea on Medicare is different: he thinks privatizing Medicare costs more, and he’s got 6 years of data to prove it. There’s no question that privatizing 20% of Medicare, with Medicare Advantage, has cost more than the public program. It has.
    He thinks he has to reform the broader health care system and end Medicare Advantage to keep Medicare nominally solvent.
    We’re not allowed to talk about that?
    I just want to be clear on the rules here.
    Obama can put his proposals up, and we can hear a solid year of nonsense and misrepresentation, with zero clarification or correction by the press, but there can be no discussion of GOP proposals, at all.

  12. 12.

    Elisabeth

    February 10, 2010 at 9:59 am

    @kay:

    Republicans don’t want to discuss their plans; they want adoption of their plans. As the president said at the retreat, give them 60 – 70% and they still aren’t happy.

    I hope they show up to the health care summit and get their asses kicked again.

  13. 13.

    Zifnab

    February 10, 2010 at 9:59 am

    @Wilson Heath:

    If they promise to stop repeating “tax cuts” like a kid asking “are we there yet?”, well then maybe, if they promise to be quiet, they can be allowed a seat at the adult table.

    Well, and that’s the thing. There is a time and a place for targeted tax cuts. The “Making Work Pay” credit wasn’t a terrible idea. The “Hiring” tax cut will at least push a bunch of employers along the line towards reducing unemployment. These are down-and-dirty approaches, very specific, and somewhat crude, but I can see them getting the job done.

    By contrast, an across-the-board 10 points off the corporate rate is insane and stupid. And that’s what the Republicans keep proposing over and over and over again. There is absolutely no evidence that the tax cut will reduce unemployment or spur the economy, but it keeps getting hammered home as a panacea for everything from health care reform to a jobs bill.

    The Republicans aren’t interested in fixing anything. They just want Democrats to give rich people money.

  14. 14.

    Bullsmith

    February 10, 2010 at 10:01 am

    How do you know the RNC doesn’t pay his salary, or part of it? Sarah Palin gets a check from Fox at the same time as they cover her potential candidacy Just like Fox, the WaPo’s trying hard to earn official party organ status. The Pravda of the Potomac.

  15. 15.

    Libertini

    February 10, 2010 at 10:01 am

    @kay: The rules are

    1.Ryan is a “budget expert” and he is “sincere.”
    2. Michael Moore is fat.

    Does that help any?

  16. 16.

    Ash Can

    February 10, 2010 at 10:08 am

    Couldn’t the WaPo save a lot of money by just having the RNC pay Gerson’s salary?

    Isn’t the RNC paying Hiatt’s salary?

  17. 17.

    kay

    February 10, 2010 at 10:12 am

    @Libertini:

    Ryan, unlike the rest of them, apparently, was actually willing to defend privatizing social security and medicare, until he looked behind him and all the Republicans were running away.
    Although now I guess he doesn’t have to, because that would be “unfair”.
    Not to mention the Democrats are probably justifiably pissed that the same people who want to privatize Medicare were accusing Democrats of destroying it, a month ago.

  18. 18.

    slag

    February 10, 2010 at 10:52 am

    @kay:

    I just want to be clear on the rules here.
    Obama can put his proposals up, and we can hear a solid year of nonsense and misrepresentation, with zero clarification or correction by the press, but there can be no discussion of GOP proposals, at all.

    The rules are that the GOP’s governance and plans for governance can be wholly irresponsible and even destructive without incurring the scrutiny they deserve for the simple reason that the GOP doesn’t believe in government. They’re just proving their own theory that government doesn’t work. And who are we to disagree?

  19. 19.

    quintinlim

    February 10, 2010 at 11:06 am

    Test

  20. 20.

    Zach

    February 10, 2010 at 1:44 pm

    “a vicious, voucherizing, privatizing assault on Social Security, Medicare and every non-millionaire American”

    Unfortunately for Ryan, this is true. His plan is to balance the budget by slowly eliminating social spending (by letting it grow at a rate lower than inflation). The effects are overwhelmingly regressive.

    Also, “voucherizing, privatizing assault” doesn’t make any sense. Fuck Hiatt, whoever’s the copy editor should’ve put a hold on this. It was a viscous assault (I agree) on Ryan’s attempts to voucherize and privatize Social Security and Medicare with the effect of hurting every non-millionaire American relative to current law.

    It’s really obnoxious that Ezra Klein and Co. treat Ryan as an honest broker in this. Ryan is proposing eliminating all or part of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. He’s doing it in a way that phases in the effect so that people agree with him, and crying “unfair!” when anyone says so. It’s fundamentally dishonest.

    It’s true that he’s the only Republican with a plan that actually fixes the problem who is willing to stand behind their plan. But that doesn’t mean he should get respect for that if he exclusively sells his plan with half-truths.

  21. 21.

    Zach

    February 10, 2010 at 1:49 pm

    Also, if anyone really want to cut to the heart of Ryan’s bullshit, just ask these two questions:

    Q: Your plan replaces Federal spending on health care with vouchers and tax credits. If you think that your plan is a better way to provide these benefits, than why do you exclude people between the ages of 55 and 65?

    Q: Your plan eliminates the employee health benefits exemption because you think it impossible to have a free market for health insurance. You propose to replace it with tax exemptions for every American. If tax exemptions and subsidies pervert the free market, why do you propose to give them to everyone instead of eliminating them all together?

  22. 22.

    Comrade Kevin

    February 10, 2010 at 2:16 pm

    @Zach: The answer to both of those question is “Shut up, that’s why!”

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