The more that I inspect the 2014 outlook for sequestration, the more I believe that incumbent lawmakers will take an absolute pounding in the midterms if they don’t spend a lot more money. People are going to be furious.
Yes, to a large degree, there will be a blame game between the two parties, but I think it will be about why we can’t spend more money, not less. In particular, the hit to military readiness will be hard for Republicans to explain, even to their own base. And how can the Republicans plausibly argue that they haven’t fixed the sequester because the Democrats were unwilling to compromise?
They keep thinking that budget negotiations are a trap that will force them to increase revenues. I think that they desperately need that trap. The consequences of their ideology and of losing the presidential election are rapidly coming to a head.
I think the simplest way of looking at this is that the government is almost to the point where it will simply start breaking. Airports won’t be able to operate. Military divisions won’t be able to deploy. Massive inefficiencies will develop and become obvious. Manpower issues will make it hard to certify the safety of food, mines, and bridges. The government is no position to meet it’s legal obligations with the sequester level of funding in 2014.
Money cannot be moved around anymore.
So, once again, we can have a functional majority in the House, but it can’t be a Republican majority. These next six months are going to be messed up.
“And how can the Republicans plausibly argue that they haven’t fixed the sequester because the Democrats were unwilling to compromise? “
Why the plausibility requirement all of a sudden? Their arguments are never plausible.
Good question.
Well yes, I fully expect Paul Ryan to present a plan that “fixes” the sequester with a combination of budget cuts and tax cuts. The problem is that it’s going to be increasingly difficult for even halfwits to take the Republicans seriously.
Of course it would be nice if we could get rid of the term “sequester” and call it what it is: a bunch of massive and arbitrary budget cuts. Not, in other words, the kind of thing we can cut our way out of.
Beat me to it. Plausability has never been a requirement.
How will they explain it to their base? Lies, of course, as usual, spouted as truth.
“government is almost to the point where it will simply start breaking. Airports won’t be able to operate. Military divisions won’t be able to deploy. Massive inefficiencies will develop and become obvious. Manpower issues will make it hard to certify the safety of food, mines, and bridges. The government is no position to meet it’s legal obligations with the sequester level of funding in 2014.”
Ted Cruz & Co.: “Great! I told you we could do it!”
Freedom, baby! Finally coming to America!! Freedom to choose if you want to eat that cheaper, non-inspected food. Or if you want to pay extra to that private company to put that “INSPECTED” seal on it.
You miners want to make a living wage? Then volunteer to work in that mine that your employer “assures you” is safe, but they still force you to sign a waiver before you start work that the company isn’t liable for anything that happens to you. Want to work in mine that is guaranteed to meet those onerous safety and health requirements? Weeeelllll…..you’re going to have to settle for a much lower wage. After all, the company has to pay for those safety and health upgrades from some pool of money. Turns out, if you want it, you have to subsidize it. FREEDOM, after all!!
Want safe bridges in your county or state? Well, we can’t have people who rarely drive over those bridges pay for them. So I guess you’re just going to have to pay that toll or fee to that private company whose job it is to inspect them and make sure they are structurally sound. Of course, when it isn’t, then you have to pay for replacement out of the tolls collected for that particular bridge. Not enough money in the fund? Guess your community needs to find a way to pool their money, then. Oh, by the way. Any extra tolls collected and which accrue above and beyond what is needed for expenditures, well….that goes to the private company as a sort of “finders fee” to cover their overhead. They, after all, have to make a profit. Because, well……FREEDOM!!! What do you think this is, the Soviet Union???? China???
The Tea Party dream world, Coming to your neighborhood, if Cruz and his buddies get their way.
Perhaps food inspection is one of those things that could be handled by private companies, but only if the other Republican dream of tort “reform” doesn’t take place.
If potential lawsuits were going to cut significantly into profits, in the absence of government inspectors, it would make sense for the food industry to employ private inspectors. Either that, or they wouldn’t be able to get liability insurance unless they did. The system probably wouldn’t work all that differently from what is in place now, except for who issues the inspectors’ paychecks.
Take away the threat of multi-million dollar lawsuits, though, and it wouldn’t be pretty.
Remember the days, folks, when the people in Congress used to pride themselves on the earmarks – aka: pork – that they were able to bring back to their states and districts?
Now, the Republicans in Congress take pride in denying earmarks – aka: pork – not only for other states and districts, but in not wanting to accept anything from the Federal government for their own states and districts, as if that money was tainted with the plague, or something.
This is no way to run a representative democracy.
Hell, it’s not even the way to run a semi-functional Banana Republic!
Now, the Republicans in Congress take pride in denying earmarks – aka: pork – not only for other states and districts, but in not wanting to accept anything from the Federal government for their own states and districts, as if that money was tainted with the plague, or something.
Can’t this be done through the normal appropriations process? I guess that would mean they’d have to plan ahead and they show no ability to do that beyond planning to throw sand in the gears.
And again, things will get done at the last minute.
The more that I inspect the 2014 outlook for sequestration, the more I believe that incumbent lawmakers will take an absolute pounding in the midterms if they don’t spend a lot more money.
If you’re right about this it means a lot of incumbent Democrats will get tossed out as well.
Not if they’re actively pushing to rebuild the government while the Republicans are still trying to drown it in the bathtub. Even more than in 2012, they seem determined to turn the midterms into a referendum on whether we should demolish the federal government.
I have to wonder what public support is to dissolve Congress and just function on executive plebicite every 4 years.
At this point, putting Republicans in charge of government makes about as much sense as putting PETA in charge of Hormel.
Putting Hormel in charge of the zoo might be a better analogy.
The Republicans will ultimately be grateful for the coalition of Democrats and 80 or so Republicans who are willing to take a hit for making the tough choices they, themselves, cannot make. Call it governing by subterfuge.
The Chamber of Commerce and other business interests had better step up with money to protect the coalition of the sane because, if more than one or two of those 80 get successfully primaried and the Democrats fail to retake the House, the country will be SCREWED.
“Government is almost to the point where it will simply start breaking”
This is a feature, not a bug to them.
You just don’t get it. Destroying the government in favor of a corporate oligarchy is, and has been their aim since the conservative ‘revolt’ started.
Why the HELL do you think that the Koch’s have poured billions of dollars into the Right Wing Puke Funnel? So they can own the country afterwards.
Or they strike Social Security.
There is not going to be a grand bargain with the tea baggers as they have nothing to trade. SS, medicare, and ACA are safe as the tea baggers wasted all their leverage on a combined shut down/debt ceiling gamble. So yeah, we are at the end of the road…Obama has successfully illiminated the tea baggers from the budget process. They can vote NO and it will only have meaning to their shrinking base.
They are not safe as long as Durbin and Obama are in office. Did you notice that SS cuts were in Obama’s budget? And that Durbin reiterated the call to cut SS last week? And that Obama’s economic adviser called for SS and Medicare cuts just a few days ago?
You know Sperling is leaving the White House staff, right? Maybe there’s a reason for that? In the meantime, Gene has served his purpose by alerting us to watch the Administration closely and to shoot down his trial balloon with extreme prejudice.
I’ll repeat: Obama’s 2013 budget includes NO cuts to Americans who have Medicare or Medicaid insurance.
As far as Obama and Durbin on Social Security: yes, they are leaving us open to accepting real cuts. But Majority Leader Reid is telling them and the Republicans to pound sand, so we just need to help Harry make that stand with the Senate Dem caucus.
Boy, does this guy have the number of our Conservative enablers on the so-called-left….If Obamacare — built on means-testing, privatizing and decentralization to the states — is treated by progressives as the greatest liberal public policy success in the last half-century, then how will progressives be able to argue against proposals by conservative Republicans and center-right neoliberal Democrats to means-test, privatize and decentralize Social Security and Medicare in the years ahead?
LOL. That argument is already out there among our leaders. And their explainers.
From the essay by M Lind. http://www.salon.com/2013/10/28/what_the_tea_party_misses_if_you_hate_obamacare_youll_really_hate_wh
at_the_right_wants_to_do_to_social_security/
“If Obamacare — built on means-testing, privatizing and decentralization to the states…”.
Amusing selection. Obamacare is also built on regulating the hell out of the health insurance industry, creating substantial funding shifts within the health care provider system which increase access to sub-acute care, and giving tens of millions of Americans the ability to gain both public and private health insurance by subsidizing their options. Too bad those attributes don’t fit into your “Both Sides Do It” frame.
And this part: “…how will progressives be able to argue against proposals by conservative Republicans and center-right neoliberal Democrats to means-test, privatize and decentralize Social Security and Medicare in the years ahead?”
How many Congressional Democrats support doing these things? Yes, Senator Durbin wanders off the reservation on SS regularly, and the President continues to offer Chained-CPI. But where are all these “center-right neoliberal Democrats”? I want names.
Are there enough to create a majority in the Senate for SS/Medi cuts to beneficiaries? I don’t see it, particularly with Harry Reid shitcanning the very idea. Should we make noise to help prevent that from happening? HELL YES. But what many progressives claim on threads like this make me believe the effect of all this misinformed gloom and mistrust will be to depress the base instead of firing it up.
Mainly, I’m just offended by all the misinformation. Total misinformation is for TEA Partiers and FOX News. Let’s try to keep our side of the political street cleaner than theirs.
Obamacare is also built on regulating the hell out of the health insurance industry, ..
Are you serious? I’m sure Liz Fowler was going to hurt the employer she left, and soon went back to after helping right the law.
Guaranteed issue with no denial for pre-existing conditions. No retroactive denial of claims or unilateral cancellation. No more junk insurance. Requirement to spend at least 80% of payments from plan beneficiaries on actual medical care, something so out of habit for these insurers that a few of them suffered the embarrassment of having to cut rebate checks to their customers when they violated the 80% standard. Yearly caps on out-of-pocket payments for policy holders, pro-rated by income level. End of lifetime caps. I could go on.
Why, exactly, do you think that there are people on the other side of this policy fight who hate the ACA with the heat of a thousand suns? If it was truly some massive, complete corporate victory, why are conservatives reacting the way they are?
I found it a credible look at how the nature of decentralized programs might be engineered under neo-liberalism. I keep hearing from people that the poor will not be injured by proposed changes to SS. That is not “my” concern, though it would be mighty useful to me personally, God knows.
My concern is that were are turning our backs on the New Deal structures that were centralized, uniform through the states, easily administrated by civil servants, and that efficiently used our resources.
Why are we buying the conservative playbook on designing the functions of government? Look at the POS that contracting has created in NSA. Look at the waste and abuse of forcing the DoD to contract the in-house jobs it performed right up to Bush’s bonanza.
There has been zero pushback on this that I am aware of. Where is our Harry Truman for this period? To draw a bright line between the professionalism of civil servants and the profiteering of contractors? Are government benefits so onerous that we go along with the destruction of a professional class that did the work with quiet efficiency? And, as a side bennie, helped to establish/standardise a middle income group.
I see conservatives losing elections, but their economic ideas are the only ones being discussed, except by a few. I see progressives eager to get out there on social issues, but silent on minimum wage (unless they can use it in the states to raise turn out). Where is card check? Our labor policies are sooo bad nationally that municipalities are doing a better job for their people.
We, Dems in Congress, ourselves cut Food Stamps in our budget. That should be nationalized and taken out of the hands of the states who abuse the hell out of the very purpose of it. Anyone talking about that?
Any talk about re-addressing Welfare? You know how many homeless school children there are out there?
We don’t even talk about progressive economic issues, we spend every minute talking in conservative frames. We should by rights have them back on their heels, instead it seems to be us, always reacting.
To answer your charge of misinformation, perhaps another article on the subject would make my point clearer.
Roosevelt Institute blog just published a neat chart of the differences between the two approaches. See which one you think yields a better product.
http://www.nextnewdeal.net/rortybomb/what-kind-problem-aca-rollout-liberalism
Then ask yourself which side do current Dem leaders seem to favor? Hmmm?
“Better product” and “what was politically possible in 2010” must be made to intersect at some point, right?
The New Deal and Great Society programs were passed by megalandslide newly elected Presidents and their preposterous Congressional Democratic superdupermajorities. If we want the idealized Column B from the linked opinion piece, then we need to listen to the President’s recent admonishment to the other side and win a bunch of elections.
We had exactly 60 Democratic votes in the Senate for a few months in 2010. Those were the only moments we could overcome the Republican filibuster. Some of our policy preferences were subsumed to the ideologies and whims of Senators Baucus, Lincoln, Lieberman, Nelson and others- we needed every single Dem. There was also the search for Republican votes, which led to many unfortunate amendments.
We can criticize that search, but it represented a reasonable approach under previous precedent. I can’t think of a post-1865 Senate that has been as hyperpolarized as the one we’ve had since 2009, and the ACA became the center of that polarization. That was not an assured outcome, even with McConnell’s famous proclamation. Mitch and his leadership team had to hold all 40 of their Senators, and they did.
To pretend that all of the above did not happen, to pretend that the ACA and other policy successes and pursuits represented all the policy preferences of the President, Majority Leader and then-Speaker is insulting in its historical ignorance.
I’ll have more in a little bit. Just color me extremely unpersuaded in the meantime, and let me ask you this: is the ACA preferable to the previous status quo?
We seem to be arguing apples and oranges.
Both of the articles I have referenced are cautionary. They cast a cold eye at ACA because it is an elephant straining at a gnat.
How can you know that Medicare for all, if it had ever been proposed initially, instead of at the end of the process when everyone was furious at one another and JL stuck his thumb in the Dem’s eye for their troubles in keeping him in the caucus.
Instead we have this ponderous, hamstrung, 50-types-of nightmare creature to deal with that may never manage to save us a cent, given all the may-not-do’s that are incorporated in it. If a few states can wring single payer out of it, it will be a blessing.
So yeah, color me unimpressed by the process, for sure. I know, as crippled as it is, it will help us limp along with our special-unique system that no one else would have as a gift. And I speak as one who has never been able to have insurance as an adult, and living in Texas, probably have scant chance. Why do you think guns are so important in red states? It happens more often than you might think.
Yes, the articles are critical of ACA, but that is NOT the point they are making. They are critical of the design complexity required to incorporate the PRIVATE sector in a task better left to a simple government-administered safety net program. And for no other reason than to satisfy the artificial need to create a “market” solution. I guess in the faint hope of shutting up Republicans.
The writers could just as easily have picked Arnie Duncan’s education initiatives to introduce competition in public schools as their poster child for inefficient solutions that strain to insert market forces ahead of the actual job that needs to be done.
The legislative process in Congress cannot be separated from the politics. I have no earthly idea how anyone could have expected otherwise.
My memory is that because the ACA needed to go through Sen. Baucus’ Health Committee, there was basically no way that the Senate process could seriously consider starting with single payer. This follows a long history of Congress’ Committee Chairs holding significant influence on what legislation gets considered; that history predates the ACA discussions. And let’s face it, with Dem Senators like Nebraska’s ex-top health insurance executive Ben Nelson, we were never going to have 60 votes in the Senate for single payer even if the Committees passed out something cleaner.
This part, aaargh: “…Instead we have this ponderous, hamstrung, 50-types-of nightmare creature to deal with that may never manage to save us a cent…”. Statements like this make me furious.
Since you seem to be unwilling to address what the premise of my posting concerned, allow me not to address yours.
Are you perfectly happy to see Medicaid, which began as a federal program and devolved to the state governments, start to be privatized? So that money that should go to the neediest, goes instead to private pockets. So states can set absurd standards? Such as Alabama’s $3,222 cap for benefits.
If Republican leaders in some of the several States inefficiently using Medicaid money through privatization or other schemes, their states will be at a competitive disadvantage and Republicans should be blamed. It’s loony to blame “Conservative enablers on the so-called left” for that, or for the Super Stupid refusal of many Republican-controlled States to refuse to accept Medicaid expansion at all. Refusing the full funding of the expansion wasn’t an option in the original law; Chief Justice Roberts (not a leftist!) did that.
There’s this view that is being developed in your posts that suggests Medicaid money is block-granted through the ACA’s eligibility expansion. That is not true. States must show that they are meeting standards of providing health care for Medicaid-eligible citizens. Using your example here, if Alabama fails to provide comprehensive evidence they are meeting the requirements of the Medicaid program, they will lose Medicaid money.
Tens of millions of Americans will gain health insurance through the ACA. There were compromises necessary to achieve that. I want to improve on the law and make it the simpler program you desire. However, if we had taken the attitude that it was single payer or nothing, we would have gotten nothing and more people would have been denied care and thrown into financial ruin for a longer period of time.
The “Plan A/Plan B” choice your link placed earlier sticks in the craw in its refusal to deal with the details of governing. First of all, Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid started out as shadows of the programs they have become; they were improved upon over time, as we should improve upon the ACA. Was FDR a “so-called leftist” because, in order to get Dixiecrats to vote for the law creating Social Security, he allowed eligibility rules which almost completely blocked minorities from gaining SS benefits?
Secondly and most importantly to the theme, you write as if, for example, Senator Baucus views himself as a leader of the leftist movement, or that anyone else believes he is. Since the Republican Party has flown off the rails, we were limited in the ACA by what the very worst Democrats in the Senate was willing to support. Let’s improve the ACA; I agree we should. That requires we preserve the law as we build upon it, and that’s harder to do when people on the right AND left attack it as a worthless piece of shit. It angers me when the attacks from the left make claims that are not sustained by the facts.
All the Democrats have to do is keep chanting Medicare and Social Security are off the table and they will win. But if and as soon as they say they’re willing to consider them the Republicans and their media mouthpieces will declare that the Dems are making them do it.
Explain to me exactly what “military readiness” is and how you can read it from a budget for the national security institutions. From what I can tell it’s an empty talking point used to beat more money for the military and intelligence establishment from Congress.
Because…when the GOP sent troops into Afghanistan and Iraq the fact that there multiple tours with short recovery periods and there was the failure to send up-armored Humvees showed that it was the military that did not understand readiness, not the Clinton administration that asked them to be ready for a two-regional-war situation. The military is still sinking money into the F-35 and other “job creators” unrelated to any strict ideas of readiness. If jobs are the issue, civilian infrastructure jobs will deliver more long-term benefits that additional waste in the military.
As far as I can tell unless someone can put up the data, the national security institutions can take a whole lot more cuts than the $55 billion in the current schedule. And I think that both President Obama and Chuck Hagel have the smarts to figure out where to take those cuts with actually affect the ability to defend the US. It requires the sort of strategic shift that the President (according to the NY Times) is currently making in disengaging somewhat from meddling in the Middle East.
It will be very interesting to see how the GOP spins their points in order to assign blame. Most of what they’ve been saying has been, compared to other efforts, pretty lame. They are having a hard time getting what they want and spinning the results.
Of course, the big strategic kahuna for them is transparently to get the Democrats to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. It’s not about ideology; it’s about depressing turnout in the Democratic base. It will be very easy for Democrats to dodge that bullet as long as they don’t listen to Village conventional wisdom.
Huh? Obama is one of the biggest advocates for cutting Social Security and Medicare. (Since the ACA significantly raised expanded Medicaid, not sure he can now put it on the table for cuts.) Once again, Social Security and Medicare Part A are collective insurance programs and NOT entitlements. Obama is either ignorant or a lying capitalist lackey for calling them “entitlements” and that benefits cuts are necessary.
So, we know well the Chained-CPI cut that the President has proposed for Social Security. Agreed: unhappy. Obama is the leader of the Party, but he is not THE Party. Reid has been very vocal in saying that he will use his Senate leadership to oppose cuts to beneficiaries of SS/Medi/Medi. That’s important, no?
And here’s where I get a little irritated with my fellow liberals/progressives. OBAMA is also opposed to cuts to Medicare beneficiaries. The cuts the ACA made to Medicare Advantage serve to take away a sop to insurance companies. They PRESERVE the financial viability of Medicare.
As far as the President’s cuts to Medicare/Medicaid moving forward, look at this summary of his 2013 budget proposal.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/11/us/politics/obamas-budget-cuts-focus-on-medicare-medicaid-and-mili
tary.html?_r=0
See any benefit cuts to those who are insured by Medicare/Medicaid? No, we don’t, because there are none. So just stop with the misinformed slurs directed toward our President.
Excuse me, but you’re defending “our President’s” rhetoric that advocates cuts to Social Security because the Senate majority leader says that’s not going to happen?
Obama does also continue to advocate for cuts to Medicare. (Note I didn’t include, and specifically excluded, Medicaid in my criticism. So, you lose debate points for claiming that I did.) It’s just that he expects that to happen through the magic of the ACA.
From Dr. Margaret Flowers:
To date, Medicare Advantage on a per beneficiary basis has cost more than traditional Medicare. But the insurance companies are now promising that it will be different if they control more of this piece. “Fool me once, ….”
A liberal or progressive that supports private insurance companies taking over any portion of Medicare isn’t a liberal or progressive.
I’m not sure how my “Agreed: unhappy” turned into your representation that I’m defending our President. Your earlier pull quote referenced the Democrats, and I’m merely pointing out that the positions of the President and the controlling leaders and groups of Congressional Democrats are not the same on SS; nor are they identical on other issues. Interesting use of scare quotes, by the way. He is our President, even when a position or positions of his makes us unhappy.
I mentioned Medicare and Medicaid because the story I linked mentioned cuts to the expenditures for Medicare and Medicaid programs. I wanted to make sure people actually read the details so they could absorb that these are NOT cuts to benefit levels or increases in out-of-pocket costs to the recipients of these insurance plans.
I question the criticism of the ACA re. Medicare Advantage. The “cuts to Medicare” created in the ACA directly address the very issue you describe here: they cut the payments to private insurers for Medicare Advantage plans. The claim here that “the Obama Administration boosted payment to the Advantage plans” is a claim I need to see justified in official numbers, not in generalized polemical narratives without citations like Dr. Flowers’.
Here’s the bottom line: if the ACA is such a sellout disaster, why is it that the total cost of health care in the United States, which had been rising at nearly double-digit percentages for many, many years before the ACA, has flattened down to a little over 4% in each of the last two years?