Anyone watching the election campaign picked up pretty fast on the fact that Donald Trump has no real policy beliefs or understanding of the policy process, but rather relies on emotive slogans and the insights of whomever is momentarily ascendant among his inner group of sycophants. We’ve gleaned from bits and pieces of what he has told folks that he doesn’t intend to get his hands dirty with actual presidential work. Which means that when it comes to policy, we’re likely going to be dealing with co-presidents-in-all-but-title, Paul Ryan and Mike Pence.

And for House Speaker Ryan that means that he may finally have the means to put the social safety net out of the misery the GOP has tried to inflict on it over the years. It looks like Medicare is going to get the ax first. As TPM reports, Ryan has “proposed to privatize the current Medicare system, within the earliest days of the impending Trump administration.”

Ryan’s hoping to phase out our highly efficient Medicare insurance system in favor of a voucher system which, in the long term, is not likely to cover the cost of buying comprehensive insurance in an uncontrolled private market. Though Ryan touts the savings to be realized from privatizing Medicare, economics journalist Michael Hiltzik shows that that the savings would be “illusory,” with costs “shifted from government to seniors.”

Ryan’s new strategy seems to be to phase Medicare out as part of the process of fulfilling The Donald’s promise to kill Obamacare. Ryan’s already started a propaganda blitz tying the two together as part of a deceptively titled “reform.” As Hitzlick points out:

Ryan has surrounded his Medicare proposal with a bodyguard of lies. In his Fox News appearance, he said Medicare is “going broke” and ascribed its problems to the Affordable Care Act. Neither is true.

Medicare faces fiscal problems, but it’s not going broke, and according to both the Medicare trustees and the Congressional Budget Office, the Affordable Care Act has in fact alleviated those problems rather than caused them. The trustees reported in 2010 that passage of Obamacare had postponed the projected exhaustion date of the Medicare trust fund by 12 years — to 2029 from 2017. Projections of Medicare spending growth have consistently come down, year after year, at least in part due to changes in the program imposed through Obamacare.

The program’s fiscal situation would be “substantially improved,” the trustees said, because the ACA instituted new cost controls and provided new tax revenues for the program. Both those features would disappear if the GOP repeals the ACA, as is its intention.

Voila – Ryan guts Medicare while simultaneously deep-sixing another of the social welfare programs so despised by Republicans.

But Ryan can’t do this all on his lonesome, you say – and you’re right. It’ll take a majority of the congress to make it happen, but, with Republicans dominant in both houses, he has a very good chance. And don’t forget, he’s got The Donald.

So, comes the next question. How does our Missouri congressional delegation stand on the issue of killing the Medicare program?

Fortunately for us, Danielle Keeton-Olsen of TPM is keeping a list (and updating it regularly) of who’s naughty and nice. And so far, none of our Missouri delegation is definitely on either list. Instead, the two who’ve been contacted to date, GOP Senator Roy Blunt and Rep. Sam Graves (R-6), are listed with those who have refused to commit either way or, as Keeton-Olsen wryly notes, claim they didn’t even know it was an issue. Yeah, right.

Blunt has been on record as opposing Medicare in the past, although he has also tried to pose as a savior of aspects of the program when it has been expedient. If his past behavior is any indicator, he will hem and haw and say nothing as long as he can, and then come down firmly on the side of the GOP Senate leadership of which he is a junior member. The guy knows where his bread is buttered, and we know what that means as far as Medicare goes. And I would guess that Sam Graves isn’t going to go to any great lengths to save Medicare either since he voted yes on an earlier Ryan Budget that included the same privatization plan.

If, like me, you’re concerned about your Medicare and whether or not the program will be around for your children and their children – and there’s no objective, fiscal reason it should not be – call or write your congressmen or women today to find out where they stand and let them know where you stand.

Making your point of view known will be especially important when it comes to our only Democratic Senator, Claire McCaskill. The Senate may well be our only bulwark against Ryan’s attack on Medicare, and Senator McCaskill, who now finds herself representing a blood-red constituency, has never been a profile in courage. She’s up for re-election in two years. We’ve got to let her know that if she doesn’t defend Medicare with all she’s got, this time we really won’t forget.

Meanwhile, you can check TPM for updates – and also consider letting them know what you find out when/if you call your congressman or woman by using the “Send Comments & News Tips” link on the TPM Masthead. And I’ll update here on SMP as I learn more about the Medicare druthers of our shy Missouri pols.

That’s so republican.

In 2011:

Health Care Front Group Provides New Clothes for GOP Medicare Privatization Plan
By Wendell Potter on September 25, 2011 – 9:37pm

If you think Rep. Paul Ryan’s plan to privatize Medicare is dead, think again.

Last week, the insurance industry and its allies began what I predict will be a massive campaign to sell the public and policymakers on the idea of moving forward with the Ryan plan — albeit with a few tweaks and new a new sales pitch to make it seem more consumer-friendly.

An outfit called the Healthcare Leadership Council (HLC) announced in a press release a scheme that could be called Ryan-lite, but don’t be fooled: the plan would — to use a favorite industry term — take us down the “slippery slope” toward a complete corporate takeover of the Medicare program. (Insurers and their allies for years have warned Americans that enacting sweeping health care reforms they don’t like would lead us down the slippery slope toward socialism.)

After Ryan unveiled his Medicare privatization plan earlier this year, there was such widespread criticism that it briefly became a political liability for the Republicans.

The GOP-controlled House of Representatives approved the plan, which would replace the existing Medicare program with vouchers that beneficiaries could use to buy coverage from private insurance. But Ryan’s blueprint never made it out of the Senate. It’s not hard to figure out why: the vouchers would have required most future Medicare recipients — many of whom like today’s recipients will be on fixed incomes — to pay far more out of their own pockets for coverage than in the existing government-run program.

I wrote at the time that the Ryan plan had the strong support of private health insurers, who would like nothing more than to have the federal government hand the Medicare program over to them. The congressman’s proposal would represent a vast new revenue stream guaranteeing profits forever….

You think you’d get more and better health care for your dollar under that system?

Today, via Twitter from Representative Vicky Hartzler (r), sworn enemy of affordable healthcare in the form of that evil socialist Obamacare and those other icky socialist health programs:

Rep. Vicky Hartzler ‏@RepHartzler
Honored to be named a “Champion of a Healthcare Innovation” by @HealthInFocus today at the #HLCExpo [….] 10:37 AM – 3 Nov 2015

Wait, the organization which gave Representative Hartzler (r) their “healthcare innovation” award is the same one that is shopping now Speaker Paul Ryan’s (r) bogus Medicare privatization scheme? How convenient. That’s like the Bank Robber’s Guild giving a bank teller their “Most Courteous and Efficient at Facilitating Large Withdrawals from a Depository” award.

My introduction to the Tea Party involved a Town Hall meeting where several Tea Party seniors were waving signs inscribed “Save our Medicare.” They had been told – and believed – that the goal of Obamacare was to take their Medicare away from them to pay for healthcare for undeserving poor, probably black, folks. That was when I understood that this was not a movement that merited respect.

This impression has been borne out over the last few years as the GOP, which was the sole beneficiary of misinformed Tea Party ardor, has, sometimes subtly, sometimes blatantly, gone after Medicare while basking in the support of the predominantly middle- and senior-aged Tea Partiers. Although Missouri Senator Roy Blunt, for example, has never exactly been a Tea Party favorite, he gets their votes. This is the same Roy Blunt who has voted again and again for Republican budgets that would voucherize Medicare while shifting much of the cost onto the shoulders of the recipients. Almost all GOP members of the Missouri House delegation, overtly Tea Party or not, have also consistently voted to support Paul Ryan’s proposed budget plans, all of which seek to voucherize or otherwise decimate Medicare under the rubric of “reform.”

Now one of the leading GOP presidential candidates, Jeb Bush, has put the issue on the table front and foremost, proposing to “phase out” Medicare. How does he plan to sell this “phase out”? By persuading the gullible that the Medicare sky is falling. Medicare, he claims, is too expensive and will eventually run out of money. Bear in mind that Bush, as Governor of Florida, went all out to cut taxes for the wealthy. It’s no wonder that he can’t imagine that Medicare solvency could be addressed from the revenue side – that’s not the Republican way; instead GOPers all want to reform it out of existence.

Nor, as a Republican, can Bush acknowledge the fact that savings realized through Obamacare have added years to Medicare’s stability, ensuring that the program is financially secure through 2030 – and proving that there are better ways to address the future of the program than to destory it through privatization. Ironic isn’t it? Medicare-baiting was a major mechanism used to rile up Tea Party seniors against Obamacare; now it looks like Obamacare is adding years to Medicare’s solvency. The voice of the Tea Party, the Republican Party, won’t “Save our Medicare,” but Obamacare might help us reach that goal.

 

It had to happen. The disaster unfolding in Greece is just too susceptible to over-simplification not to be seized upon by Republicans looking to go after Medicare and Social Security. First up in Missouri? Why none other than that astute economic thinker, Rep. Billy Long (R-7), who had this to say on the topic:

… . With the events in Greece this week, it is hard not to think about our own debt crisis.

Currently, the U.S. national debt stands near $18.3 trillion. To put that in context, the total size of the U.S. economy is $17.7 trillion. It is frightening to think our nation’s debt outpaces our economic activity; and, even worse, China holds 30 percent of our debt and counting. As the interest we pay on our debt continues to increase, I am concerned we may be on a similar path as Greece, which has debt close to double the size of its economy. That is why my colleagues and I are committed to sound fiscal solutions to curb America’s rising debt.

[…]

Reducing our spending, creating a balanced budget and responsibly continuing deficit reduction are the steps to take to reduce our debt, and I believe we are getting off on the right foot. Our next move should be concerning reforms must focus on Medicare, Social Security and entitlement programs. [Emphasis added.]

This refrain has been sporadically played on the right since 2010 – and none of the predictions of debt-related disaster have been realized. There are a number of reasons why the U.S. is not nor never will be like Greece (for instance, see here, here, or here).

While Long is right about the fact that the ratio of debt to GDP in the U.S. is very high, he, like many other Republican fear-mongers making the same claim, are wrong about the conclusions to be drawn from that fact. Many are still citing past research purporting to show that a high debt-to-GDP ratio damages economic growth. This research has been shown to be incorrect, and, in addition, there are many examples of countries that have a high debt level while enjoying respectable economic growth. One need look no farther than our own economy which in spite of our high debt-to-GDP ratio has also been enjoying sound economic growth.

Of course, one should also bear in mind that high as our debt is, it has shown little increase relative to other developed countries over the past eight years. The debt represents the sum of each yearly deficit and the $18 trillion debt Long cites includes the deficits from the period 2000-2007, when the debt was growing at its fastest rate ever. It includes the cost of the Bush war and the Bush financial implosion in 2008. In the past few years, deficits have been shrinking which helps to constrain the growth of the debt.

But more importantly, if Long seriously wants to cut the deficit and, hence, the debt, he is taking the wrong lesson from Greece and the European Union. Cutting spending hurts; it doesn’t help. As Daniel W. Drezner notes in the Washington Post:

As 2015 unfolds, the U.S. economy continues to rebound and the Eurozone economy continues to… not do that. So you would think that the debate over the merits of austerity would have been settled. After all the United States deployed expansionary fiscal and monetary policies for a longer time than Europe, with a more modest switch back to austerity after 2010. The Eurozone abandoned fiscal stimulus pretty early, the European Central Bank prematurely raised interest rates, and the result is an an economy that is underperforming the Great Depression.

Why in the face of the evidence would any one sincerely interested in the public good want to impose more austerity on the U.S? We seen how the actual austerian experiments have played out and, in spite of European persistence, the picture is not pretty – except, perhaps, for Germany where exports have been enhanced by the currency controls imposed on the rest of Europe.

Finally, Long’s insertion of the Chinese spectre into the argument can only be intended to spike the same fear of national decline and loss of dominance as the Greek comparison, neither of which is justified by the facts. Long is dead wrong about Chinese influence and the imagined threat it poses. He can’t even get the numbers right. China does not hold 30% of our debt. It is the largest foreign investor in U.S. debt, but, overall, only 34% of U.S. debt is held by all international investors together. In fact, a similar amount, 28%, is held by the U.S. government itself.

All of which is to say, Long, like his GOP confrères, is full of it. His spiel represents just one more dishonest way to go after government programs that Republicans have always loathed. Take a complex subject, make it simple, add a few few buzzwords, spin it according to ideology, and presto-bingo, you’ve created a curtain behind which to go after government that works for all its citizens, not just the wealthy big spenders who call the shots for Republicans. Billy Long is, as usual, just regurgitating predigested talking points, but don’t doubt that we’ll be hearing lots of the same type of talk during the coming weeks as GOPers seek to make their vendetta against Social Security, Medicare, and now Obamacare, sound respectable.

Senator Roy Blunt (r), via Twitter today:

Senator Roy Blunt ‏@RoyBlunt

The Obama Admin broke its promise to millions of seniors by cutting Medicare Advantage payments to pay for #ObamaCare. 6:55 PM – 21 Feb 2014

The White House response:

Jesse Lee ‏@jesseclee44 1h

Guess what? He voted for it http://www.senate.gov/legislat… … http://nyti.ms/1c97qoC  MT @RoyBlunt: Obama broke promise to seniors on Medicare Advantage 7:29 PM – 21 Feb 2014

From March 2013:

House G.O.P. Plans a Budget That Retains Tax Increases and Medicare Cuts

By JONATHAN WEISMAN

Published: March 6, 2013

WASHINGTON – House Republicans will preserve Medicare cuts that their presidential nominee loudly denounced last year and accept tax increases they sternly opposed just months ago in a new tax-and-spending blueprint that would bring the federal budget into balance by 2023, senior Republicans said Wednesday.

….Also, Mr. Ryan offered tempered praise for the cuts to Medicare that helped finance the Affordable Care Act, cuts that he denounced as his party’s vice-presidential nominee but that will help him avoid subjecting people older than 55 to his Medicare changes. “Because of Obamacare, you have – for a moment in time – lower Medicare spending rates,” he said.

With higher taxes, Medicare cuts and an unexpected slowdown in health care spending, budget experts say the House budget needs only about $100 billion in additional cuts toward the end of the decade.

In Mr. Ryan’s last two budgets, he also banked the $716 billion in Medicare cuts for the health law for deficit reduction, but when the Republican presidential nominee, Mitt Romney, attacked the president for those cuts and pledged to restore that money, Mr. Ryan fell in line….

Fancy that. The vote in the Senate:

Vote Summary

Question: On the Amendment (Murray Amdt. No. 433)

Vote Number: 46 Vote Date: March 21, 2013, 08:36 PM

Required For Majority: 1/2 Vote Result: Amendment Rejected

Amendment Number: S.Amdt. 433 to S.Con.Res. 8 (No short title on file)

Statement of Purpose: To amend the resolution.

[….]

Missouri:

Blunt (R-MO), Yea

McCaskill (D-MO), Nay

[….]

[emphasis added]

From the Congressional Record, CONCURRENT RESOLUTION ON THE BUDGET, FISCAL YEAR 2014 — (Senate – March 21, 2013) [S2132]:

[….]

 AMENDMENT NO. 433

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.

  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, this next amendment is the Ryan budget. The House Republicans have doubled down on failed policies by passing the same budget that was rejected by the American people just a few months ago. Now Senate Republicans are going to have to decide whether they agree with this approach.

  This budget would be devastating for the middle class and the economy. It would cause millions of our workers to lose their jobs and dismantle programs such as Medicare that seniors and families depend on. It relies on gimmicks and tricks to eliminate the deficit by an arbitrary date and does all that while giving the wealthiest Americans a tax cut.

  I encourage my colleagues to oppose this amendment.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who yields time?

  The Senator from South Dakota.

  Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, the House Republican budget does something the Democratic budget does not do–it balances. It actually balances in 10 years, and it does it not by taxing more but by spending less, spending at a slower rate–3.4 percent over that 10-year period.

  If we look at what the House Republican budget does, it is focused on growing the economy, not growing the government. What the Democratic budget, before the Senate this evening, does is it grows the government, not the economy.

  In fact, if we look at the analysis that has been done, it is suspected the Democratic budget would cost us 850,000 jobs and reduce take-home pay for middle-class families by $1,500. The House Republican budget takes seriously the challenges that are facing this country, takes the steps necessary to save and protect Medicare for future generations of Americans, something this budget–the Senate Democratic budget–does not do.

  I urge my colleagues to support this budget, and it is a serious one, that balances the budget in 10 years and puts our economy back in growing mode and our fiscal house back in order.

  Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?

  There appears to be a sufficient second.

  The question is on agreeing to the amendment.

  The clerk will call the roll.

  The bill clerk called the roll.

  Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Lautenberg) is necessarily absent.

  The PRESIDING OFFICER. Are there any other Senators in the Chamber desiring to vote?

  The result was announced–yeas 40, nays 59, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 46 Leg.]

[….]

[emphasis added]

Senator Roy Blunt (r) voted for the cuts. He obviously has no shame.

Is anyone surprised?