I’ve said from the beginning, which was a long time ago, that the price for getting any kind of Grand Bargain would be that Medicare gets dinged in some way on the benefits side. But I have also always maintained that the compromise won’t necessarily be all that painful. I’ve said this both because I firmly believed that it reflected political reality and because I believed it to be true. I still think it is the case.
The progressives’ default position is that there should be no cuts in entitlements, whether they be to Medicaid, Medicare, or Social Security. That’s the mirror image of the Republicans’ position that there should be no increase in revenues, whether it be through raising rates or reducing tax expenditures. It’s a hardline negotiating position. But there was never any way either side could impose an agreement that involved no concessions. We can have a deal, or we can over the cliff, but we can’t have a deal where we make no concessions on entitlements.
If you don’t feel like admitting that publicly, that’s fine. It is our negotiating position not to make concessions, after all. But, if a deal actually happens, it should be judged in its totality.
One advantage we have is that we know what we want and we have a much better understanding of the real world implications of various policy changes than the Republicans do. They want to raise the retirement age on Medicare, but they have no real idea why they want that or what it would mean for individuals or how it would play out politically over time, or even how it would impact the budget.
If done correctly, and in exchange for enough good stuff, raising the retirement age might actually be a very good trade that winds up hurting very few people at all. Whether it does or doesn’t has to do with whether states fully implement the Medicaid expansion. Seniors in the 65 or 66 age group would be covered under ObamaCare and would be eligible for the Exchanges, with accompanying subsidies. If they are too poor for the Exchanges, they’d be eligible for Medicaid in the states that have adopted those reforms. The law, as written, would prevent people from falling through the cracks. Of course, it still bad policy because it would make providing health care more expensive, but we’re negotiating with ideological idiots who are more concerned about getting a win than making good policy. Fortunately, they don’t know what a win is, so they can have one without realizing that they didn’t really get anything.
There’s no possible way it should ever be accepted to raise the Medicare-age unless Obama-care instituted an all-payer system where it set rates that private insurance can charge doctors. It can NEVER be a “good” trade. And I can’t believe you’re taking Chait’s side on this.
I don’t even know what Chait’s side is.
Then it’s time to go over the cliff. Your claim that the 2 sides are “mirror images” is ridiculous. You yourself go on to show that they are not — that one side is right and the other side is full of shit. I’ll never understand what makes you say stuff like that.
Merits have nothing to do with it.
Jesus, Boo. You sound like Cokie Roberts with all that false equivalence.
Maybe you are confused. There is an absolute equivalence between each side’s no concessions opening negotiating stance. The Republicans’ bottom line could be no more hot chocolate in the Capitol Hill cafeteria and it would be equivalent to the Democrat’s opening stance of no cuts to entitlements. I am not talking about merits.
Obama never said no concessions that I remember. He wants to make a deal, but the deal can’t include pimping his wife, metaphorically speaking. Cutting self-funding universal programs or turning them into welfare programs is not equivalent to refusal to raise taxes at all on the 1%.
That’s the mirror image of the Republicans’ position that there should be no increase in revenues, whether it be through raising rates or reducing tax expenditures.
That is a false equivalency. Just because those two proposals are equally unacceptable to the opposing party does not make them “mirror images.”
If there are going to be spending cuts on entitlements, there are options for how to do so that doesn’t come out of benefits.
There seems to be a strange insistence that describing the two sides’ nonnegotiable stance, that are not actually nonnegotiable, is creating a false equivalence.
Both sides claim to be totally unwilling to make any concessions on these issues. Both sides are lying. No deal is possible unless both sides make concessions on precisely these issues.
I never said going over the cliff wasn’t an option. I advocated going over the cliff if the deal wasn’t sweet enough.
But, if there is going to be a deal, it is going to involve both tax hikes and cuts in Medicare benefits, either though means-testing or the eligibility age.
It has nothing to do with the merits of tax hikes or the age limit.
Then over the cliff we go. And no concessions are necessary on the debt ceiling. Any concessions Obama makes are ones he wanted to make.
I’m not necessarily disagreeing with you, but please don’t tell me that you want Obama to mint trillion dollar coins.
Not particularly, but I don’t think it’s necessary to do so in any case. I agree with Armando’s legal analysis of the situation. However, I would rather mint a trillion dollar coin than negotiate with these lunatics. I think Obama’s decided the same thing; the question is, is he going to try to settle on both at the same time, or stick to his guns and tell them to fuck off? The latter is a perfectly reasonable solution as the tax rates expire on their own. Not taking it shows he wanted to raise the Medicare age; something you said in the last set of negotiations was just for show.
I’m with seabe.
Too hell with it.
No deal is better than another bad deal where they make us give up actual lives and they give up their fucking surplus money nobody on God’s ear could possibly need so much of.
If they are really equally unwilling let them pay for it.
We don’t need a deal badly enough to give ANY of this ground.
Jesus Christ.
How do you suppose those fuckwads would react if it was THEM who had to eat cat food?
Caviar to cat food.
How’s that for a change of diet?
It’s probably not the case that you expressed your thoughts clearly, and the problem is that everyone who reads them is making the same mistake. Your post expresses a certain idea, and it doesn’t seem to be the idea that you wanted to express.
Your intended point seems to be that the hardlin-i-ness of both sides’ negotiating positions are equivalent. I agree completely, but what you wrote is that the “opening bids” themselves – the content of the positions that the two sides are treating as hard lines – are “mirror images.” I don’t agree with that, and I don’t think it was your point, either.
I think people don’t agree with my definition of “mirror image.”
Mirror image is basically the same as “negative image.”
The same, but reversed.
If it is Good and Evil, this is not misunderstood.
We are protecting necessities for desperate people.
They are protecting ludicrous privilege for the fattest plutocrats.
Yeah, mirror image.
I see that.
Luke Skywalker is the mirror image of his father, Darth Vader.
See the false equivalence?
No, he’s not.
“Mirror image” just doesn’t mean what you want it to.
You see yourself in the mirror, not your opposite.
You see the reverse of yourself. The opposite of yourself. But, whatever, if you insist on reading it that way, you’ll find yourself disagreeing with a point I wasn’t trying to make.
Boo, the reason for our “misunderstanding” is that you follow your claim that there is a “mirror image” of equivalent intransigence in the Dem/Rep bargaining positions with a supposition that “raising the (Medicare) retirement age might actually be a very good trade that winds up hurting very few people at all.”
You are correct in stating that “…(Democrats) have a much better understanding of the real world implications of various policy changes than the Republicans do.” That is why we disagree with you, in my case quite vehemently. Messing with the Medicare qualifying age is horrible policy. Your view that 65 and 66-year-olds would be served decently by the Obamacare exchanges is wrong, wrong, wrong. (It is also the Chait position about which you claimed ignorance.)
Even if 65- or 66-year-olds were served adequately in comparison to Medicare by the exchanges (which I disbelieve), your admission that it would “still bad policy because it would make providing health care more expensive” is an inadequate concession. I believe it would be MUCH more expensive, and that would give away the part of Obamacare with the most bipartisan and policy appeal: it reduces the deficit. Raising the age would also do away with the reductions in the inflation rate of health care costs which we’ve enjoyed in the last 18 months as Obamacare policies phase in.
Then there’s the politics. What. A. Fucking. Disaster. Obama and the Democrats would be blamed for screwing over future (and perhaps current!) Medicare recipients. Billions of dollars in plutocrat-funded ads would make 100% certain of that; at the very least, the propagandists would muddy the waters enough to make the Republican’s sticky fingerprints on the benefit cuts almost invisible. We can’t screw with the Democratic Party brand: the creators and defenders of the safety net programs. We can reduce the expenses of these programs without cutting benefits.
So, no, we don’t have to accept benefit cuts. Those cuts would be highly immoral, and would cause widespread suffering and premature death. It is quite insane to cut these programs at a time when income and asset security for the lower- and middle-classes have never been lower. It is beneath your analytical abilities to consider raising the Medicare age to 67 as something which could be part of “a very good trade.” The damndest thing is that a real CBO scoring would be extremely likely to show that changing the Medicare age in such a major way wouldn’t result in a meaningful reduction in the budget deficit.
I’ve gone through enough of these brinkmanships now that it’s easier for me to avoid jumping to hyperbolic conclusions, but I believe it’s extremely important to stomp on this Medicare trial balloon immediately, “and with extreme prejudice.”
Calvin is disappointed in Booman’s point that we have a one to one situation with raising the retirement age. Nothing could be further from the truth and other commenters have made this point as well.
DO NOT RAISE THE RETIREMENT AGE. DO NOT MESS WITH ENTITLEMENTS.
CUT the Defense Budget. There’s so much fertile territory there. That this isn’t seriously considered is rather sick.
Doesn’t necessary have to be the retirement age. But the GOP can’t pass anything that doesn’t hit Medicare benefits at all. Could be means-testing.
Let me be clear about something.
they are just stupid enough to give us pretty much everything we want in exchange for a bump in the retirement age which will make progressive howl in rage, but won’t really bite very hard.
You understate how much that would bite. We’re not talking about going from 57 to 59 here. Sixty-seven. The exchanges? For people in the mid-sixties? Buying insurance? Not to mention the total lifetime reduction in the value of the benefit they receive. That bit would bite. a lot.
The concessions would have to be huge to make any deal that raises the retirement age worth it. The debt ceiling and a temporary stimulus? For permanently raising the Medicare retirement age? It would take the accomplishment of a major liberal policy goal to equal that conservative policy goal, not some insider stunt the Republicans just invented, and not an agreement that they won’t block a tax cut they’re going to care on anyway. I would something more than the ACA public option before I would consider a deal that raised the retirement age.
If I was in Obama’s place, I’d offer a mild increase in means-testing for Medicare premiums, and let that be their trophy. If that wasn’t good enough, go over the cliff.
This. It can’t be stated any clearer than that. Thanks, joe.
There’s another understatement: how much Obama will personally be held to blame for increasing the Medicare eligibility age.
Not just Obama.
This would be a huge Democratic betrayal that lent strong additional credence to the conservative effort to paint the Dems as NOT the unshakeable defenders of the elderly and earned benefits they need to be seen as.
And also strong additional credence to conservative propaganda that Medicare and Social Security cannot survive and will be essentially gone long before the young who are paying in can get anything back.
And then comes the collapse of public confidence both in these programs and in the Democratic Party, with electoral consequences to suit.
Republicans win, big.
And the Democrats can try to win elections as the sociolib “mirror image” of the Republican Party.
That seems to be where they’ve been heading, anyway.
Yep.
They can’t have my cousins scalp as a trophy. Nor my daughter’s. Nor my grandsons’. I’ll go to the streets before I allow that.
Wiki
Yeah, your defenses are worsening your positions here, Boo. I gave my major points of view earlier in this comments thread, but it upsets me that you want to believe that an increase in the Medicare entry age “won’t really bite very hard.” You’re so very, irretrievably wrong there, on both the policy and the politics.
That causes us to mistrust your other, correct points; “..a deal can only happen if (the GOP) get(s) some concessions..”, and because the Tea Partiers are stupid on policy, we can make some concessions which provide them the scalps they need but don’t bite too hard. Raising the Medicare age would BITE. HARD.
You may wish to allow that trial balloon to fill with helium and see it carry your retirement security and future health with it. We’re putting our knives in that balloon, and would prefer you join us. My trust in your judgement has soared in recent years, but not on this, no way.
Oh yeah, and major means testing on Medicare and SS benefits? The hell with that policy as well. That would change the image of the programs as welfare programs, things that poor people need. Most Americans hate poor people, so more major means testing would be puttings metaphorical bullets in every chamber, flexing the trigger finger, and placing the gun barrel in the mouths of SS/Medi.
Speaking of trial balloons, what would be the point of this one? We just had an election. There were plenty of polls done on how the public feels about cutting benefits for Medicare and Social Security. What will a trial balloon gain that won’t be offset by making the policy appear to have bipartisan support as opposed to being the brainchild of the 1% that it is? Why not instead brand Republicans as wanting to cut Medicare and use the OFA database to get the public to vociferously object?
We keep hearing that these loathsome ideas put out by Democrats are “trial balloons” and never ask ourselves “Why would they do that?”.
Dealing looks peachy keen when you don’t have a dog in the hunt.
There is no necessity for a deal before January.
And in January we will see if the political environment has changed.
Are you changing your analysis because the leadership is driving Democrats to a deal, regardless of its quality.
The GOP set up the automatic sequester. Their constituents can take the consequences of it. And if they want to shut down the government, better in January than having this political crisis continue to drag on.
Raising the retirement age only makes sense if the raise in the age does not occur for a decade and if the Democrats make sure there is a backlash against raising it such that that legislation can be reversed before it actually takes effect. Otherwise, it is just Kent Conrad, Ben Nelson, Mark Pryor, and other nutcakes in Congress enjoying making other people suffer so that they can be “moderate”.
At some point in order to have sane policies, you have to stop moving toward crazy.
If this is a White House trial balloon, the answer is “Hell No”. Enough of the capitulation. Let’s negotiate when Kent Conrad and Joe Lieberman are not around.
“I have also always maintained that the compromise won’t necessarily be all that painful.”
How painful would it be and at what point should Dems be drawing the line? That’s what should be driving the discussion IMHO. I can buy into giving the Repubs some kind of concession for optics, but I think Dems need to be more clever than this. Raising medicare age is really stupid policy and Dems need to amplify what some of the health care analysts point out. It would raise total overall costs:
I understand you’re just painting the 10,000 foot view of bargaining chips. And Obamacare would help fill the gap – albeit at a larger cost overall. Americans need to know that and it needs to be brought up in the negotiations. Repubs still shouldn’t be allowed to pretend that their position fixes shit.
This post has a faith in the meliorating effects of Obamacare and an expansion of Medicaid that from what I can see are unfounded.
First, there’s such an disconnect between what the government defines as financial hardship with what people actually experience that there’s no reason to believe that ACA subsidies will ever be adequate to make private insurance affordable.
Second, Medicaid recipients are very much at the mercy of their state governments. Booting people off Medicare (i.e. raising the eligibility age) is throwing millions of Americans to the winds.
Third, do you know how hard it is in many areas to find a good doctor who accepts new patients on Medicaid or Medicare?
Let’s see if your logic holds up in another scenario: let’s have a deal that raises taxes but that reduces spending by raising the age at which children enter public school to seven. For those families who can’t afford private education, we’ll give them subsidies.
“But I have also always maintained that the compromise won’t necessarily be all that painful. “
Kind of reminds me of the old joke that minor surgery is surgery being performed on someone else.
In this case it would appear to be your readers, well, at least those that buy into the innocuousness argument you’re making here.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2012/12/11/raising-medicare-age-could-leave-hundred
s-of-thousands-uninsured/
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2012/12/03/raising-medicares-age-saves-feds-5-7-bill
ion-costs-you-11-4-billion/?wprss=rss_ezra-klein
and of course, that doesn’t even cover the many and varied reason why considering it before other options is unjust.
http://americablog.com/2012/12/cut-medicare-republican-tax-cuts-iraq.html
Judge it in its “totality” indeed. Wouldn’t that include consideration of the reasons why we’re in this position to begin with.
Gee, I’ve “known for a long time now”, and I didn’t need John Edwards to make his “Two America’s” case to know, that this has all been by design and has been a part of the class warfare launched by Saint Raygun decades ago. That’s the “political reality” to be judged “in its totality”.
Quite frankly I think you “thinkers” are doing your “thinking” in a very fragmented fashion, at least in the way you evaluate things in isolation from one another, which blinds you to the big picture and the potential ramifications of what you propose. For example, if BHO succeeeds in raising the retirement age, I’d suggest we’re talking about a great deal of public outrage resulting in the further and significant erosion in the already waning trust in government many already have, particularly in regards to who they are working for.
This won’t be seen as the product of brains arguing with the brainless, but rather just another concrete example of the good cop/bad cop, faux duopoly, janus-like condition DC has fallen into since the fascist/corporatist-lite days of Bill Clinton, that I’ve argued “for a long time” now it is.
Support all the capitulation you want, but I’d suggest you’re gonna find yourself in the minority on the left side of the aisle. As those of us who have been paying attention know, this would be every bit as much the product of a long desired goal on the part of BHO as anything else, http://www.tinyrevolution.com/mt/archives/000867.html the current hostage-taking on the part of rightwingnuts is only providing cover for.
This is precisely why so many of us have difficulties with participation in politics — it’s ALWAYS the choice between the lesser of two evils.
“One advantage we have is that we know what we want and we have a much better understanding of the real world implications of various policy changes than the Republicans do.”
Sorry, I’m going to quibble with this. The people running the Republican Party have a very good idea of the real world consequences of their policies-they will make rich get richer and the hell with the rest. They are the party of the aristocracy. It’s the GOP base that has no understanding they are being used for that purpose.