Remember how it was the beltway conventional wisdom that the Ryan plan was “serious” and “adult” and that it was up to the Democrats to offer a counter and yadda, yadda, yadda. Things sure have changed in a few months, haven’t they? We’ve now got the Democrat leading in a Republican district, Republicans are publishing weepy op-eds about how they just can’t support the Ryan plan, and the Politico is charging forward with a new conventional wisdom for us all:
It might be a political time bomb — that’s what GOP pollsters warned as House Republicans prepared for the April 15 vote on Rep. Paul Ryan’s proposed budget, with its plan to dramatically remake Medicare.
No matter how favorably pollsters with the Tarrance Group or other firms spun the bill in their pitch — casting it as the only path to saving the beloved health entitlement for seniors — the Ryan budget’s approval rating barely budged above the high 30s or its disapproval below 50 percent, according to a Republican operative familiar with the presentation.
The poll numbers on the plan were so toxic — nearly as bad as those of President Barack Obama’s health reform bill at the nadir of its unpopularity — that staffers with the National Republican Congressional Committee warned leadership, “You might not want to go there” in a series of tense pre-vote meetings.
But go there Republicans did, en masse and with rhetorical gusto — transforming the political landscape for 2012, giving Democrats a new shot at life and forcing the GOP to suddenly shift from offense to defense.
It’s been more than a month since Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his lieutenant, Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va) boldly positioned their party as a beacon of fiscal responsibility — a move many have praised as principled, if risky. In the process, however, they raced through political red lights to pass Ryan’s controversial measure in a deceptively unified 235-193 vote, with only four GOP dissenters.
The story of how it passed so quickly — with a minimum of public hand-wringing and a frenzy of backroom machinations — is a tale of colliding principles and power politics set against the backdrop of a fickle and anxious electorate.
No one could have predicted that 4 trillion in tax cuts for the rich while gutting Medicare and doing nothing to balance the budget would have been unpopuar with the public. It’s a mystery!
DougJ is right. Thank you, Bobo! Thank you, Joe Klein! Thank you, Sully! Thank each and every one of the innumerate villager class who fluffed the Ryan plan and goaded the Republicans into believing their own bullshit.
PeakVT
is a tale of colliding principles and power politics set against the backdrop of a fickle and anxious
electoratemedia.FTFY, Politiho.
arguingwithsignposts
How many is “many”? More than “some”? One of the most useless words in village “journalism.”
Omnes Omnibus
@PeakVT: Agreed. I don’t see any real evidence the the electorate has ever wanted to decrease SS, Medicare, or Medicaid. To me, it seems that the electorate wants what it always wants: jobs and security.
Omnes Omnibus
@arguingwithsignposts: More than a few but less than most.
martha
@PeakVT:
is a tale of colliding principles and power politics set against the backdrop of a fickle and anxious
electoratecorporate media.Edited, slightly, to further clarify!
TooManyPaulWs
The divide between the Beltway and the nation at large is vast. I doubt even one major “talking head” or media elite knows of someone who’d been unemployed for more than six months… all because they have a nice little circle of think tanks, colleges, speaking tours and book deals that can keep each other afloat and off the unemployment lines.
I’ve said it before: we need term limits for the op-ed and media elites. Every four years, they gotta get shipped off to a low-income community and forced to work a minimum wage job – evening shifts! – for a year just to stay aware of the fact that IT SUCKS OUT HERE IN THE REAL WORLD!!!
Morbo
@arguingwithsignposts: Hey, I think it’s inarguably principled; that doesn’t mean I’d consider those principles worth the copies of Atlas Shrugged they’re scribbled on.
Oh yeah, and you know who else had principles?
martha
@Omnes Omnibus: Yes dear fellow resident of a northern tier flyover state, but we know this because we don’t live in the echo chamber. We actually sit in bars in Monroe County Wisconsin on a Saturday in May, 2011 and listen and observe the people who frequent them daily. Duh.
Comrade Javamanphil
@Omnes Omnibus: Hippie.
Paula
Oh the irony! Pass the popcorn!
Paula
Oh the irony! Pass the popcorn!
scav
@Omnes Omnibus and @ PeakVT: Silly old public, not lining up behind what the media-os and politicos say it’s lining up behind. Come ON! They speak for the “common man” and the “common man” better step on it.
lamh34
O/t, for anyone who cares, RTE national Television in Ireland has live footage of President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama in the lil town of Moneygall.
http://www.rte.ie/live/
beltane
Not only is the Ryan plan unpopular with the public, it is also unpopular with one faction of Very Important People, i.e. the big money crowd. 2012 may well see Citizens United biting the GOP in its big fat ass.
Trinity
We Dems may be dysfunctional but the Republicans are certifiable.
Hunter Gathers
Not only has the Village’s White Knight (Mitch Daniels) decided that he lacks the intestinal fortitude to run for POTUS, but the Budget That Soiled 1,000 Pair of Armani Slacks is now hated by the public, denying the Villagers the extra income that would have been provided to them by tax cuts financed on the backs of the ungrateful middle class. Looks like Bobo, Sully and Joke Line will have to continue getting their jollies from reading GOP Tiger Beat (Chris Christie is this month’s cover boy, with the headline ‘Loudmouthed Assholes Are Soooooo Cute!’), crying themselves to sleep every night wondering what could have been.
I’m going to drop a whole lot of money into companies that produce Emo pants. The market for those is going to explode in a few days.
The Republic of Stupidity
Emma
They don’t live in the same world as the rest of us, do they? They promised my parents that their social security and medicare would not be affected. And when they asked us how it would affect us, we told them we would have to work until the day we died, or do without insurance in our last days, because we could not afford to pay the difference between the vouchers and the insurance price.
Who’d know that even wingnut parents would think about their children? (/snark)
Don
I don’t think you’re using the term fluffer correctly. Fluffers merely, um, engage in temporary encouragement. These folks demanded every little bit of the Ryan plan be rubbed all over their adoring faces.
beltane
@TooManyPaulWs: If the Beltway media had any knowledge of their supposed country they would not squeal with such excitement every time a cab driver speaks to them. I think it would be a wonderful idea if someone organized tours of the United States for the pundit class so they could witness first-hand what life is really like in this country.
GregB
When did Balloon Juice become so unserious?
I wonder when the media goes back over the record and gives Paul Krugman another award for being an effing psychic?
Comrade Javamanphil
If I had a millionaire dollars, I’d print up t-shirts that say “I fluffed Paul Ryan’s budget and all I got was this lousy t-shirt” and ship one off to any media figure that used “Ryan budget” and “serious” in the same sentence.
mk3872
AGH! Friggin’ Cole … A Politico link without proper warning!
Friends don’t let friends click on Politico … Turns your brain to mush …
MattF
Well, just because those silly-willy numbers don’t add up. You’d think it’s some kind of law, or something.
cathyx
Is there anyone who votes for reducing medicare, writes in favor of reducing medicare, or opines in favor of reducing medicare benefits even need medicare benefits? That’s the disconnect.
geg6
@TooManyPaulWs:
Agreed. Just watched an episode of “Oprah: Behind the Scenes” this weekend because it was about a show that featured Michelle Obama and other celebrities who want to highlight the plight of military families. And Oprah said that it’s hard for her to truly understand what military families go through and it’s shocking to her that she doesn’t know a single person, personally, who is currently serving in Afghanistan or Iraq. At least she gets that she is totally privileged and insulated from the problems of people in the real world. The Beltway Media should be, at a minimum, half as self-aware as Oprah, considering that she is enormously more privileged and insulated than they are. Tellingly, they are not. I can only assume from that that they are sociopaths.
Citizen_X
Slickly done, Politico. And how long did said nadir last? A month? Two? Whereas the Ryan plan is pretty permanently in the shitter.
Stefan
It’s been more than a month since Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and his lieutenant, Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va) boldly positioned their party as a beacon of fiscal responsibility — a move many have praised as principled, if risky.
God, I hate this sort of writing. Exactly who were “the many” who praised bold-faced lying by the GOP as principled? What did the Republicans do to actually “position” their party as dedicated to fiscal responsibility other than merely parroting the words “fiscal responsibility” over and over again — did they propose to raise taxes, cut defense, etc.?
Frankensteinbeck (The ex-Uloborus)
What’s that smell? It smells like… Republican overreach.
I mean, criminy, when you’ve lost Politico…!
ChrisS
@geg6:
At least she gets that she is totally privileged and insulated from the problems of people in the real world. The Beltway Media should be half as self-aware as Oprah, considering that she is enormously more privileged and insulated than they are. Tellingly, they are not.
But the beltway pols talk to cabbies who said that the real problems in America is a lack of investment because investors are scared about Obama passing new regulations and taxes.
wonkie
How on earth can the Republicans be “principled” opponents of the deficit when its THEIR fucking deficet?
Dear God, I do’t kow who I dispise more: Repuboican politicias or Beltway political writers.
chopper
wow, so the dems actually followed pelosi’s lead on this one and didn’t let themselves get goaded into a back-and-forth over cutting medicare.
and guess what, the GOP are looking like choads. is our party learning?
Omnes Omnibus
@martha: I have never been in a bar in Monroe County. Dane, Milwaukee, Waukesha, Marathon, Portage, Outagamie, Oneida, Brown, and a few others, sure. But never Monroe.
Fe E
@Citizen_X:
That’s a good point, I’d say worthy of of a “I see what you did there, politico.” As always BOTH sides something something something….
But you bring a related question: are there any good, recent numbers for public perceptions of ACA? My impression is that it has just largely faded from view and is probably in the “eh, so-so” category, but it might be nice to have some real data.
Roger Moore
@GregB:
How about never? Does never sound right to you? Going back over there record would involve accountability, which is slightly lower than ebola on the media desirability scale.
geg6
@ChrisS:
I’m afraid these guys have mistaken their brokers and financial advisers for cabbies. I actually know a few cabbies and none of them, to a man/woman, give a single shit about the fee fees of investors, regulatory reform, or increased taxes on corporations and the wealthy. They’re too busy trying to make enough to keep themselves and their families fed and housed and making sure that they don’t get stiffed by a fare or held up at gunpoint.
Culture of Truth
If one or all of these are secret liberal plants – bravo, sirs
PurpleGirl
@lamh34: Thank you for the link. I watched for a few minutes and saw him shaking peoples’ hands.
chopper
@The Republic of Stupidity:
it aint called the third rail of american politics for nothin. and it’s almost always electrified.
moonbat
Usually I flatter myself I can figure out the Republicans’ underhanded strategy to do what they’ve always tried to do: dismantle the social safety net. But this time I am totally flummoxed. I think it really must be that they believed their own press. “We’ve got the media in our back pockets, a Democratic president who is near, and control of one house of Congress. We MUST have the power to gut Medicare!”
This is AFTER running on saving Medicare from the near president. This is AFTER running on “jobs, jobs, jobs.” This is AFTER Nancy Pelosi told them to go fuck themselves in 2004 when they tried the same thing with Social Security. And this is AFTER the near president pantsed them in the so so-called budget negotiations this spring.
They really are stupid enough to think that Obama and the Senate are going to fall for this crap? That the American people in one of the worse economies this country has ever seen are going to put the gun to their own retirement security and pull the trigger.
Overreach doesn’t even begin to cover it. These folks are just flat out delusional.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@scav:
Fixt for accuracy
dmsilev
Hmm. Sounds familiar. Let me edit it down a bit…
Linda Featheringill
@lamh34:
Obama in Ireland:
It’s a love fest! Nice to see.
IIRC, Obama has some Irish ancestors through his father. Yes? No?
Odie Hugh Manatee
IOW, the idiots were finally useful.
Now if Harry Reid can push through the vote in the Senate and finish them off for the next election. You know that the Repugs in the Senate are going to flee from this bill like it’s the plague, leaving their compatriots in the House to hang in the wind. Mitch ‘Ain’t I a Bitch’ McConnell said that he isn’t going to whip his Senate comrades to vote for this so you know they have shuffled the deck chairs on this Titanic failure for the last time. Of course, you can count on a few idiots in the Senate to vote for it.
At least I sure hope they do.
kay
@Stefan:
Last week, in the middle of an article, Politico had “…in an electorate desperate for change”. That’s us, presumably.
So they’re setting that up, for 2012.
They’re incapable of writing anything straight. They feel compelled to do a little GOP electioneering with each and every submission.
Culture of Truth
Thus answering the question – what is the best strategy to make Republican party highly unpopular?
Answer: Get out of their way
arguingwithsignposts
@moonbat:
When one of them said something along the lines of “we have a mandate, the issue of taxes was settled by the Nov. 2010 election,” that’s when you knew they were smoking the stock.
El Tiburon
No doubt this was a secret plot by Obama to goad the Republicans into believing their own bullshit.
Obama proved how well it could work when he tricked so many Republicans into thinking he was not born in America.
Obama is tricky that way.
Culture of Truth
Yes, in fact his ancestors are from that town and I believe a distant relative has been found.
artem1s
@lamh34:
thanks for the link to the Ireland trip. what a cool thing!
Fe E
@Fe E:
A little bit of Google fu comes up with these numbers althoug they do seem to be a bit scattered it does look like it is fading from people’s focus.
I’d suspect they are more worried about keeping their jobs and the value of their houses.
Chris
@geg6:
Well, that. And, you know, who wants to be accused of harboring white guilt?
ChrisB
@Linda Featheringill: Yes, Black Irish.
MikeBoyScout
Our job is not yet done.
When shall our Dem leaders in the Senate bring up the Very Serious and unanimously approved by the House Republican caucus budget for a vote in the Senate?
There a quite a few Republican senators who need to walk the plank.
Write your senator and our leader to get the vote scheduled.
Roger Moore
@Citizen_X:
And how huge a media campaign did it take to reduce it to that nadir, compared to the constant media attempts to talk up the Ryan plan?
Kane
More fluffing while writing about the failure of the fluffed plan.
Politico never learns.
Han's Solo
The “Nut Fluffers” have truly done us all a favor. Back when Ryan’s plan was proposed I was confident there was no way it would get a vote. I thought it would go the way of Social Security privatization during Dubya’s days. But since the GOP didn’t control the Senate and the White House (something that made them feel safe to vote on outlandish legislation without having to fear that said legislation would ever be enacted), and because of the fluffers and the baggers, not only did they vote on the bill, but they voted on it nearly unanimously.
That said, good lord is it hard to listen to Joe “Fluffer Man” Scarborough fondle, metaphorically, Limbaugh and the baggers. This morning it was all about how Obama had made some terrible error by mentioning 1967 borders. He was so far off base Mika looked like she was going to start laughing at him and Mark Halperin, the doofus who said McCain forgetting how many houses he owns is bad news for Obama, kept looking at Joe like he was insane.
I realize that this is just Joe making a fool of himself, and that I should rejoice because it helps my side by showing his side to be bereft of sanity and untethered from reality, but I can’t rejoice. As a liberal I just can’t take pleasure from other people’s ignorance.
Mark S.
Well, I suppose it’s principled, if your principles are creating a banana republic.
arguingwithsignposts
@Han’s Solo:
The fact that they let that dumbass former representative anywhere near a microphone, much less as a host of a morning show on a major cable network, is just about all the proof you need that our media is broken.
liberal
@martha:
Actually, I don’t think I personally know anyone who’s been unemployed for a long period of time.
On the other hand, I can read the unemployment stats and have enough of an imagination to begin to understand the personal situation of the unemployed.
The Villagers are just idiots and shills for the rich.
Linda Featheringill
@ChrisB:
Black Irish: :-)
Life is funny.
Han's Solo
@arguingwithsignposts: True.
The sad thing is that the show isn’t THAT bad when Joe isn’t there. Some of the guests have functioning brains. But Joe is just such an idiot, and such a “Nut Fluffer” (yes, I’m coining that term because it is so closely related to “Tea Bagger”) that the show can be unbearable.
Poopyman
@arguingwithsignposts: This is not new:
Remember that from 2004? That is not a quote from someone rooted in the real world.
liberal
@moonbat:
Given that, for example, neither Obama nor the Senate has proclaimed the obvious strategy re the debt ceiling (the one advocated by Yglesius: no strings attached to raising the ceiling), it wasn’t an entirely bad bet.
Ash Can
@lamh34: What fun! Thanks for the link!
geg6
@Han’s Solo:
Well, in Joe’s defense, he doesn’t have a former National Security Advisor for a dad, who probably called Mika up over the weekend and told her not to look like the ass she usually does and here’s why Obama’s speech was spot on. As for Halperin, he saw how well AIPAC responded to Obama’s speech yesterday morning. Even an idiot like him, if he’s paying attention, gets it right now and again (though Halperin is truly the idiot of idiots and gets it right about once a century). As for Joey Scar, he doesn’t pay attention and he has no experienced and intelligent advisers in the family. So all he has is the WSJ, FOXNews, Politico, and Red State to rely upon. And why not? He’s come pretty far on that considering that he has a lucrative and successful cable news career for a guy who has had somewhat mysteriously dead women turn up in his congressional office.
Poopyman
@geg6: Now now madame. Only one dead woman. Don’t exaggerate.
Unless I missed a couple maybe?
ruviana
@Linda Featheringill:
Through his mum, actually.
Montysano
In other news: one would think that running for POTUS against a soshulist Kenyan Usurper would be the easiest gig in politics. Yet no one who matters in the GOP wants to take it on (except Newt!®). Funny, that….
gogol's wife
@Omnes Omnibus:
I’ve been in many bars in Outagamie County. Thanks for the flashback.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@liberal: 11 dimensional chess!
Han's Solo
@geg6:
LOL! That isn’t much of a defense! But Mika’s dad was on Morning Joe last Friday and explained the situation to Joe in detail, which seemed to shut Joe up. Until this morning, when Joe was “Nut Fluffing” with the exact same nonsense he was using last week before Mika’s dad came on.
So to say Joe didn’t know any better would not be true; and that is why it is Nut Fluffing.
Ivan Ivanovich Renko
@Montysano: “Make my enemies ridiculous.” And God granted it!
PurpleGirl
@Linda Featheringill: Through his mother’s father. A great, great, great, great grandfather (right number of greats?) came from Ireland.
PurpleGirl
A quick Google gets a lot of links, I liked this one:
http://www.origins.net/help/resarticle-obama.aspx
Origuy
Wikipedia says his great-great-great-grandfather, Falmouth Kearney, came from Moneygall in 1850.
ChrisS
@liberal:
Actually, I don’t think I personally know anyone who’s been unemployed for a long period of time.
I don’t either, but my nearly 62 year old mother has been underemployed for the last three years.
geg6
@Han’s Solo:
Oh, well. That changes things. Joey Scar is probably just contradicting Zbig today because he’s too afraid to do it to his face. Considering that doing that very thing has not worked out well for Joey in the past, what with Zbig calling him an idiot on national tv and all.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/12/30/zbigniew-brzezinski-calls_n_154211.html
Bulworth
But Obama and Pelosi were accused of “rushing through” HCR, which if memory serves me correctly, wasn’t passed until a year after Obama was in office. Boner and company “rammed this bill down our throats” less than three months after his crew took over the House. But I guess it’s all balanced out and “both sides do it”.
David in NY
@ChrisS: My son, just graduated, has been underemployed for a year.
Thank God, by the way, for the ACA, which puts him on my health care plan.
artem1s
@Montysano:
yea, but watching what is going on in Ireland right now I can imagine that the goopers are more than a bit worried about their reception out in the real America. A little bit different than sitting in the green room on Meet the Press.
Makes me think of this quote…
Do you have any idea how much noise Air Force One makes when it lands in Eau Claire, Wisconsin? We’re going to have a party, Congressman. You should come, it’s gonna be great.
The President is going to be throwing a non stop party.
The GOP gets to schlep around the country on the austerity bus tour going to town halls full of gun toting, sourpuss faced, knuckle draggers who will resent every plate of Jello Salad and creamed green beans they have to supply for the event. Who wants to spend 18 months hanging out in nicotined stained VFW halls having senile old white guys yelling at you? yea, there will be a $5K plate chicken dinner here and there to raise the money but how much fun are those going to be? No way I would want that job especially if you are going to go down in history as the guy who LOST to the secret Muslim, Kenyan.
rea
principled, if risky.
Kind of like Napoleon’s invasion of Russia.
PaulB
No; it’s through his mother.
The Ancient Randonneur
At least one political party has the guts to jump and ask why later.
Mike in NC
Evidently the Village Idiots gave Ryan a swelled head:
http://www.journaltimes.com/news/local/article_840691bc-72be-11e0-a286-001cc4c03286.html
grandpajohn
@rea:
Or the charge of the Light Brigade
El Cid
Majority of Americans don’t believe that balancing budget requires cutting Medicare or Social Security.
Clearly our media have failed at their job of letting the American people know what’s right.
Joshua
I was kind of shocked when I first read that Ryan’s plan didn’t even balance the budget “on the backs of the poor” as critics claimed. Since, you know, it didn’t even balance the budget. There was not a hint of fiscal seriousness to that pile of shit, it was just a raw wealth transfer to the rich from everyone else.
Of course the Village loved it – they’re all rich. But man, this total disconnect between them and us has put us in some really hot water.
Fucen Pneumatic Fuck Wrench Tarmal
the problem with the beltway media is they ride the wrong amtrack. what they need to do, is not get on the one from d.c. to new york, and ride the one that goes through chicago, or st louis, or louisville, or tennessee, see if they can make it across the country, observing from their perch, the back side of real america.
Nomad
@artem1s:
fixt!
PS Jello Salad and creamed green beans = funny stuff
Robert Waldmann
The new cocktail party line is different from the old one, but it is still bullshit. They said the plan was serious because it undoubtably cut entitlements which are the only thing wrong with the USA.
Even now the Politico correspondent (no I didn’t click the link) asserts ” a beacon of fiscal responsibility — a move many have praised as principled, if risky.” This is total nonsense. The beacon of fiscal responsibility would have vastly increased future deficits. The absurd claim that it reduced deficits was more than entirely due to two magic asterisks — elimination of unspecified tax deductions which the Republicans would never enact and hugely massive reductions of unspecified discretionary spending which Republicans would never enact.
It still isn’t allowed to say that they ran through a political red light in order to attempt to increase the deficit and cause more deaths. This is true, but it is also outrageous.
The old line and the new line equate cutting entitlements with reducing the deficit and equate both with good policy. So long as the plan cuts Medicare and Medicaid it is serious and “a beacon of fiscal responsibility” no matter how much it adds to the deficit by cutting taxes on the rich.
The logic is that with all this shit there must be a pony somewhere, but there is no pony in the Ryan plan. It is horrible in every way which anyone but Ayn Rand and acolytes define horror.
catclub
@Fe E: Watch out with those polls. the people posting them apparently are interchanging
“favor/oppose” ACA and “favor repeal/oppose repeal” with no rhyme or reason. I have no idea which is correct, since in the one you post Rasmussen is 43 / 51, but a little deeper
in the web site Rasmussen is 51=favor repeal, 43=oppose repeal.
Shoemaker-Levy 9
The GOP platform has been unpopular for decades, yet they manage to get themselves elected to office, it’s just a matter of advertising and tribal identity. So they thought they could sell another pet rock the same way they’ve been doing all along. What happened this time is the seemingly impossible; Dems and some pundits finally reaching a river they won’t cross. Now, let’s not get cocky. There are still a few orcs in the Senate Dem caucus who would like nothing better than to compromise away our retirements in the name of their bipartisan fetish, but the signs are good for the moment.
jayackroyd
What the fuck is a “deceptively unified” vote? After about a billion years of praising Republican discipline and solidarity, NOW their votes don’t really count as actually their fucking votes?
McJulie
@Shoemaker-Levy 9: The GOP platform has been unpopular for decades, yet they manage to get themselves elected to office, it’s just a matter of advertising and tribal identity.
Always worth repeating.
priscianus jr
@Linda Featheringill:
Scamp Dog
@Linda Featheringill: Actually, it’s his mom’s side of the family. But hey, just add an apostrophe and you have O’Bama!
Young Whippersnapper
@arguingwithsignposts: More than Some but less than Most.
Triassic Sands
The sentence that caught my attention:
This is pretty depressing. Although the Obama health care plan was in important ways ill-conceived and inadequate, it was nevertheless going to help a lot of people address their health care needs. Because American legislators are unable to learn from the collective experiences of the other developed countries that have created universal health care systems, we are doomed to come up with half measures and window dressing. Other nations have learned that for-profit private insurance companies have no role to play in delivering basic health coverage, but the US is so besotted with right wing market ideology that we can’t bring ourselves to face reality. Still, the Obama plan at least was an attempt to solve the problem, even if it accepted constraints that guarantee its long term failure (or at least inadequacy).
On the other hand, the Ryan Plan isn’t even a pretend attempt at solving people’s health care problems. All it intends to do is remove a bunch of red ink from the federal books and turn it over to private individuals, many of whom won’t have any way of paying the bills and will, not surprisingly, begin to suffer and die as their situations deteriorate.
It’s no big secret that the health care problems of a country can’t be solved individually. There is sufficient money in the United States to pay all of our individual health care bills, but that money isn’t distributed evenly. Some people have many times more money than they will ever need, while millions have nowhere near the bank balance to see them through their health travails, which are also not distributed equally throughout the population. That’s why we
havehad progressive taxes — they allow us to accumulate enough money to pay our bills and not leave those with little or no money to suffer and die.Unfortunately, the Grover Norquist’s of America have been working overtime for decades now convincing people that taxes — all taxes — are bad, but the worst taxes are the ones levied on the rich. The economic forces that allow some people to become wealthy also came with an expectation (that was once fairly widely accepted in this country) that the rich can demonstrate their gratitude for a system that has allowed them to do so well by paying taxes at a rate that will permit the nation to address problems like health care and defense that can only be solved collectively.
Unless we are willing to reverse the conventional wisdom that the Norquist’s have been spreading, we have no hope of providing a workable health care system for all Americans. If we decide that tax rates that generate enough money to pay for expensive national priorities punish rich people unfairly, then we will have to accept that millions of us are going to suffer and die prematurely while those same rich people enjoy lifestyles that are only very slightly better than they would have enjoyed if they had paid tax rates that would fund our national priorities and prevent lots of suffering and death. (For the richest Americans, the difference will be undetectable.)
How can a plan like Ryan’s — that is simply designed to shift debt from the collective to individuals (who can’t afford it) be more popular than the Obama plan, which is merely an inadequate attempt to provide care for everyone? The answer can only be monumental stupidity and ignorance.