The fail is strong in this NY Times piece titled Delicate Pivot as Republicans Blast Rivals on Medicare Cuts:
For much of the past year, Republicans assailed President Obama for resisting the Medicare spending reductions they say are needed to both preserve health benefits for older Americans and avert a Greek-style debt crisis. Representative Paul D. Ryan, the House Republicans’ point man on the budget, has called the president “gutless.”
Yet since the Supreme Court upheld the Democrats’ 2010 health care law, Republicans, led by Mitt Romney, have reversed tactics and attacked the president and Democrats in Congress by saying that Medicare will be cut too much as part of that law. Republicans plan to hold another vote to repeal the law in the House next week, though any such measure would die in the Democratic-controlled Senate.
“Obamacare cuts Medicare — cuts Medicare — by approximately $500 billion,” Mr. Romney has told audiences.
That is a reprise of Republicans’ mantra of the 2010 midterm elections, which gave them big gains at both the state and federal levels and a majority in the House. Yet the message conflicts not only with their past complaint that Democrats opposed reining in Medicare spending, but also with the fact that House Republicans have voted twice since 2010 for the same 10-year, $500 billion savings in supporting Mr. Ryan’s annual budgets.
The result is a messaging mess, even by the standards of each party’s usual election-year attacks that the other is being insufficiently supportive of older people’s benefits.
And in this year’s contests, which both parties describe as a referendum on who can best correct the nation’s economic course, such talk underscores how far Republicans and Democrats are from truly squaring with the public about curbing the growth of the major entitlement programs: Medicare, Medicaid and, to a lesser extent, Social Security. That growth is driving the projections of a federal debt that is mounting unsustainably as the population ages and health care costs rise.
“A pox on both their houses,” said Ron Haskins, a former Congressional staff member who is now a scholar of social programs and budgeting at the Brookings Institution. Democrats and Republicans “know they have to do something about Medicare, and then they harass each other about cutting Medicare. It’s so discouraging to me, but I’m a Republican, so I’m much more distraught about Republicans.”
And, Mr. Haskins added, “$500 billion is modest compared to what Ryan would do.”
Why can’t reporters just come and say what the Republicans are doing. They are lying. They are lying about the Obamacare cuts to Medicare. It doesn’t cut Medicare benefits at all- it expands them. What it does cut are bloated payments to private insurers, which is basically more corporate welfare the Republicans gussied up and call Medicare Advantage, which paid 10-15% (I can’t remember the exact number, but it is in that ballpark) more to insurers than regular Medicare.
They are lying about what Paul Ryan (and Mitt Romney) would do to Medicare, which is not make it sustainable, but to gut it, throw elderly people “premium support” which is basically a voucher capped at a certain dollar value, and then toss them into the magic that is the free market to find their own insurance. Can’t find one that you can afford, you just aren’t trying hard enough, because we all know the free market can never fail, it can only be failed. And let’s not even talk about the spectacle of millions of early onset dementia patients navigating the private insurance market. Nothing could go wrong there.
Not to mention, Republicans want to repeal Obamacare, which means that insurers could once again deny you coverage for a pre-existing medical condition. You know how many 70 year olds have pre-existing conditions? ALL OF THEM, FIRST OF WHICH IS BEING 70. None of them would be able to find coverage that would provide them with the security they need, because no insurance company wants to take on a 70 year old diabetic with a thyroid condition, high blood pressure, and cataracts. So guess what would happen?
WE’D BE RIGHT BACK WHERE WE WERE IN THE 60’S WHEN WE FUCKING CREATED MEDICARE TO SOLVE THIS VERY FUCKING PROBLEM (Read this .pdf).
Why is it so hard for our media to just call them liars?
John Weiss
John, you know why it’s so hard for the media to call ’em liars. You know who owns the media, right?
JPL
When I speak to rethugs, I simply say Medicare has worked for decades so why privatize it. Raise Medicare taxes if need be but don’t go back to the sixties.
SFAW
“A pox on both their houses”? Great, another imbecile passing himself off as a Voice Of Reason.
rikyrah
these mofos voted to TURN MEDICARE INTO A VOUCHER PROGRAM.
TWICE.
that should be EVERY OTHER SENTENCE in this so-called story.
Rhoda
@John Weiss: It’s more than the corporate control of the media. Corporations have varied interests; we’ve had issues with corporate control of media in various times in this country. The bigger issue, IMO, is the lack of reporting.
The Washington Post ombudsman is calling out the paper for it’s storm coverage and saying there wasn’t enough reporting going on; of actual news relayed from the community and how the utilities (PEPCO in particular) were screwing it up and how that screw up was affecting the citizenry and the part that regulators played in that. This is basic storm coverage. It’s not that political. And it’s being hit because of the lack of investment in real reporters gathering facts. That’s not put at a premium anymore because it’s way too difficult to monetize.
Reporting is a lost art; and it’s that loss that is killing the fourth estate and by extension our entire government IMO.
Hunter Gathers
These reporters want to keep their jobs, right? Kind of hard to call out lying liars when doing so will get you a pink slip. The editors of the NYT don’t want to spend all day fighting off charges of media-bias from the wingnuts, and the conservatives that they wine and dine with at night will refuse to give info ‘on background’ (which is the equivalent of crack cocaine to political reporters) and will refuse to engage with any of the reporters who call out their bullshit. It’s just easier to say ‘both sides do it’ and learn to enjoy the taste of GOPer cock.
General Stuck
They say my methods are “unsound”
Sir, I don’t see any method at all.
Mediscare won’t work this go round. And besides, this election is shaping up to be one big global bughunt, on where in the world in Romney hiding his cash from feeding off of wounded companies, then killing those companies and the jobs they came with. It’s a self inflicted dagger through the heart of the GOP. The ACA is a done deal, though it is one of the few enterprises that will be creating some new markets and likely jobs to go with it.
Litlebritdifrnt
It is not that they do not report on the lies that gets me so much as it is that THEY FUCKING REPEAT THEM as if they were gospel. Not only do they not fact check, and say, which of course is not true, after repeating everything that comes out of Romney’s mouth, they just fucking repeat it.
PeakVT
I don’t think a straight reporter should use the L-word. However, if somebody is lying, they should lay out the facts so that it’s clear that lying is going on.
Dayen thinks that the NYTtimes editors meddled with the story. Dunno about that, but the reporter certainly didn’t write the headline.
owlbear1
Why is it so hard for
ourRich Old Guys’ media to just call them liars?I think I see your problem, John.
gluon1
By the way, “10-15%” is fine. The number most often cited during the debate was that Medicare Advantage was an 11% subsidy to Rick Scott and his ilk, but that was an average with some companies getting much more than that.
moonbat
This is something I am surprised that congressional and senate candidates are not doing more. “Hey, (insert GOPer here) voted twice to turn Medicare into a voucher program, grandpa. How good would it feel at your age to enter the insurance market in search of a policy that you can afford on your Social Security check?”
Let’s face it, the GOP voted twice to shaft their main constituency and we aren’t even calling them on it. We should be beating them around the head and neck with this every day, all day.
greenergood
@Hunter Gathers: Just like bankers: Barclay’s B. Diamond being one of the many: rig/fix the markets, pretend you don’t know what’s going on (like I’m shocked, fainting couches, pearls, etc.), collect your 10 million dollar bonuses, and put all your money in an off-shore account, and watch the country whirl down the plug hole from a comfortable distance, while your supporters in their mobile scooters, cashing their Medicare checks, praise you and condemn the Kenyan overlord. Cog diss? you betcha!
General Stuck
Meanwhile, back at the front. The world’s stupidest website squeals like little piggies.
Whatevs!
Let’s talk about the weather, the ghost of Andrew, and the liberal plot to whack him. Anything but that silly presidential election coming up.
MattF
Well, but what’s a ‘pivot’? It’s when you say ‘X’, and then later say ‘not-X’. Can’t both be true.
ChrisNYC
I just cannot believe that someone in the political class has the balls to say, “A pox on both their houses” and NYT has the balls to print it. For the both sides do it nonsense but also …. geez …. what a fucking boring trite substanceless thought. Why even read the paper if that’s what they have to offer?
Randiego
A righteous rant – thanks JC.
Spatula
Well, John, it would help the media narrative a LOT if the fucking Democrats would call the Republicans liars FIRST, over and over again, and in the most publicity-friendly way possible.
Then the media simply has to report what was said and why. This has to added benefit of giving spineless reporters cover from right wing charges of liberal bias.
But with Mr. Obama constantly harping on “bipartisanship” and indulging his tendency to go along to get along and most national Dems following his lead, strong clear, rough language that will make news is rarely used.
And there you have it.
Republicans drive the media narrative because they work their asses off and organize to do so. Think what the Dems, with a lot of actual TRUTH on their side, could accomplish with a similar approach.
I wonder why they don’t do that…
General Stuck
Kiss of the orange death
General Stuck
Wildepirate has a new nym. cool.
GxB
They need their paycheck. Their bosses need theirs – or so they think. Their bosses’ bosses aspire to become the elite high rollers – though they’re richer than most any royalty that ever existed; and their bosses’, bosses’, bosses own the whole fucking ball of wax.
The house of cards must be sustained for the same reason the banking bubble was a few years back. Nobody’s going to take the fall without having a scapegoat to pass the blame. The implications of someone actually pulling back the curtain and blowing the whole charade is terrifying to everyone (myself included.) And it will only make the end result that much more spectacular.
Come on John, you know this, we all know this.
Lavocat
Same as it ever was, John: it’s all about media access and hurt fee-fees.
Whatever you do, you just can’t call the liars liars. It’s, it’s, it’s sooo unseemly, dontcha know.
SiubhanDuinne
@MattF:
Can if you’re Willard Mittens Rmoney.
RSR
Truth.
fleeting expletive
I’m about to get Medicare, thank LBJ. It has been amazing how much the insurance companies are trying to sell me MedAdv or the Med supplemental coverage. Very aggressive marketing. I wouldn’t think it would be that profitable a line of policies for them. I don’t understand what’s really in it for the insurance companies to cover us geezers for co-pays and the like, especially since the policies are federally regulated. I haven’t decided to buy a supplemental, I’m just delighted to be out from under the fecking BCBS tyranny.
John Weiss
@Rhoda: OK, so if the issue is lack of reporting are you blaming the editors? I do. Think about FOX “news” for a bit.
Ben Cisco (onboard the Defiant)
It’s not that it’s hard; it’s that they aren’t in the least interested in doing so. In a world where even Stretch Gregory’s servicing skills are deemed insufficient, the remnants of the Fourth Estate are compelled to step up their game by stepping on us.
JWL
“If it’s not broken, don’t fix it”.
Talk about a Dog Bites Man insight. The same people (and paper) lied the country into waging the Iraq War, were busted, and… chirping crickets.
If I stood in their ranks, I’d continue to lie, too. It works.
NR
Well Obama already offered them $650 billion in cuts, so where is the problem?
Ash Can
Hell, the way these guys roll, I’m just glad they were sufficiently uncouth to call the GOP messaging “a mess.”
mcd410x
@Spatula: Nicely said.
MonkeyBoy
Gee, has “pivot” become the new polite term for flipflop, self-contradict, or lie?
In rhetoric or debating “pivot” is a specific way of changing the subject. It works as follows”
Speaker A talks about X.
Speaker B says that you can’t have X without Y and Y is what really determines the issue so Speaker B changes the issue to Y.
Politicians are taught to “pivot” all questions into their rehearsed talking points so that they seem to be answering a question.
I recall recently a video of some right-wing female politician who when questioned about a completely unrelated answer she gave to some question explained that she had “pivoted” the question without apparently realizing that you are supposed to give a “pivot” statement that gives some reason the answer is related to the question.
Anyway calling a flip-flop and/or lie a “pivot” seems like yet another attempt suck the meaning out of language in the service of politics.
Litlebritdifrnt
@Ash Can:
Donnie Deutch (not sure if that is spelled right) said on MJ a week or so ago that the problem with the Republicans messaging is that the messages are coming from all over, due to the over abundance of Superpacs. Whereas you have the Obama Campaign, the DNC and maybe one Obama Superpac who have ONE message, Romney, the RNC and all of the Superpacs are all over the place, and Romney really has no control over what they say, he said that it really is a nightmare for the Romney campaign and he sees it as working against him. Hell Romney doesn’t even have a say over what the Republican Governor’s are saying about the economy, he told them to shut up about how good things are, and they basically, to help their own reelection efforts, told him to go pound sand.
PaminBB
@Spatula:
I also agree with Spatula (hmm, that sounds weird…).
If the Dems would call out the GOOPers more publicly and clearly, it would be easier for the media to report on it.
Turgidson
Excellent rant. It’s all stating the obvious of course, but the media is no longer capable of this. And you channel the exasperation people like me feel just right.
Ash Can
@Litlebritdifrnt: Interesting. Maybe the Citizens United decision is going to turn out to not be quite the bonanza for the GOP everyone thought/feared it would be.
WereBear
@Litlebritdifrnt: Wow. That makes me have a happy!
Chris
@Litlebritdifrnt:
Romney is sounding more and more like the presidents of the Gilded Age, e.g. complete nonentities who only ruled in name while the real power was elsewhere (e.g. the robber barons).
Linnaeus
@SFAW:
The guy’s now at the Brookings Institution. That explains a lot, right there.
jl
Thanks for this post, and pdf. I didn’t know about that paper.
Maybe the GOP votes on Ryan plan earlier this year (or similar) will give Dems some ideaa on how to explain it. Won’t bet on it but will hope a little.
But will not hope that NYT tries writing a story that reports facts ‘n’ history. Heartbreak would be too likely outcome.
Woody
Democracy requires an immense amount of energy and courage to work.
Modern corporations require an immense amount of energy and toadyism to work.
I’m just waiting for President Romney to anoint Rafalca as a Senator.
Followed by a riveting roundtable where Raffi out-debates Cokie, George F., and Joe Mentum.
Valdivia
so wait. delicate pivot=lying. Got it.
I am going to delicately pivot next time someone asks me something uncomfortable I don’t want to reply to.
I hate these mf’ckers
Linnaeus
If Medicare and Medicaid spending is a serious issue, then would it be untoward of me to suggest that we can begin to address that by 1) not enacting huge tax cuts for wealthy people and 2) not spending so much on war and the means to make war?
Cain
The answer is very simple and I’ve repeated many times here. Just stop subscribing to papers. Just turn all that shit off. Start a drive on getting people to unsubscribe from these national papers, not watch the 24 hour news channel, just turn all that shit off.
Advertisers will start paying less and then nobody can pay those editors and high priced reporters the salaries they demand. Free market bitches. Use it. You want to change their behavior do it that way.
It’s too bad that Democrats are like cats and won’t do it. But I bet you can get the wingnuts to do it and of course thats why teh news media is scared and coverage tends to tilt conservative. Lock step. They got much more market power because of it. We had a taste of it with Kommen, we can do it again with the news media. Hit them where it hurts.
BTW I’m not suggesting you abandon your local paper, just the national ones.
lumpkin
I heard some government spokeswoman on NPR today who was answering questions about Obamacare. Someone asked this very question about the $500B cut to medicare. She provided a completely accurate answer that pointed out that the cuts came from wasteful payments and that benefits were not reduced. But you know what? Even though I already understand all this and think that this is all a good idea that helps retired people, actually – the explanation was just a dry, technical, wonky and timid recitation of the facts – I would not have gotten the significance of the “cut” if I didn’t already know. I guarantee you that anyone that’s already concerned about the government “taking away my medicare”, did not come away from this explanation convinced otherwise. The very first thing she should have emphasized is that coverage is not reduced. Then she should have repeated that in different words so everyone would understand, then provide examples. Then she should have re-inserted that between every other talking point because this is the thing that people who freak out about the “medicare cut” DON’T UNDERSTAND!!! But instead, we get the equivalent of one accountant talking to another. Democrats do not know how to win at politics – period.
Triassic Sands
Only when the primary cause of death for middle class and poor elderly Americans is lack of health care due to an inability to afford it, will The Modern Republican Party have the health care reform plan of its dreams.
Mitch McConnell has made it clear that he’s willing to tinker around the edges of the “best health care system in the world,” but has no interest in extending coverage to the uninsured. What he means is that he’s willing to improve coverage for himself and other Haves, but not willing to even consider helping the Have Nots.
And Republican plans for Medicare — best articulated, not by Paul Ryan, but by Rand Paul, Lindsey Graham, Jim DeMint, and Mike Lee — are ideally for complete privatization. In what may have been the most disingenuous comment in the history of the world, DeMint said that if people couldn’t afford a Medicare policy under their plan, those people “…also still will have Medicaid,” which kind of ignores the plans the GOP has for that program. Apart from complete elimination of Medicaid, the GOP certainly hopes to make fewer, not more, people eligible.
As usual, the MSM is doing a hopelessly inept job of accurately reporting on these issues.
SW
‘Why is it so hard for our media to just call them liars?’ Because they answer to the same paymasters. They’re on the same team. At the deepest level, at the corporate heart, they are pushing the same agenda. The personal sensibilities of journalists is a red herring. You have the professional class of journalists prizing this vision of even handed objectivity, but the limits of the debate that is what the extremes are is determined by management, which is corporate, not professional. And what we are seeing in the determination of the limits of the debate are the values of the wing nut corporate over-class in this country. It is just a cross section of this elite in-bred crowd that has driven us to ruin. These people are fucking nuts. And we have seen them crawling out of the woodwork recently. It ain’t pretty.
Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.)
Because it would be uncivil. It isn’t nice to call people liars. And beyond not being nice or civil, any reporter who said or wrote such a thing would never get to go to any of the Georgetown parties after that. And those parties have kickass weenies at them, coctail and otherwise. No self-respecting reporter wants to miss sucking on those weenies–either kind…
John M. Burt
@rikyrah:
No, it should just be the non-buried lede.
Cain
@Horrendo Slapp (formerly Jimperson Zibb, Duncan Dönitz, Otto Graf von Pfmidtnöchtler-Pízsmőgy, Mumphrey, et al.):
Why can’t they go? I’m sure that these people would like a piece of them when they meet? I mean, I’d love to say some shit and then argue with the guy at some party. Besides who are throwing these parties anyways?
Haydnseek
@MonkeyBoy: Merely the latest example of Newspeak.