One-Trick Pony Hack of the Day
In addition to the foolish idea that it would be possible to reach a grand bargain if only the Obama campaign would unilaterally disarm and refuse to tell the truth about “demagogue” the Ryan/Romney budget, it’s important to ask the question of whether such a grand bargain would actually be desirable. What, exactly, would accurately describing the effects of Ryan/Romney’s budget proposals and trying to win the election prevent us from doing?
A number of Democrats once believed—and some still do—that a well-crafted version of premium support is part of a balanced and sustainable long-term fix for Medicare. If the effect of the Ryan choice is to take not only the Ryan budget’s version of premium support off the table, but also the kinds of approaches that Alice Rivlin and Ron Wyden have proposed, then we’ll be left with far less appealing options for stabilizing Medicare.
So it would stop us from replacing Medicare with “premium supports.” Uh, good? Here’s the thing — Ron Wyden foolishly agreeing to give Paul Ryan cover doesn’t make his proposal a “Democratic” proposal in any meaningful sense; it proves that it’s long past time for Wyden to retire. As Galston implicitly concedes, most Democrats reject Wyden’s kinder, gentler end to Medicare for the obvious reason that it’s a horrible idea. As Medicare Advantage conclusively demonstrates, replacing Medicare with “premium support” (even in the somewhat more generous Wyden version) would result in greater inefficiency, with less money going to the provision of health care and more money going to rentiers. It can “stabilize” Medicare only by denying people medical care and/or greatly increasing costs to individuals. It is the unappealing option.
Alas, I don’t think Galston is right that attacking Ryan ferociously would permanently kill premium support, but I certainly wish he was right.
When I saw the headline I thought for sure the post would be about John Fund’s claim that Thaddeus McCotter submitting photocopied ballot petitions was a strong argument for tough voter ID laws.
As for Galston, I don’t understand people like him. This is the first time I’ve noticed Chait deploying ridicule toward a New Republic writer.
But Wyden is very serious? Remember that health plan he proposed? Actually, I don’t either, but people who didn’t care much what we did thought it was very serious.
The great John Cole, updated:
How about tire rims marinara veal parmesan with anthrax?
Does that come with vouchers?
You know, if running against the Ryan plan really were going to make it toxic for Congresspeople who don’t understand how the insurance model works[*] to fork taxpayer money over to insurance providers for some kind of private industry scheme to replace Medicare … I think I’m completely fine with that. Taking that idea off the table would force Democratic policy makers to look at solutions that would actually keep Medicare solvent instead of partnering up with Republicans who have a stated policy preference for getting rid of it.
It would, in fact, be a fairly positive policy outcome from a Presidential election. Therefore it’s completely unlikely to happen (for all the reasons that Chait points out in the link above, and probably others that he didn’t think of too).
[*] Or, you know, know exactly how it works and want to funnel money to friends and campaign contributors anyway.
Does anyone know why Wyden did all that?
Jonathan Cohn: Ron Wyden, Paul Ryan, and the Future of Medicare
From the same article:
Maybe Wyden just isn’t all that bright.
As I’ve gotten older I’ve found that my explanations for the nearly inexplicable actions of Congressional Reps tend to boil down to one of two options:
1. They have “invisible constituents” that they’re doing it for (cronies, contributors, and other people outside the obvious state/district constituencies)
2. They are ignorant about how whatever they’re doing will actually work and really honestly think they’re helping people
I used to live in the comforting fantasy world that Congressional Reps were intelligent men and women who used their power to give kickbacks to their friends and contributors. As I get older there are more and more cases where it’s becoming obvious that they’re actually ignorant, getting bad advice, and really think they’re helping when they meddle.
A “William Galston” is the popular name for the pupa of pseudo-Democratensis flatulens that ultimately becomes Doug Schoen.
Democrats need to
destroyfix Medicare via a Grand Bargain so that they can take the issue off the table and get back to finding common ground with the anti-abortion movement.William Saletan will be so thrilled!
I do find the incentive system Democrats work under to be confusing. On Social Security and Medicare, Dem politicians are frequently at odds with what their rank-and-file wants. Best I can tell, it’s one part “rich people hate social programs” and Dems can’t just tell them to piss off and hope to keep up moneywise, one part mainstream media bias actually mattering because some Democrats still care what they have to say, and possibly just general self-satisfaction with being serious and part of the in-crowd.
I just ignore Galston. Dude says the same thing all the time and that one thing doesn’t get any less wrong. Boring.
As for Wyden, he strikes me as being a lot like Obama, far more a pure wonk than politician, and someone who’s a little too confident in his own cunning plans. But also capable of surprising you every now and then–Obama managed a DREAM masterstroke that ended Romney’s appeal to Hispanics, while Wyden managed to get Darrell Issa to cosponsor a SOPA alternative much better than what most Senate Democrats wanted.
Dude says the same thing all the time and that one thing doesn’t get any less wrong.
Just like fellow Catfood Commission member Robert Samuelson. And they both always end up with the same conclusion: our only hope is to give the GOP everything it wants.
Robert Samuelson wasn’t on the commission.
Where did that come from?
Obama can and will do both — both blast Ryan and pursue a Grand Bargain (as he’s been doing and will almost certainly continue to do so in a 2nd term.)
As for Wyden, if he were to retire, the Senate would lose one of the few pols who’s pretty good on civil liberties in the national security realm (in case you care about that kind of thing.)
http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/05/secret-patriot-act/
http://www.oregonlive.com/politics/index.ssf/2012/06/wyden_blocks_intelligence_bill.html
http://news.firedoglake.com/2012/02/10/wyden-wants-information-on-targeting-of-anwar-al-awlaki/
I’m pleased by the huge bump in concern trolling from the right and their surrogates since the Ryan pick. Seems like it’s becoming common knowledge that Romney is toast in November.
But, but, but FREE MARKETS(tm)!!!
‘Premium support’ must be part of ‘patient-centered solutions’.
Here’s a grand bargain: Agree to scrap Obamacare entirely as well as scrap Medicaid(they’ve been wanting to do that for years) and just expand Medicare to everyone in this country. If the Republicans need to call it the “Moochers Health Plan”.
All of which is simply code for “shovel massively larger amounts of money to the rentiers.”
Republican bullshit that obviously doesn’t add up = Serious Idea!
Democratic detailed legislative proposals with CBO scoring = Why won’t the Democrats get serious about this issue?
Our liberal media.
Why does deficit reduction have to occur in a bipartisan way? The most successful deficit reduction legislation in history — 1993 — passed with zero Republican votes. The deficit creation act of 2001 — aka the Bush tax cuts — had noticeable bipartisan support. The deficit expansion act of 2002 — aka the Iraq war authorization — was also bipartisan. HCR, on the other hand, achieved deficit reduction with as partisan a breakdown of he Congressional vote as is possible.
Look, I don’t share the fascination with deficit reduction. It sounds nice, probably beneficial in the long run, but manageable deficits have been pretty successful too and, if it were up to me, I’d rather focus on other things. But if deficit reduction is what floats your boat, you should have some sense of what has worked in the past to achieve it, how it came about, when it failed. I don’t understand why someone who claims to want deficit reduction can be so ignorant as to the past causes and solutions to the problem. To want deficit reduction and to support bipartisan legislation is akin to wanting to be a grandmaster in chess while refusing to learn how the knights move.
On the other hand, the budget deal George HW Bush struck with the Democratic Congress was bipartisan, and it probably deserves more credit for reducing deficits in the 1990s than Clinton’s 1993 budget, which stayed within the lines of that deal.
Fair ’nuff, although the fact that the Republicans have taken the view of the 1990 act that “oh my god, we should never do something like that ever again” does seem to indicate to me, again, that somebody who wanted to achieve deficit reduction should probably not be wanting bipartisanship too. History suggests that you’d be better off voting straight Democratic and just suffering through the occasional stimulus bill than hope for a split government, which is much more like to only agree on things that will explode the deficit.
Delong disagrees
I think it’s because of the politics of it. In other words, if Congress and the President are going to make Americans “take their medicine”, then it has to damage both parties more-or-less equally.
And, really, we saw what happened when Clinton worked to clean up the budget – Republicans got into power and blew it all to hell within 18 months. Obviously this is the big problem here – a future Congress is not beholden to ‘deals’ hashed out today, why would they? And why would Democrats go through all that trouble unilaterally just to see Republicans spend it all on tax cuts and wars again?
That’s the idea of it anyway.
I understand the theory, I just think that the evidence has completely disproven that theory, and if this is something Galston is going to treat as important, he needs to understand the evidence from history and not just focus on a concept so plainly at odds with history and present practice it probably doesn’t even deserve to be called a “theory.”
Because they’re idiots.
This, absolutely.
Like every other shitty Republican idea (dept. of redundancy dept.), it’s been tried already and it sucks. We already know the private industry cannot provide good care to elderly people. That’s why we set up Medicare in the first place.
I heard a report on NPR about counties in NY privatizing elderly care facilities. Politicians claimed it was because of efficiency but all these companies were doing was laying off staff, cutting pay, kicking people out, and refusing to take Medicaid patients. In other words, “efficiency” means worse care for the people who need it most.
Yes. I would like to see some TV commercials featuring elderly people who remember what it was like before Medicare – for their parents or other relatives. I think part of the problem is that it’s been around so long, lots of people forgot why we did it in the first place….and other people just haven’t bumped into the Insurance Industrial Complex that is functionally illiterate in terms of actual Health Care.
Galston is also the person who’s name is most mentioned whenever someone wants to argue that “some Straussians are liberal.”
For the record, Galston is a Leo Strauss student. But the notion that he’s a liberal is ludicrous (even Galston, I think, wouldn’t claim that he is).
whose*
(preview please)
Leslie Goldstein might be an actual example, I guess. At best,Galston is a Straussian nominal Democrat…
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