You gotta just love the new (same as the old) Republican majority in the House. The very first thing they do is kinda/sorta introduce new rules:
After calling for bills to go through a regular committee process, the bill that would repeal the health care law will not go through a single committee. Despite promising a more open amendment process for bills, amendments for the health care repeal will be all but shut down. After calling for a strict committee attendance list to be posted online, Republicans backpedaled and ditched that from the rules. They promised constitutional citations for every bill but have yet to add that language to early bills.
Some rules are more equal than others, though:
The new Republican majority in the House is learning already that governing is harder than campaigning.
They vow to repeal President Obama’s health reform. But they say they want to reduce the deficit, too, so one of their rules requires that any new legislation be paid for fully.
Here’s the problem: The health care reform includes new taxes and a tough cut in Medicare spending. It actually reduces the deficit, according to the Congressional Budget Office. So if you kill health reform, the rules require that you find offsetting spending cuts or tax increases to plug that gap.
So Republicans have decided to exempt health reform from the rule. That deficit they talked so much about during the campaign? Never mind.
We haven’t seen this kind of hypocrisy in Washington since … a few weeks ago, when Republicans insisted on extending tax cuts to the wealthy and didn’t pay for that either.
And about those massive costs associated with the repeal of health care reform? I know it is all fashionable for the Republicans to call the CBO a bunch of liars (and for the glibertarians to come riding, once again, to their defense), but the CBO is not backing down:
The estimate for H.R. 2 will differ in one significant way from the estimate for the enacted health care legislation. The original estimate covered the period from 2010 through 2019, the period used for Congressional budget enforcement procedures when the legislation was being considered; new estimates will span the period from 2012 to 2021.
Today’s letter describes—in broad terms and on a preliminary basis—CBO’s assessment of the effects that repealing PPACA and the relevant provisions of the Reconciliation Act would have on federal budget deficits, the federal government’s budgetary commitment to health care, the number of people with health insurance, and health insurance premiums in the private market. (Repealing the provisions of that legislation would also have a variety of other effects on the health care and health insurance systems that this letter, like previous CBO cost estimates, does not address.)
Impact on the Federal Budget in the First Decade
As a result of changes in direct spending and revenues, CBO expects that enacting H.R. 2 would probably increase federal budget deficits over the 2012–2019 period by a total of roughly $145 billion (on the basis of the original estimate), plus or minus the effects of technical and economic changes that CBO and JCT will include in the forthcoming estimate. Adding two more years (through 2021) brings the projected increase in deficits to something in the vicinity of $230 billion, plus or minus the effects of technical and economic changes.
I’m sure all the Republicans need to do to dispute this new report is borrow a calculator from the Atlantic’s Business and Economics Editor.
David Fud
I don’t know if even an order of magnitude would save the Republicans on this one.
Ross Hershberger
There you go with your ghey liberal Math again. They know in their gut that HCR must be repealed and the GOP gut is never wrong.
cleek
meh. don’t worry. all those budget cutting things the GOP promised are merely symbolic.
(h/t,me)
Comrade Dread
Facts schmacts. You can use facts to prove anything remotely true.
MikeJ
It’s a pity that nobody can afford a doctor for their gastritis, which would fix their calculators.
Loneoak
Mah gastritis! It is acting up.
MattF
Look, look… over there, behind the chair. No, not that chair, the chair near the table. No, not that table, the table under the chandelier. No, not that chandelier, the one in the hallway. No, not that hallway…
Dave
Not only that, but repealing HR2 would increase premium amounts on employer-provided healthcare.
HR2 sucks in every possible way. It’s a grand testament to GOP idiocy.
Comrade Dread
@David Fud: They won’t suffer for it.
The people who voted for this current Congress aren’t going to abandon the GOP and let the Democrats take back control, even if the Republican Congress proves to be every bit the pack of the same old, same old liars I know they’ll be.
They’d probably rather starve and die at 30 from easily preventable diseases than see Pelosi as speaker again.
MattR
Semi-related, but it turns out the Republicans will not read the entire Constitution on the floor of the House. They are skipping over the parts that were later changed (such as black slaves being equal to 3/5 a person). God knows we wouldn’t want the Tea Party to realize that the original document had problems that were later fixed via ammendment.
Bulworth
The Repeal Obamacare Act is H.R. 2? What was H.R. 1? The Let Us Read Our Glorious Constitushion Act?
Rommie
The Senate will get some very strange bills over the next few months from the House. But only for a few months, as I see the House going dormant, and not doing anything they don’t have to, once the election gets closer. Full-bore crazy is awesome if they go for it, but I just see them shutting up like good little Elephants when the marching orders get issued.
General Stuck
They are quite unspoofable right now. The layers of bullshit would take a thousand Texas oil rigs to drill through. And then you would just run into the previous layers of bullshit. There is no plan, other than to scoop up as much taxpayer cash for their rich buds as they can carry, and plant as many fiscal time bombs into the HCR as time will allow, before the voters figure out what they are up to, all over again. Stupid American voters.
Jeff
John, speaking of her, remember when she went all crazy about how the Democrats were forcing something through against the will of the people, and massively restructuring the health care system on an essentially party line vote? Odds we get any similar posts about the repeal vote?
comrade scott's agenda of rage
Can anybody name a true “fiscal conservative” in the last 30 years?
Didn’t think so.
Violet
Excellent headline that I saw on Yahoo today:
and then the first couple of paragraphs:
Breaking promises, violating vows, not keeping pledges. More stories like this please. Link.
Ross Hershberger
@MattR:
Maybe they should just get an overhead projector and show everyone the Classic Comics version.
I’m not holding my breath for the GOP in the House to follow through with any single one of the things they promised to do.
Because what are promises to the GOP? Just nice things to say to collect votes from gullible rubes.
aimai
Hypocrisy is the tribute Vice pays to Virtue. And it looks like the Republican party is abandoning its tribute. I think its astounding that anyone, including the tea partiers, ever took seriously the wild claims the Republicans made about “deem and pass” and “partisanship” and the deficit. Its interesting to me that they even felt the need to fake their original cause of outrage when its so clear that they don’t really think anyone is watching them, or listening to what they say.
aimai
Bulworth
No, because Obamacare was all a tax increase so repealing Obamacare is a tax cut and tax cuts don’t increase the deficit because the money belongs to us. Why does the CBO hate America?
Bubblegum Tate
I raised this issue to the Blogs for Victory crew yesterday. In response, I got a whole lot of angry name-calling; the one comment that even tried to address the issue merely said that saying HCR will reduce the deficit “doens’t pass the laugh test.”
Conclusion: In wingnut world, being wrong doesn’t mean jack shit because as long as you can kill the messenger, you don’t have to confront the fact that you are wrong.
comrade scott's agenda of rage
I’m guessing if you look closer, you’ll see it’s nothing but an Al Qaeda front.
matoko_chan
im fucking sick of this kabuki.
THIS is why “conservatives” want to repeal the health care bill.
HCR + Salam-Douthat stratification on IQ + the demographic timer on non-hispanic caucs = forevah defeat for republicans.
it is a simple equation.
but the TP/GOP base has been bred to be STUPID.
and now they are going to get exactly what they deserve as stupid sub-sentient cattle….
a feedlot drench of recycled shit.
that is what they usta do in feedlots….feed cows their own shit so they could reprocess it and extract missed nutrients. they had to stop because of mad cow disease.
unfortunately we sapients get some backsplash.
but the TP/GOP is still doomed. they cannt repeal because they have no senatorial mandate, for one reason.
be patient.
Cole you bitch about the dems not explaining the facts to the electorate……they CAN’T. those dumbass conservative base bovines dont have the intellectual substrate to get explanations.
they have been memetically engineered to be low IQ racist anti-intellectual jesus humpers for 50 years.
it cant be done.
cyntax
I’m tempted to borrow that calculator the next time I do my taxes, just to see what would happen, but I damn sure wouldn’t file with it: no interest in seeing the inside of a Federal Penitentiary.
WarMunchkin
Man, that Reason article gives me a sad. Their rationale for this stuff is, “since the bulk of costs don’t begin for four years, it’s not fair to consider the ten years of reduction as starting upon enactment”.
I think we should, in the interest of fairness, choose the year that health care costs the most and extrapolate it for the next 100.
Alternatively, they could just look at the long-term predictions, which unsurprisingly, show even more deficit reduction.
matoko_chan
and yeah now i betcha the old harpy patrol will pile on with a defense of “conservative intellectuals.”
you stupid cudlips dont unnerstand that cunning is not the same thing as intelligence.
and neither is “commonsense.”
Alex
That Reason article is amazing.
First sentence — Is Eric Cantor, the GOP’s new House Majority Leader, accusing the Congressional Budget Office of bad faith for its health care scores?
Last sentence — Indeed, in saying that “most people understand that the CBO. did the job it was asked to do by the then-Democrat majority,” Cantor seems to be nodding to the idea that the CBO was constrained and the Democrats are to blame for gaming the scoring process.
Every other sentence in the piece — Something like “But if you look past the awkward phrasing, Cantor’s statement was hardly new: Rep. Paul Ryan, who has praised the CBO’s work on many occasions, said much the same thing, as did former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin—another critic of the new legislation who has also defended the work of his former employer.”
catclub
@comrade scott’s agenda of rage:
Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi
Oh By the way, Has Boehner requested a smaller plane than Pelosi to fly home in? Hers was large in order to get to California, so his should not need to be so big.
Just Some Fuckhead
Obama isn’t going to sign ACA repeal so who fucking cares about making sure their stupid little rules apply?
Republicans are children.
Kryptik
On this note, how ’bout those new rules about the budget in the House? You know, the one that lets Paul Ryan essentially decide it by fiat if a vote can’t be attained in the House Committee proper?
Cat Lady
@Just Some Fuckhead:
Please don’t insult children. What did they ever do to you?
The Grand Panjandrum
That and a case of gastritis just in case some jerk comes along to question all that math stuff.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cat Lady: I don’t know about JSF, but my nephew used to have the habit of running across a room and leaping onto people’s laps, leading with his pointy, bony, little knees. This, if done to an unsuspecting, testicle-bearing American, can be stunningly painful.
John Cole
@WarMunchkin:
@Alex:
I don’t think people truly appreciate what hacks most of the Reason writers are. Although we better be careful, or Radley Balko will get a sad and take things personally again because his co-workers got called for churning out bilge.
jwb
@Bubblegum Tate: Which is why I assume the staff of the CBO will soon be replaced by lackeys who will tell the Goopers what they want to hear.
The Moar You Know
@matoko_chan: Just because you are grossly, horribly, provably wrong 90% of the time, and we point it out to you, does not mean that you need to get snotty about it. Nobody is going to defend “conservative intellectuals” because no such animal exists.
Where’s that great revolution being brought about by the WikiLeaks leaks? Oh, that’s right. It’s nowhere.
This:
is why I like you in spite of your appalling illiteracy and idiotic assumptions about the power of the interwebs. Because the line “they have been memetically engineered to be low IQ racist anti-intellectual jesus humpers for 50 years” is one of the most truthful things I’ve ever read. And giving contradictory facts to those who’ve made up their minds to believe in propaganda has been proven by psychologists to make people believe the bullshit even more.
TR
Pfft. I refuse to believe Megan McArdle knows what a calculator is, much less owns one.
Omnes Omnibus
@jwb: What is stunning about this is that, IIRC, the CBO is required to accepted certain assumptions that go into a bill and take it as given that the bill bill work as planned and then, with those assumptions and givens built in, run the numbers. Even with those parameters, the Republican plans break the budget.
AnotherBruce
@matoko_chan:
As I explained to my dear old Fox news watching mother, common sense is often wrong, common sense once told you that the sun rotated around the earth.
The Grand Panjandrum
But … but … but … Obama doesn’t wear his seat belt! I’m dying to know if Bush wore a seat belt so we can have a more meaningful tit-for-tat with Ben Smith.
terraformer
Anything that pisses of liberals, punches hippies, etc.
If there were such a thing as invisible internet ink, you could see the sentence at the end of the linked Politico article read “isn’t this fucking awesome?”
Davis X. Machina
IIRC from a few weeks ago, there is no H.R. 1 by design.
H.R. 1 is always the majority party’s Big Enchilada, and if it doesn’t pass the leadership looks bad. With a Democratic White House and Senate, and the GOP agenda being so extreme, there’s zero chance of passage of whatever the Big Enchilada is.
So there’s no H.R. 1., at least not yet. You can’t fail to pass it, if it doesn’t exist.
Ross Hershberger
Since the GOP in the House decided to redact the Constitution leaving out the embarrassing parts maybe the Dems should hold a press conference to read the rest of it and tell reporters why the Republicans don’t like those parts.
Use their tactics and take the battle to them.
RP
Is there any credible evidence — even from a source on the far right — contradicting the CBO and showing that health care reform will raise the deficit significantly? All I’ve seen are bald assertions. “It’s going to blow a hole in the budget!” “How so?” “Because it’s really expensive!” etc.
gene108
@matoko_chan:
I think this is over stated as a reason to feel good about the future by liberals.
People aren’t evenly spread out around the country.
Wyoming will still be largely white and rural and still get 1 House Rep and two Senators, same with other conservative strong holds.
You aren’t going to see a shift based on demographics, until you start populating rural America with minorities, who will vote.
I think the idea that there’s an inevitable demographic time bomb hanging over Republicans is overstated. There will be a demographic time bomb in places on the coasts, maybe some place like North Carolina or Florida or Virginia.
I don’t see it having an impact in Utah, Wyoming, and other Mountain West / Central Plains states.
Our form of government was set up to give small and rural states disproportionately high levels of representation in Washington, D.C. There’ll never be a liberal groundswell in D.C., since most rural states are pretty conservative, unless you there’s going to be a large enough immigrant population to change the demographics of Nebraska, Kansas, Iowa, Wyoming, Utah and Idaho.
I just don’t see that happening. I don’t think those states have the economies to attract people. Several of them have been losing population for decades, as people move out of family farming and into other industries.
It’s not the 25% of Bush, Jr. supporters the Dems need to target. It’s the people, who voted Republican in 200, 2004 and Democratic in 2006 and 2008.
Those people aren’t getting the message about the benefits of HCR and other Democratic legislation passed in the last two years.
Cat Lady
@Omnes Omnibus:
But that’s funny if it’s not you, and that child should be rewarded for entertaining the IGMFY cohort.
/teabagging retard
matoko_chan
@The Moar You Know:
its called backfire effect, and it has only been observed in conservatives. it likely is a correlate of lower cognitive ability and higher religiosity.
insufficient data.
give me an example where i have been wrong.
at 90% error it should be easysauce.
Wikileaks is not a “revolution”. it is designed to be an autonomous self-reproducing nonlinear systems killer.
it works by inducing paranoia reflex.
as far as i can tell, it is working as intended with the slow drip of cablegate.
and it apparently cannot be turned off, at least not by the US gov….
Assanges design (in theory) predicts that America will turn into a police state on its way to NLS collapse…..stinging itself to death like the scorpion in the faerytale.
will that happen?
unknown.
but so far the systems-killer is WAI.
The Moar You Know
@gene108: I think this may be the most dangerous Democratic belief of all. Latinos are a natural Republican demographic: religious, anti-gay, traditional-family oriented, vehemently anti-abortion and anti-women’s rights, the culture is oriented towards strong leaders…I could go on and on. All the Republicans have to do is to realize that Mexi-punching is not in their best interests – a tall order at the moment I will admit – and the Latinos are there for the taking.
But the Republicans won’t stay stupid on this subject forever, and then the Dems are going to be in a world of hurt if they’ve predicated their electoral stratagem on an endless supply of ever-faithful Hispanic voters.
Caz
John, you are way off on this one.
First, the CBO only crunches the numbers that they are given. So when the progressives give them faulty numbers, the CBO spits out faulty conclusions. Make no mistake – Obamacare will cost this country billions of dollars; it won’t save us money. Repealing that law will reduce the deficit.
Second, why don’t you wait until the new “constitutional citation” rule is fully in effect before blasting the republicans for failing to abide by it. I fully expect that they will use that rule for all bills that come up in the next few years. That’s why they proposed it. They didn’t propose the rule so they could ignore it.
John, you are surely smart enough to know the charade that is the CBO. They don’t independently audit anything – that’s a fact. Garbage in, garbage out.
I expected more of you.
Kryptik
@The Moar You Know:
To be fair, they’ve borked up a lot of the African American outreach they’ve tried simply because a lot of the policies remain unabashedly racist. Even if they do recognize Latinos as a necessary demographic, the way the GOP acts I’m expecting less outreach and more disenfranchisement.
Chyron HR
@Caz:
Is this based on the actual Constitution? Or the special Republican Constitution being read today that has all the parts they don’t like removed?
MattR
@Caz:
And you have a link that shows this?
Pangloss
People with guts that enormous couldn’t be wrong, could they?
slag
@Caz:
You make claims based on nothing but your own intuition and then you complain when people disregard it? I would say I expected more of you, but who would I be kidding?
Chyron HR
@MattR:
A morbidly obese drug addict said it on the radio, a paranoid schizophrenic wrote it on his blackboard on TV, and a mentally handicapped woman Tweeted it and added it to her Facebook wall. What more proof do you want?
RP
@Caz:
Did you post this just to make me look good? If so, thanks.
MattR
@Chyron HR: Those are a good start but I also need at least one position paper from a think tank that receives significant money from the health insurance and pharmaceutical industries.
JAHILL10
@Chyron HR: Har! Thanks for the first belly laugh of my day.
Captain Goto
@MattR: Matt–“Forget it; it’s Chinatown.”
WereBear
@Chyron HR: Way to sum up.
Your internet is on its way to you now! Just pay shipping and handling! Act now and get another one (Al Gore not included) free!
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Alex:
You really can’t blame Cantor or the other Repubs for thinking this way. Why? Because that’s how they operate. Since that’s their MO, they assume that their opposition works the same way. It’s like the spouse who cheats on the other because they just know that their spouse is doing the same thing to them.
They know what they do is wrong but one way that they try to justify it is to think the other side does the same as they do and probably more/worse. The crappy politicians of old had it easy in that they only had to fool the locals to make life easy for themselves. With the communications of today, their abject failure as human beings is on display for all to see. So what do they do? Double down on it. That’s all they have to work with because they are only in this game for themselves, no matter the cost.
IMO, their irresponsible behavior is almost traitorous. It’s possible that their ‘leadership’ will destroy this nation and it’s sad that they have a good portion of the population stupidly cheering on that destruction.
Divide and conquer, it works.
lacp
The Republicans are just following the lead of their spiritual advisor, Ronald Reagan – you know, “facts are stupid things.”
Omnes Omnibus
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
I understand your point and agree to some extent, but, and it’s a big one, I certainly can and do blame them.
MattR
OK, I just went over to the GOS and they have a great picture of how few House Republicans were present during the reading of the Constitution and they are saying that Boehner held his weekly press conference while it was going on.
Odds that detail will get reported in the news?
Odie Hugh Manatee
@Omnes Omnibus:
Of course when I said that “you really can’t blame” them, it was in the sense that yes indeed, you can blame them for it.
So no argument from me. :)
Caz
@Chyron HR:
I believe they read the entire Constitution. And the rule requires each bill to cite the provision(s) of the Constitution that authorizes it.
It’s pretty clear that it’s the progressives that don’t like the Constitution. To them, it’s merely an impediment to “progress.” That anyone can support the individual mandate in Obamacare as constitutional is beyond me. Surely, you don’t think the Constitution grants the federal government unlimited power, so where do we draw the line? If you’re saying the government can basically regulate any economic activity and any non-activity, nothing is beyond their reach.
The Constitution enumerates 18 specific powers of the federal government. Anyone who says that today’s federal government has not gone beyond those specific powers is either lying or supremely ignorant.
TR
@Caz:
This is a spoof, right? Please?
gene108
@The Moar You Know:
I wouldn’t call them a natural Republican demographic, anymore than factory workers were a Democratic demographic for decades.
People remember the Party that helped you out and they can remember it for generations. Factory workers were helped by Democrats because of the New Deal.
They told their kids about it. Their kids went to work in the factories and voted for Democrats.
When the factory jobs started disappearing and their grandkids faced economic uncertainty in the 1970’s and 1980’s, they looked for an alternative and found a home in the Republican Party.
If Democrats pass a comprehensive immigration reform bill that helps Latinos, they will hitch their wagon to the Democrats for at least a generation.
Blacks, for that matter, would be a natural Republican demographic, by your description because of deep religious convictions, strong family / community ties, etc., but have been overwhelming voting for Democrats, since the 1964 Civil Rights Act passed (I heard somewhere Nixon got 33% of the black vote in 1960, I don’t see another Republican coming close to that any time soon).
TR
@Caz:
You might want to start discussing that belief with conservatives, since the individual mandate in health insurance is their fucking idea.
It was a Republican suggestion in 1993 as an alternative to Clinton’s plan. It was part of Mitt Romney’s plan in Massachusetts, and it was part of the Wyden-Bennett plan that had eight Republican co-sponsors. As late as the summer of 2009, Chuck Grassley was on Fox News insisting that he found it ridiculous that anyone would ever challenge the individual mandate.
But then the Ministry of Truth declared the individual mandate to be double-plus-ungood, and all you conservatives did a 180 and started denouncing the idea — YOUR OWN IDEA — as a ludicrous, commie plot to destroy America.
(See also: cap-and-trade legislation, which was dreamed up in the GHWBush White House, supported by the GWBush White House, and an official fucking plank of the McCain-Palin ticket. Conservatives loved it until liberals accepted their idea, and then it was the end of goddamn days.)
TR
@Caz:
I know, it’s almost like the Constitution that’s being read in the House of Representatives has some kind of clause in it that empowers Congress to, I don’t know, “regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.”
I mean, hypothetically speaking, if that were in the Constitution that might be the justification for Congress’s duty to regulate all kinds of economic activity. And if that were there — again, HUGE IF — well, then we might have two hundred years of congressional action and Supreme Court support for economic regulation of activity and non-activity alike.
But thank God something like that doesn’t exist.
Certainly not in Article I, Section 8, Clause 3.
Chyron HR
@Caz:
Well, if you’re one of the standard bearers of the Tea Party, you draw the line at “EXCEPT OBAMA! EXCEPT OBAMA! HELP US, JESUS!”
Ash Can
Shorter Caz: “I can’t respond to any of your questions or challenges because I got nuthin’, so LOOKEE THERE! SHINY OBJECT!”
cleek
@Caz:
awesome.
we refuse to do what we say we will until there’s a rule in place to make us do it?
satby
@TR:
It’s all about what Caz Believes!!
In spite of the statements above (easily checked) saying the Goopers did no such thing. Don’t bother Caz with facts.
Benjamin Cisco
@matoko_chan:
This was a great line, and true to boot.
kay
@Alex:
I think he’s just wrong. His original complaint is this: the CBO scored the ACA over ten years. He says that’s not a good span, because the spending doesn’t kick in until Year Four.
The CBO can’t just pick random spans of years, but if they could, you could score it from 2012 out ten years, and it would cost more.
But, today, it looks like they did that:
So they addressed his major concern. They measured from 2012 to 2021, instead of 2010 to 2019.
It still doesn’t work for conservatives, if deficit reduction is the goal.
Next he’ll insist the numbers are bad because they didn’t measure from 2014 out ten. This could go on a long time.
Omnes Omnibus
@Caz:
One of the powers is regulating commerce (i.e. trade, business, commercial activity). Please explain how health insurance is not commercial activity. Oh, yeah, Congress can do what is necessary and proper to carry out its enumerated powers. It is pretty darn broad, but, if you look at cases stretching all the way back to John Marshall’s day, you will see that the Supreme Court has tended to interpret the Commerce and Necessary and Proper Clauses pretty darn broadly. BTW John Marshall was not a drafter of the Constitution, but he was very involved in the ratification of it.
Bulworth
I for one am thrilled the new Republican House majority plans to reverse recent violations of the Constitution, such as illegal surveilance, improper and indefinite detention, and torture. But critics will accuse them of being “First Amendment extremists”.
Also, too, I’m eager to hear the new Constitutional Republican majority denounce such heresies as the “unitary executive theory”.
Alex
@Odie Hugh Manatee:
I’m blaming Reason for writing a terrible blog post. If the final answer to your rhetorical question is yes, don’t spend the rest of the post saying that it’s no.
Benjamin Cisco
And I just noticed the current BJ tag:
__
Perfect!
JD Rhoades
Caz is the perfect example of why it’s a waste of time to argue with a wingnut. Show them facts, and they just handwave them away. Show them figures, and they say “garbage in, garbage out.” Ask them to cite their own sources and they just ignore you.
And they usually manage to be smug condescending pricks while they do it, but when you point that out, all you get more smug condescending prickishness in the form of false outrage over ‘name calling.”
kay
And, then if they do score from 2012 to 2021, it gets worse for conservatives, from 145 to 230, so I think they should quit while they’re “ahead”.
This whole “bring a repeal bill!” idea is a train wreck. I wonder if they knew it was going to be scored all the way out.
Cantor’s original objection was malarkey, and he just insisted that the CBO prove it. Good work!
Bubblegum Tate
@jwb:
I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised–the big GOP talking point is that the CBO is just doing the bidding of its Democratic masters, so those disgusting, evil people there need to get cleared out so Real ‘Murricans can get to work parroting the talking points.
SFAW
Caz was going to list his/her sources, but was chagrined that Chyron @57 beat him/her to it.
Sexist! Much better to use “persons of indeterminate sexual organitude”. Or, in light of Rep. Torquemada’s recent comment, maybe “prick in the way that a disk drive is a prick”.
Don’t forget their monomania for projection.
nevsky42
@Bubblegum Tate: I’ve seen the phrase “garbage in, garbage out” in a number of forums where the new CBO #s have been discussed; the ‘baggers must have gotten their new typing orders…
eemom
we haz new troll?
eemom
@JD Rhoades:
Truer words never spoke.
Which is why the likes of Somerby are wrong in their pious-ass screeds about how we should hate the tea-tardery and love the teatard.
Omnes Omnibus
@eemom: I note the similarity with the previous Koz-troll.
PWL
Nothing new about this: Politics is the enemy of truth. Always has been.
Omnes Omnibus
@PWL: What is truth?
/Pilate
Svensker
@Bubblegum Tate:
And here’s Caz right on schedule:
Bulworth
Presumeably, the GOP minority could have made its own request of CBO then, and could do so now. Did they or the Democrats, or some other entity request estimates on H.R. 2?
Bulworth
So I guess the new meme is “The CBO numbers suck, unless we (the GOP) request them, and if we didn’t request them it’s because shut up that’s why”.
Catsy
@The Moar You Know:
But other than that, how was the play Mrs. Lincoln?
That’s an absolutely gigantic hand-wave. Similar points could be (and have been) made about African Americans. In order to make this shift, the Republican Party would have to abandon one of their biggest core constituencies: the American Southern Bigot. They would have to repudiate and marginalize the Confederate heritage they inherited when the Dixiecrats moved to the Republican Party.
That’s not going to happen without causing a schism that could very well split the Republican Party. It’s just not. The South lost the Civil War a century and a half ago, and to this day there is a significant core of the Republican Party that won’t accept that. That’s not going to change in a year, a decade, or even a generation.
It’s entirely possible that the Republican Party will completely abandon the kind of overt racism they currently direct towards brown people in favor of the kind of dog-whistle racism they practice towards black people. How’s that worked out for them with the African American demographic?
Admiral_Komack
“I’m sure all the Republicans need to do to dispute this new report is borrow a calculator from the Atlantic’s Business and Economics Editor.”
You assume they can use it.
Makewi
*cough* docfix *cough*
Navigator
Just called the DC office of Renee Ellmers, the teabagger who beat Swindell here in NC with a campaign against “Obamacare”.
Asked if she was going to leave her private insurance and enroll in the Federal Employee health system. Nice lady answering “would get back to me”.
To her credit, she did, and Ellmers is doing just that.
The lady earnestly insisted “but it’s PRIVATE insurance”.
Ignorant beyond belief.
I told her this was going to cause Ellmers trouble.
And I intend to be part of it. Letters to the Editor go out tomorrow.
Chyron HR
@Makewi:
That’s right; we needed to fix the Medicare payment schedules that the Republican-controlled Congress screwed up back in the 90s. Thanks for reminding us of yet another comical bout of GOP innumeracy.
Makewi
@Chyron HR:
Actually I was referring to the docfix joke as it relates to the CBO estimates and the cost of ObamaCare, but like a dog with a bone your singular focus on the evils of Republicans inc is noted.
danimal
I keep hearing about how the CBO numbers are wrong, wrong, wrong, but I see very little evidence presented.
Also, the CBO is non-partisan, independent, pisses off Dems and Repubs alike, and the staffing/funding can not be easily controlled by the GOP since the Dems control the Senate.
Chyron HR
@Makewi:
And sadly, it’s not a part of “ObamaCare”. It’s a separate “fix” to a problem that your GOP Messiahs stuck us with years ago.
But, like a dog with a bone your singular focus on the evils of the “Halfrican Welfare Thug” (or whatever the Tea Party is calling him this week) is noted.
Annelid Gustator
@danimal: Actually they still can (at least they can monkey with the funding).
Omnes Omnibus
@Chyron HR:
WTF? Has that been used? Is the term “halfrican” something that passes for wit in Concerned White People’s League circles?
Makewi
@Chyron HR:
See now this is funny. Probably not in the way you intended, but whatever.
Chyron HR
@Makewi:
Is it funny like Tea Party founder Mark Williams’ knee-slapper about exterminating the “Juden rats”?
But I digress. If the GOP wants to abolish the evil Muslim Negro “doc fix”, we can’t stop them from trying. Hell, they’ve already broken every other campaign promise, why not cut hundreds of billions from Medicare while they’re at it?
Makewi
@Chyron HR:
It’s OK, I get it. You don’t understand how the docfix spending relates to ObamaCare or the CBO estimates. Which is why you are busy pretending that I said something racist. It’s what stupid people do.
catclub
@TR: Also remember that it is AMONG the several states, not between. So not just interstate commerce.
Bulworth
And you haven’t exactly enlightened us. Maybe you could try.
azlib
This whole exercise is all show and no substance. They know repeal will not pass, so they do not have to be responsible about it. And the average voter will not care about the process or how repeal will increase the deficit. I wish the public did follow all this stuff more and had a better grasp on reality. But if they did, the Dems would not have been hammered in November.
If the Dems are smart they will repeat the “jobs!”, “jobs!”, “jobs!” mantra over and over again and not get bogged down in the tactical fights. I do not have a lot of faith they are that smart or unified.
Makewi
@Bulworth:
Sure. Obamacare cuts Medicare by around 23% (SAVINGS!). The CBO uses those figures to score the bill. Later the docfix, which is a separate bill and thus not part of the CBO scoring, adds that money back in.
Makewi
@azlib:
The GOP will try repeal, knowing they don’t have the votes, so that they can say see if we just had more votes we could get it done. This will be a point made going into 2012. More GOP votes = repeal of ObamaCare.
I think it will work too.
Bulworth
Not yet. If it’s a separate bill and hasn’t been passed then it isn’t adding any money back in. And we’ve just started a new session of Congress, meaning all bills hanging around from the last Congress are null and void and would need to be reintroduced. And now of course with a very anti-deficit, anti-spending, Congress it won’t be. Right? Not sure why CBO should be to blame for not adding a separate bill into its estimates. There are thousands of bills floating around that never get voted on.
les
@Caz:
And I’m sure you can point to the real analysis supporting your claim?
les
@Caz:
That would be incorrect, perfectly consistent with everything else you asserted.
Uloborus
@Makewi:
Interesting. Given that it’s tremendously rare that a president fails to get a second term and Obama’s popularity is unprecedentedly high, how are you going to get enough votes to override his veto? Particularly since 2010 was as good a set of election circumstances as the GOP is ever likely to get, yet they couldn’t take the Senate? In 2012 the election patterning swings back in the Democrats’ favor, after all.
Makewi
@Bulworth:
Good in theory, only it was done already. That money was already added back in. Thus the whole scoring by the CBO was a scam.
Makewi
@Uloborus:
I don’t see anything swinging back to the Democrats favor if the unemployment situation doesn’t improve.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Caz:
Nope, they didn’t.
And yet they are going to violate it with the very first things they do.
See the Munitions act of 1792. The founding fathers even believed that they could require people to purchase things.
The Constitution gives the government rather broad power in regulating Commerce. The reason for this is for the very reason the Constitution was created: Each state acting individually was actually making commerce harder, and making the country weaker. The British government, in particular, was negotiating with a few states against the other ones.
I suspect the founders were hoping people would act like grownups. The statement “Regulate commerce among the states” was not meant to be read as “Congress shall only be able to regulate 30 head of cattle crossing a border.” It was left broad in order to allow for expansion of commerce.
les
Did something about docfix emerge from the permanent redaction that is makewi? The republican trick to have CBO scores for their Medicare boondoggle look better, by having the legislation expire every year and therefor not contribute to the projected deficit? Like they had the bush tax cuts expire, so the deficit projections wouldn’t include the trillions in revenue lost in future years? Like that?
Wadda buncha dicks.
Uloborus
@Makewi:
It’s improving, though. Big job gains in December, unlike last year. But really, let’s assume it stays where it is. You’ve lost three serious electoral advantages. HCR, like any massive legislative victory, leaves the supporters apathetic and the opposition energized. You will also not have a large supply of dangerous seats traditionally held by Republicans to reclaim. Statistically blowing all of this out of the water, it will be a Presidential election year for a popular president and not a midterm election with one party solidly in power. It really doesn’t get any better for you. Why would you expect to gain seats?
Makewi
@Uloborus:
Gallup has unemployment up in December (to 9.6) from 8.8 in November. They also have Obama’s Job Approval down 1 to 48% and Disapprove up 1 to 46%. Lastly, the number of people calling themselves Democrats is at it’s lowest number since 1988.
What remains to be seen is if the GOP will keep it’s election promises.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
@Makewi: You mean all the ones the are already planning to violate?
SFAW
November, 2008, maybe.
I realize innumeracy is a badge of honor or something for you and your soulmates, but please try to get it right once in awhile.
Makewi
@SFAW:
Innumeracy. That’s a big word for you. Maybe you should try smaller ones, like “Makewi was right”.
Uloborus
@Makewi:
Looking up the correct numbers to fix your mistakes is fantastically annoying, so pardon any sarcastic tone. First, Gallup does polling, not labor statistics. That would be the department of labor. Unemployment was 9.8 in November. The increase you claim did not happen. Instead, 300000 jobs (seasonally adjusted, even) were added in December.
As for Obama, those ARE unprecedented levels of popularity for a president. Reagan was scoring in his 30s around this time. Again, why wouldn’t he be reelected handily in these circumstances? Things just don’t get any better for you from here, Makewi. Your chances of overturning the ACA are remote.
El Cid
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, which has data through November of 2010 (I think the December data is to be released in a few days), here are the measures of unemployment for that time period:
U1 — Persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent of the civilian labor force: 5.8
U3 — Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (official unemployment rate): 9.8
U5 — U-5 Total unemployed, plus discouraged workers*, plus all other persons marginally attached to the labor force**, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force — 11.3
U6 — Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time*** for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force — 17.0
* “Discouraged workers” = “Persons not in the labor force who want and are available for a job and who have looked for work sometime in the past 12 months (or since the end of their last job if they held one within the past 12 months), but who are not currently looking because they believe there are no jobs available or there are none for which they would qualify.”
** “Marginally attached etc” = “Persons not in the labor force who want and are available for work, and who have looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months (or since the end of their last job if they held one within the past 12 months), but were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. Discouraged workers are a subset of the marginally attached.”
*** “Part time” = “Persons who work less than 35 hours per week.” Part time “for economic reasons” = “Refers to those who worked 1 to 34 hours during the reference week for an economic reason such as slack work [demand for hours by employers] or unfavorable business conditions, inability to find full-time work, or seasonal declines in demand.” In other words, not by their choice, but the choices of employers and job availability.
SFAW
Yes, and “Independent Research” (from the “SFAW Research Institute”) has shown that Republicans are traitorous felons who are trying to destroy the USA.
Which is to say: Gallup’s figures are nice, but ultimately useless. Try the BLS, if you want to play with the big kids.
http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet?series_id=LNS14000000
But you’re right, “innumeracy” was a poor choice of words. “Intellectually dishonest”, however, is spot-on.
El Cid
Crap. Too many links landed my prior post moderated. Until its release from prison:
The Bureau of Labor Statistics’ measures of unemployment for November 2010 (December stats are coming out in a few days, I think):
U1 —Persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent of the civilian labor force: 5.8
U3 —Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian labor force (official unemployment rate): 9.8
U5 —U-5 Total unemployed, plus discouraged workers*, plus all other persons marginally attached to the labor force**, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force—11.3
U6 —Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time*** for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force—17.0
Terms with asterisks can be looked up in the BLS’ glossary, which I won’t link to to keep from getting this moderated.
Makewi
@Uloborus:
Actually the mistakes are yours, since my assertion was correct. Gallup did in fact show exactly the numbers I indicated that they did.
It isn’t my fault that you and SFAW read what you want to read.
kay
@Makewi:
Nope. You’re still wrong. You had a point before libertarians/conservatives submitted their purely political repeal bill for scoring, but not anymore.
Make two columns.
Democrats/ACA on the left and Libertarians/conservatives Repeal ACA on the right.
Add the increased payments to physicians (the doc fix) to costs in the ACA column.
Now add the increased payments to physicians to costs in the “Repeal the ACA” column.
You want the CBO to compare this: “Repeal The ACA – doc fix” with “The ACA + doc fix”.
But the CBO didn’t do that comparison, because conservatives didn’t freeze payments to physicians. They submitted their health care bill, which is “repeal the ACA”.
If you’re going to add the doc fix costs you have to add them to both sides, until conservatives introduce “The Rand/Ron Paul Act to freeze Medicare payments to physicians at 2002 levels”.
Uloborus
@Makewi:
So a polling company, who has to guess, shows a gigantic 1% jump in unemployment, while the department of labor that has the actual numbers reports a massive increase in jobs. Your claims about employment are still utterly disproven. So why, exactly, is Obama not going to be reelected? What reason is there for the GOP to gain seats when the conditions that were uniquely suited to a Republican election victory are over, and you still didn’t take the Senate?
Makewi
I have no problem adding the doc fix costs to both sides. So there you go.
Makewi
@Uloborus:
Please show where I said Obama wasn’t going to be re-elected.
Makewi
I just remembered why it was so tedious to talk to you people.
El Cid
@Uloborus: FWIW, the unemployment rates are compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, but these figures themselves are obtained by surveys — the Census’ ongoing Current Population Survey for household data, or through surveys of employers for the Current Employment Situation.
These figures are benchmarked on a yearly basis against such hard figures as state unemployment insurance applications, and they turn out to be exceedingly reliable.
kay
@Makewi:
But what happens then? Unless the docfix is more than 230 billion, conservatives and libertarians are still in a hole.
I don’t know how to break this to you, but you’re going to have to cut Medicare. Democrats actually cut Medicare. They paid a huge political price.
You won’t, because you just ran on not cutting Medicare.
This isn’t theory any more. You won. You actually have to grapple with health care costs.
I do find it a little amusing that conservatives were screaming for a CBO score that spanned 2012 to 2021, and now that you have one, and it’s WORSE than the score that went from 2010 to 2019, we’re now looking at the doc fix.
Cantor’s argument is false. He was wrong. Incredibly, he ASKED the CBO to prove him wrong by submitting that bill, and they did.
El Cid
Oh, and the BLS’ December 2010 data will be released tomorrow, January 7th.
For November from October, 39,000 nonfarm payroll jobs were added.
Uloborus
@Makewi:
Then the ACA is not going to be repealed in 2012. The votes to override his veto are beyond any reasonable possibility, even more so since there’s no reason to believe you can pick up more seats than you already have. THAT was the topic under discussion. I’m still waiting for you to come up with an argument that holds up under analysis.
As for docfix, you misunderstand the argument being made against you. Docfix is not part of the ACA. Adding the cost of docfix to the ACA only even becomes possibly meaningful if you (the GOP, not you personally) repeal both, which you aren’t doing. The ACA you want to repeal reduces the deficit.
El Cid
@Uloborus: I’m pretty sure that any Republican assault on ACA won’t be hopeless attempts at repeal, but attempts to deny funding to the various agency initiatives and programs and whatever else are needed to implement it.
Uloborus
@El Cid:
That was educational, but in case Makewi misunderstands, it leads to exactly the same conclusion – the government has vastly more reliable numbers than Gallup could ever hope to. The 1% jump in unemployment he’s using as an arguing point simply did not happen.
SFAW
Well, if being called on your bullshit can be characterized as “tedious”, then you’re correct (for once). [No, make it twice – in one day, even! – counting when I used “innumeracy” instead of “intellectually dishonest”.]
El Cid
@Uloborus: Well, the question of whether or not the government has more reliable figures than Gallup is an empirical one.
If they’re both relying upon household surveys, and they arrive at the same numbers, then they’re actually doing the same thing, no matter the name of the organization.
Most of the time a larger sample size doesn’t make the figures more accurate above a certain level. But I have no idea what the comparative reliability of Gallup unemployment figures versus the CPS / CES would be, nor even if Gallup does this on a regular basis.
daveinboca
Big fucking deal. A one-page bill goes without committee oversight to repeal a 2600-page bill that went through without ANY SINGLE DEMONRAT paraphiliac even reading it… There’s a big difference, but go on and whine like y’all usually do. It’s in your genes to be crybabies.
kay
@daveinboca:
I don’t care at all that it went without committee oversight.
You’re going backward on the deficit, though, so maybe Democrats could have pointed that out, had it gone through committee. Suggested some cuts. Tossed around some idears. We-all just spent nearly two years on health care, and conservatives were AWOL, screaming about death panels, ignoring the helpful and informative powerpoints, leaving early and such.
No, you had to go it alone, and now look where you are. 230 billion in the hole :)
SFAW
Ah, once again the head of Rethug projection rears its head. Paraphilia? As the saying goes – that all you got? We’ll have to see if Vitter (or any of the other Rethug deviants – what are you guys up to, 100 of them in the House and Senate?) changed parties recently.
dave-el-bobo, your post, as with your “blog”, is not very-well-connected to reality.
Crybabies? I didn’t know Boner was a “Demonrat” (as you so moronically phrase it), since he seems to be the only one puling these days. Oh, right, there’s that projection thing again.
Listen, little boy, you Rethugs have been playing the victim for so long – with no basis for doing so, other than you’re a bunch of pussies – that you think everyone else is a whiner, just like you dimwits. Sorry, you’re WRONG AGAIN. What do we have for THIS loser, Johnny?
If you and the rest of the Rethugs weren’t so willfully destructive of this country, you’d be laughable. But thanks so much for attempting to provide comic relief, you imbecile.
Cacti
@daveinboca:
Do the Republicans even have a platform besides…
Waaah…gays
Waaah…mexicans
Waaah…blacks
Waaah…muslims
Waaah…abortion
Waaah…taxes
Waaah…unions
Waaah…evolution
SFAW
Cacti –
Good list, but you forgot
Waaah … reality
matoko_chan
@The Moar You Know: oh you intransigent unrepenitant cudlips.
the embedded racism in the GOP base CANNOT BE TURNED OFF.
the teatard leaderships are trying, vewwy vewwy hard.
it simply cant be done.
now do the maths.
in 2008 non-hispanic caucs became a minority in the children under five demographic.
dig medved, he can do maths.
.
Ash Can
@Makewi:
Because every time you show up here you end up on a gift-shop poster? Yeah, I might get tired of that myself the first couple of times.
SFAW
OK, I feel as stupid as a Rethug (well, maybe not THAT stupid), and I’m sure I’ll have the obligatory head-slapping moment when you tell me, but … what do you mean?
Ash Can
@SFAW: That was a humorous saying around the NBA circa Michael Jordan — he’d drive to the net, and if you were unfortunate enough to be trying to guard him when the camera shutter snapped, there you’d be in the spectacular photograph, helplessly watching him literally soar over your head and drop the ball into the net. Made for a hell of a poster (and gave the Prez a great idea for a joke too).
SFAW
Ash Can –
Thanks for the explanation. Seems a little obscure (to me, at least), so I don’t feel as much like a dumbshit Rethug as I did earlier.
Ash Can
@SFAW: Maybe it wasn’t as common currency as I remember it being. I do recall that some troll showed up here not too long ago referencing that story about Obama and Reggie Love, and was all indignant about how arrogant Obama was about it, and I fell off my chair laughing because said troll completely missed the joke.
SFAW
Ash Can –
No, you’re OK, it’s just that I don’t follow hoop much since Max Zaslofsky retired.
matoko_chan
@The Moar You Know: IM STILL WAITING FOR THE EXAMPLE OF WHERE I WAS WRONG!
c’mon wide boi, serve me some empirical data.
at 90% error it should be cake.
cant do it?
then STFU about me being wrong.