DOWNLOADS: (131)

PLAYS: (1076)

Embed

Before the election, Rep. Kevin McCarthy said that electing Mitt Romney would mean that Republicans have a mandate to overhaul Medicare: House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy: Election is ‘Mandate’ to Overhaul Medicare:

House Republican Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) says electing Mitt Romney this fall means Republicans have a ‘mandate’ to overhaul Medicare. As McCarthy put it, “If there’s a mandate going through this election, it’s to save Medicare.” As I put it: When Republicans say “save Medicare” they mean end Medicare as we know it. They would keep a government program called Medicare but it would not be the Medicare that has existed for almost half a century. The Republican plan for Medicare is to turn it into a program designed to shortchange seniors while increasing profits for private insurance companies.

We have a single payer health care insurance program that works very well for senior citizens. We don’t need to hand Medicare over to private insurance. Republicans can continue to blame Democrats for doing nothing to “save Medicare” but Republicans are the “kill Medicare” party and they have been for decades.

If what he said on this Sunday's Meet the Press is any indication, McCarthy hasn't seemed to figure out that they lost. And we've already explained here why this trial balloon put out there by the administration, where it seems they've forgotten who won as well, is a really bad idea that needs to be pushed back against forcefully. As everyone explained, even partially privatizing Medicare is not going to "save" the program. It just makes the cost of health care coverage more expensive for seniors.

I was glad to see Sen. Dick Durbin say raising the age is off the table during this interview, but I wasn't thrilled about him offering up means testing. Digby has more on that here: Hot Air Trial Ballooning:

I have a sneaking feeling that Durbin is throwing up a smokescreen there (or he's been smoking some of that special Alan Simpson sensimilla.) He must know that the argument is that Obamacare will pick up the slack if they decide to raise the Medicare age. If he doesn't then he needs to find another line of work.

Even Mitt Romney's health care advisor, Avik Roy from the Manhattan Institute, knows that. Here's what he said on Up with Chris Hayes this morning (with Steve Kornacki subbing for Chris)

"I have to respond to this interesting hyperbole about Medicare death sentence. If you raise the retirement age for Medicare, we have the Affordable Care Act as the backstop. Everybody under 400% poverty level is still covered with the affordable care act in place. So what we are really talking about is means testing Medicare by raising the retirement age. People who are upper income, above 400% of the poverty level won't be subsidized if they're younger retirees. It's where entitlement reform should go, to expand it into the retiree population."

(Kornacki pointed out that ACA is being challenged so it's not exactly a backstop at this point, but he let the topic drop in favor of more masturbation over tax rates.)

It sounds as if Roy and Jonathan Chait may have found the bipartisan sweet spot for Obamacare. Privatize Medicare! Now that really is a Grand Bargain.

Before everyone gets into another tizzy about how shrill and unreasonable I'm being for taking this rumor seriously, let's have a little discussion of what a "trial balloon" is. It is, simply, a rumor that's purposefully spread during a negotiation in order to gauge the reaction. Therefore, it is important to react, not act all glib and self-assured that it could never happen. They want to know if you think this is a good idea, so if you don't you should say so. And you should say it in a shrill enough fashion that they know it's a very big deal, if you think it's a very big deal.

Transcript below the fold.

Continue reading »

DOWNLOADS: (210)

PLAYS: (1796)

Embed

Thank goodness there is at least one of these talking head shows on Sundays where Republican talking points are pushed back and where it's not just a bunch of millionaire pundits talking about how we need to inflict pain on our senior citizens, and raise the Medicare age in order to appease the GOP during these deficit negotiations. That show is Up With Chris Hayes.

While discussing the Republicans' absolute refusal to raise taxes, their dire warnings about the economy collapsing when Bill Clinton raised taxes, guest host Steve Kornacki asked former Romney advisor Avik Roy how he reconciled that with the similar rhetoric we're hearing from Republicans today. Roy argued that things are different now because of the “Obama levels of spending” and that the rich today are somehow shouldering way too much of the tax burden, therefore we're going to have to raise everyone's taxes in order to balance the budget.

Here's some of the response he got from the rest of the panel.

DAVID CAY JOHNSTON: The average income of the bottom 90 percent of Americans has fallen back to the level of 1966 when Johnson was president, and the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent have gone in today's dollars from 4 million to 22 million. In 2010, the first year of the recovery, 37 percent of all of the increased income in the entire country went to 15,600 households.

We have created a privatized system to redistribute upwards and the reason people at the top are sharing a larger share of the income taxes because their incomes are growing at this enormous rate, but their burden is falling. And to suggest we don't need to raise more revenue by applying it to people who are a success depends on this government, on living in this society, with its rules that make it possible to make that money is just outrageous. It is arguing that we should burden the poor and help the rich.

[...]

LAURA FLANDERS: No, you're right. we have 50, 5-0 million Americans living in poverty at this point with food stamp help for many of them. We've got 9 million Americans over the age of 50 who are food insecure. One in three of us have no savings whatsoever.

I mean, you talk the Johnson years, in that period, '65 to '73 the war on poverty reduced poverty by 43 percent. We know how to do it. It works. That's what we should be talking about. We are in a crisis where we're going to see stimulus. We're going to see stimulus of poverty and hunger in this country and it's shameful. And again, going back to '63, you had more than 60 percent of Americans, I think even in1983, 60 percent of Americans had private pension plans. Now, it's under 20 percent.

So these elders that you're talking about, young people with greater unemployment than ever before. I mean, this is the stuff that we want to be talking about after the last election, children and poverty are exploding.

JOAN WALSH: And also... we need higher tax rates for the tippy top earners because everybody likes to talk about building the middle class or rebuilding the middle class. Well, the top tax rate that the middle class we in the '40s,' 50s and '60s. The top marginal rate was in the 90's. I'm not saying you should go back to that, but you can't say at 37 percent.

They followed up with more discussion on tax loopholes and deductions, who they favor, what should be done to make sure they're not upside down with whether they benefit the working class. Laura Flanders brought up the issue of a Wall Street transaction tax, which gets mentioned far too rarely. She also discussed that while everyone is pushing for cuts to Medicare and raising the age to receive benefits, none of them want to talk about defense cuts.

If you missed the show, the whole thing was worth watching. It's generally a nice break from the typical Sunday show fare and this week was no exception. Go check it out here.