Here’s Ed Kilgore’s latest, Will Republicans Cut Medicare? A Paradox. I’ll save you the pain of reading the piece: After many strokes, Kilgore concludes that no, the Republicans will cut Medicaid instead.
Why is this even up for debate? The core of Republican support in this country is old, and they love Medicare. And every Republican politician at the state and county level has been bitching about Medicaid for years. Rick Perry even wants to drop out of Medicaid entirely.
To anyone who’s been paying attention to what Republicans actually say, there’s no paradox here. Cutting even an obvious waste like Medicare Advantage is impossible for today’s Republicans, who are completely beholden to their aging, white base. It’s only when you buy into a villager notion of the Republican party as stalwarts of fiscal restraint — a notion that a trillion dollars of deficit has yet to dispel — that you can gin up a paradox.
Speaking of paradoxes, Kilgore blogs at another site called “The Democratic Strategist”, a term that’s on the verge of being an oxymoron, or at least an anachronism.
(via Sully, of course)
Matthew
Efficiency and progress is ours once more…
Riggsveda
The natural extrapolation of this kind of thinking eventually takes us to the outright murder of the poor. Simply deny them all aid, and voila! No more hungry children or dying homeless to tug at the vestigial public conscience. They die quick in infancy, you know.
Oscar Leroy
@Matthew:
Excellent )
aimai
I’m so angry that the Dems are, apparently, going to cave on the Bush Tax Hike and let the Republicans have the Tax Cut for the Rich that I’m writing in mostly capitals here. (Axelrod,apparently, over at Steve Benen’s place.)
aimai
El Cid
I know a number of white senior citizens, some of them being helped by what they call “Medicare” (not too many ordinary people I know clearly distinguish Medicare from Medicaid), are convinced that much of the money goes to waste and corruption and to undeserving and lazy poor people.
So the notion that cutting it while promising to give it only to the truly worthy is something I think would be fairly easy to sell. “It’s not you we’ll be trimming, it’s all those lazies / blacks / Latinos who are sucking the money out of it.”
Now, as mentioned, Republicans can certainly portray any move to do so as a Democratic evil, but maybe they can split the difference and portray Democratic proposed trimming as evil and tyrannical and hating of the whites who get it, and Republicans trying to keep it working by cutting off those who don’t deserve it.
ornery curmudgeon
Oh, Sully linked something. Several Sully links today. woot.
Thank you for the very important information.
debit
@aimai: I may have missed it, where did he explicitly say this? I know he was interviewed by the HuffPo, but from the excerpts I’ve seen, even the ones supposedly supporting this, nowhere did he say, “Yes, we’re extending all of the Bush tax cuts.” Instead I read a lot of filler written by the “reporter” slanting what Axelrod said into what the “reporter” wanted to “report”.
R-Jud
@ornery curmudgeon:
Yep. Green balloons. This completely random story makes for much better reading– who knew the guy was even a surfer in the first place?
@Riggsveda:
I actually saw someone quoting that famous line from A Christmas Carol— “Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?” favorably, as a way of “dealing with” the poor.
I think I will read the Dick Van Dyke story again.
Punchy
Mix, can you please tell me what toothpaste Sully used this morning? Perhaps his views on garden fertilizer?
By the way, if I wanted a paradox, I’d search the hospital.
NonyNony
@aimai:
check the update of the story at Benen’s. The White House is basically accusing the HuffPo being full of shit and taking Axelrod’s comments out of context.
I’m not quite sure what to think. On the one hand, the immediate retort from anyone who is caught accidentally speaking the truth in an inconvenient situation is “I was taken out of context” and then to spin. On the other hand, HuffPo is seriously full of shit most of the time, their reporters are sloppy, and they have a long track record of being factually challenged in a lot of their stories.
I guess I’ll just save my anger and see if the White House rolls over and plays dead or if they actually fight back. But Axelrod should know better than to say anything that might be construed as pre-emptive surrender.
Oscar Leroy
@debit:
Then I’m sure there will soon be a statement from Mr Axelrod about how he was misquoted. We’ll see.
JPL
Thanks Debit and Nony/Nony for questioning the source.
When Republicans slash Medicaid will they stop calling themselves ProLife?
evap
Isn’t a large percentage of Medicaid used to pay for seniors in nursing homes?
Nick
@NonyNony:
Whatever happens with the tax cuts debate, you can not say the White House didn’t fight for their position. They spent most of September and early October bully pulputting.
I won’t be surprise though when the professional left forgets about that.
4tehlulz
>HuffPo being full of shit
Quelle surprise.
debit
@Oscar Leroy: Okay, I can’t seem to post as I wanted, so I’ll try it this way.
Rebuttal, here.
Culture of Truth
“Will Republicans Cut Taxes? A Paradox”
Oh wait, did I say paradox? I meant a painfully obvious question.
cathyx
If the core of the republican support is old, and love medicare, wouldn’t they also love social security? And they want to cut that too.
Medicaid is used by many younger people who have long term disabilities. What a drain on society they are. That’s why they target that and not medicare. But cutting medicare is just around the corner.
Culture of Truth
I fully expect the WH to, eventually, give up tax cuts for the rich, and I can see the sense in it, so maybe Axelrod signaled it, but for god’s sake, it’s a negotiation.
Brian S (formerly Incertus)
@cathyx: As always, the plan would be to keep the older people on Social Security, while cutting it for future generations. How they’d pay for it is the multi-trillion dollar question.
gbear
So when do we reach peak aged?
Corner Stone
@Culture of Truth: And we get?
OGLIberal
I have a friend who works as a hospital administrator and he said that most Medicaid beneficiaries are either poor children or people (children and adults) with disabilities. I found some stats from the Kaiser Foundation that are from 2004 but are probably not much different today. The breakdown of who makes up the Medicaid populations is as follows:
Children: 48%
Adults: 27%
Disabled: 16%
Elderly: 9%
And here’s the spending on each of those groups:
Disabled: 43%
Elderly: 26%
Children: 19%
Adults: 12%
So basically what the GOP wants to do is take health care away from poor kids, old people, and disabled people. Nice, huh? And check out the spending – the lazy brown folks who buy XBoxes and sneakers instead of healthcare only account for 12% of the spending. Even kids only take up 19%. Most of it goes to old and disabled people, which makes sense. So let’s leave the elderly poor, poor kids, and disabled people fend for themselves.
Freaking monsters. And white Americans will eat it up because way too many people truly believe that all the government – Democratic government, that is – does is takes their money and gives it to gangstas and Welfare queens and wetbacks living in the hood.
danimal
What’s with slamming Kilgore and the Democratic Strategist? Kilgore’s a good guy. Maybe a little to the DLC side for this crowd, but he’s a mainstream Dem (in a good way).
The article referenced basically says that the GOP doesn’t have the stones to cut Medicare, so they’ll screw the poor instead. Not exactly a novel position for progressives.
JasonF
Republicans want to cut spending on the poor but continue spending on the elderly? I am shocked! Shocked, I tell you!
NonyNony
@Nick:
Please. You can say they fought for it – past tense – until they decide to roll over and give up. If they actively fight against it until they get the GOP to capitulate on something else that’s important then that’s fine – if they’re going to give up on it they should at least get something out of it. If they actively fight against it until the Senate passes a steaming pile of crap onto the President’s desk that’s also fine – it’s how the process works and if the Senate is full of morons there’s nothing you can do about it. Personally I’d like to see him veto it and make the House and Senate come up with 2/3 vote to extend tax cuts for millionaires, but I certainly couldn’t blame him for not doing it given that the idiot Blue Dogs in the House made sure that Congress couldn’t pull the poison pill out before the elections. Morans.
On the other hand if they just give up and say “whatever – Republicans control the House now there’s nothing we can do anymore” – which was basically the gist of the story that HuffPo was fronting – then you should expect people to get mad. And no, the President’s team isn’t going to get any “partial credit” for having fought for a while for it only to completely give up once the opposition got too tough for them to handle. Nobody gets partial credit for just giving up before the actual fight happens.
If he can’t figure out a way to at a minimum use the capitulation to Republican demands as a bargaining chip to get something good done then he’s going to earn the scorn he’s going to receive.
General Stuck
For those of us who have considered the House wingnuts as leading the national adventure up the mythical mountain toward Peak Wingnut, you ain’t seen nothin’ yet.
Wait for the Saturday night tribal celebrations, when a liberal is burned in effigy for the writhing natives set to bongo drums on the House floor.
Culture of Truth
Ideally this lame duck Congress will get off its ass and just re-up the tax cut for the middle class and well-off. Would that really be so hard?
OGLIberal
@Culture of Truth: I pretty much resigned myself 3-4 months ago to the fact that the Bush cuts were going to be extended for all tax brackets. The only question is temporary or permanent. Contrary to what they might say, I think the GOP would love to have a temporary extension of two years for all of the cuts. This way they get to have this same debate again in 2012 – and when the debate is about taxes the GOP always wins because the Democrats let them win. What the GOP won’t sign on to is a permanent extension for the lower 95% and a temporary extension for the top 5%. That would mean we’d have the debate again in a few years about extending the cuts but only for the top 5%. That’s a debate the GOP does not want to have. So they’ll tell everybody that a temp extension for all brackets is their compromise, the Dems will cower in fear and accept, and David Broder will hail the new spirit of bi-partisanship, which means giving the GOP everything they want.
I’m not blaming this on Obama. This is Congress’ deal. The Dems should have used their huge majorities to pass what they wanted before the election. They didn’t. They should use those same majorities now to pass the same thing…or at least have two bills/votes – one to extend for the bottom 95% and one to extend for the top 5% (or even raise the ceiling from $250K to $500K or even $1M). They won’t. And there really isn’t much Obama can do to make them.
General Stuck
@Culture of Truth:
I’d be very surprised if the lame duck, this time, can find it’s ass with both hands. Therefore, making it unlikely they pass anything other than lots of gas. Dems are pissed at all the Citizens United money that was thrown at them, and the wingnuts are simply full of themselves, thinking the American public voted them majority for life. A recipe for a whole lot of nothing.
SteveinSC
It was on the news this morning that Obama cautioned not to kick the Bowles/Simpson ideas out of bed. Boner’s response was something like “I am glad the President is in complete agreement with our position.” Rolling over is apparently ingrained for the One-Term-Wonder.
Hawes
I have a solution for Medicare: It’s clean, efficient and market oriented.
http://zombieland-nowbrainfree.blogspot.com/2010/11/swift-way-to-reduce-deficit.html
batgirl
@cathyx: Any cuts to Social Security will have be phased in so the old people don’t have to take any hits and the younger people get screwed. The slogan is Cut social security… for my children! After they are done paying for mine!
batgirl
@Culture of Truth: Yep, I have a feeling this is a battle we are going to lose. There is no down side for the Republicans letting all the tax cuts expire if they don’t get their way. They’ll simply argue (helped by the “liberal” media of course) that it is a Democratic tax raise and that Democrats refused to compromise. The tax cut battle is full of win for the Republicans and they know it.
Mnemosyne
@NonyNony:
Yeah, I was pretty sure that’s where you guys were going: it doesn’t count as a fight unless we win.
So much for “oh, we’d totally support the administration if they fought for something and lost.” Apparently, by definition, it’s impossible for them to fight and lose, so if they lose, it’s proof positive they never fought at all.
Nick
@NonyNony:
Whatever happened to “I’d be ok if we gave up, as long as there was a fight”
Now he’s gotta magically force Republicans who have no incentive to give concession, to actually give concessions, otherwise the fight doesn’t matter either.
Why don’t you ask him to stand on his head, read the Emancipation Proclamation backwards while delivering world peace?
You’re all full of shit, every last one of you. If Democrats can’t win because they need to please you, then what the fuck ever, winning isn’t worth it.
DRer
@NonyNony:
Then when is it ok to say “Well we fought and lost, lets move on?”
I mean I hear all you saying you at least want him to fight, and he did, but that’s not good enough for you. Now you want “concessions,” as if temporarily extended them, rather than making them permanent like Republicans wants, ISN’T a concessions the Republicans are making.
I agree with Nick, you’re all full of shit. You wouldn’t be satisfied until he delivered whatever you wanted 100% and you know you’re being unreasonable and try to hide it with this “oh, but we want him to fight” crap.
You won’t give him credit for anything he does.
Nick
@Mnemosyne:
It’s a false concept. They create an argument to make themselves look reasonable, but it’s false because that argument can never come to pass. There will never be a situation where they will say “Gallant effort Obama, thank you!” because it would mean admitting that sometimes they can’t win.
Look at this comment on GOS;
Except he did, and when told he did fight for it, this douchebag tumbled over a million times to justify his bullshit
That’s right. His fighting was all a ruse, no one of it was real, it was all kabuki.
Do you know why he tries to play nice with Republicans? Because he has a better chance of pleasing teabaggers than he does the left.