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?

Previously:

Sen. Paul LeVota (D) – Back to Blue Dinner – Belton, Missouri – April 13, 2013 (April 14, 2013)

Cass County Democrats hosted their annual Back to Blue Dinner in Belton, Missouri last night. Attorney General Chris Koster (D) was the keynote speaker.

Attorney General Chris Koster (D) speaking in Belton, Missouri on April 13, 2013.

Part 1:

Attorney General Chris Koster (D): ….And so, he [an elderly relative] has this physical challenge that causes great concern. We think about what the world was like, even just a couple of years ago before the Affordable Care Act when pre-existing conditions stopped people who were in this situation from obtaining health care. And we imagine a world where the Republicans follow through on [Representative] Paul Ryan’s [R] promise and just give my seventy-seven year old family member a six thousand dollar voucher. A six thousand dollar health care voucher to walk up and down main Street and knock on the door of private insurance carriers and say, here’s my coupon, would you give me some health care? And they say to him, Well, do you have any pre-existing conditions? Well, I’m not sure, I spent, there was, I had a seventy thousand dollar medical bill last year and the doctors still don’t know what’s going on with me and the tests continue, but I have Paul Ryan’s six thousand dollar coupon right here, and if you could please help me. He’s seventy-seven years old. He shouldn’t have to walk up and down Main Street and beg for health care in this country. This is the [applause]….  

Part 2:

Attorney General Chris Koster (D): ….And at the end of my time with him, as I was kind of bringing the discussion to a conclusion I asked him, I said, Bishop, is there anything that you would share with me as, as advice? You’re forty, you’re exactly forty years older than I am, he’s eighty-eight, I’m forty-eight. I said, is there any piece of advice that you would share with me. And he thought for a second, he kind of looked down at his chest, and then he, he lifted his head back up, and he very determinedly said, salus populi, suprema lex esto. And I was frozen in place. And I though to myself, my God, what a response. He had said, let the welfare of the people be the supreme law. This eighty-eight year old man has said this, these five words in Latin. That was his advice. He was a religious man, but he had not given a religious answer. He had given the most secular of all answers. He was an African-American man, but he did not an answer that was based in race. he gave an answer that addressed us as a universal family. He was a preacher, but he didn’t give an answer that was an hour long. He, he could have. He gave an answer that was five words. That was so at the heart of our state’s democracy and our state’s formation….

….And if we underestimate one another as people then we probably underestimate our ability as a community as well to go down to Jefferson City, to govern ourselves with intelligence and humanity, to balance the needs of a capitalist business class with the basic social contract that our children should be educated, our sick should have medicine, and our old people should not live in poverty. Salus populi, suprema lex esto, that was his advice. Let the welfare of the people be the supreme law. It is great advice for us as Democrats, for us as Missourians….

Attorney General Chris Koster (D).

A new ad from Teresa Hensley’s (D) campaign:

Announcer: People are turning to Cass County Prosecutor Teresa Hensley for Congress. The Star said, Prosecutor Hensley far outclasses Congresswoman Hartzler. The Tribune says, Hensley’s a moderate law and order type with eminent good sense.

Hensley will do what’s right, protect Medicare, create jobs, put Missouri’s middle class first.  

Teresa Hensley (D): I’ll fight for Missouri priorities in Washington, like I have in the Prosecutor’s Office. Our seniors can count on me to protect Medicare and Social Security.

I am Teresa Hensley and I approve this message.

Previously:

Not something you see in the paper every day (October 30, 2012)

Teresa Hensley (D) in the 4th Congressional District: endorsement by the Kansas City Star (October 19, 2012)

Teresa Hensley (D) in the 4th Congressional District: endorsement by the Columbia Daily Tribune (October 12, 2012)

If the republicans have their way, they’ll drown it and the rest of in a bathtub.

The Pledge: Grover Norquist’s hold on the GOP

….As we first reported last fall, Grover Norquist, through the pledge, controls 279 votes, including both the speaker of the House, and the Senate minority leader. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have signed it. And in the coming campaign, you can be sure that Grover Norquist won’t let them forget it….

“…I just want to shrink it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub.” – Grover Norquist

….Vice President Joe Biden (D): Quickly. The bottom line here is that all the studies show that if we went with Social Security proposal made by Mitt Romney, if you’re forty, in your forties now you will pay twenty-six hundred dollars a year mo, you get twenty-six hundred dollars a year less in Social Security. If you’re in your twenties now, you get forty-seven hundred dollars a year less.

The idea of changing, and change being in this case to cut the benefits for people without taking other action you could do to make it work is absolutely the wrong way.

These, look, these guys haven’t been big on Medicare from the beginning. Their party’s not been big on Medicare from the beginning. And they’ve always been about Social Security as little as you can do.

Look, folks, use your common sense. Who do you trust on this, a man who introduced a bill that would raise it forty, sixty four hundred dollars a year, knowing it and passing it, and Romney saying he’d sign it, or me and the president?….

I know who I trust. And it’s definitely not the right wingnut voucher waving zombie eyed granny starver [thanks, Charles P. Pierce] from Wisconsin with the Edie Munster haircut.

President Obama on the Romney/Ryan (r) Medicare voucher plan:

President Obama: ….First of all, I think it’s important for Governor Romney to present this plan that he says, uh, will only affect folks in the future. Uh, and the essence of the plan is that you would turn Medicare into a voucher program. Uh, it’s called premium support, but it’s understood to be a voucher program. Uh, his running mate [crosstalk]…

Jim Lehrer (doormat): And you, and you don’t support that?

President Obama: I don’t. And, and let me explain why [crosstalk].

Mitt Romney (r): Again, again that’s for future…

President Obama: [across] I understand.

Mitt Romney (r): … people, right, not for current retirees.

President Obama: For, for, so if you’re, if you’re, if you’re fifty-four or fifty-five, you might want to listen, uh, ’cause this, this will affect you.

Uh, the idea, which was originally presented by Congressman Ryan, your running mate, uh, is that we would give a voucher to seniors and they could go out in the private marketplace and buy their own health insurance.

The problem is that because the voucher wouldn’t necessarily keep up with health care inflation, it was estimated that this would cost the average senior about six thousand dollars a year a year.

Now, in fairness, uh, what Governor Romney has now said is he’ll maintain traditional Medicare alongside it. But there’s still a problem, because what happens is, those insurance companies are pretty clever at figuring out who are the younger, uh, and healthier seniors. They recruit them, leaving the older, sicker seniors in Medicare. And every health care economist that looks at it says, over time, what’ll happen is the traditional Medicare system will collapse.

And then what you’ve got is folks like my grandmother at the mercy of the private insurance system precisely at the time when they are most in need of decent health care.

So, I don’t think vouchers are the right way to go. And this is not my, uh, own, only my opinion. AARP thinks that the, the savings that we obtained from Medicare bolster the system, lengthen the Medicare trust fund by eight years. Benefits were not affected at all. And ironically, if you repeal Obamacare, and I have become fond of this term, Obamacare, uh, if you repeal it, what happens is those seniors right away are gonna be paying six hundred dollars more in prescription care. They’re now gonna have to be paying copays for basic checkups that can keep, keep them healthier.

And the primary beneficiary of that repeal are insurance companies that are estimated to gain billions of dollars back when they aren’t making seniors any healthier. And, and I don’t think that’s the right approach when it comes to, uh, making sure that Medicare is stronger over the long term.

Jim Lehrer (doormat): We’ll talk….

“….Again, again, that’s for future…people, right, not for current retirees….”

If the republican Medicare voucher plan is so good why doesn’t it apply to everyone?

I’ll repeat the question.

If the republican Medicare voucher plan is so good why doesn’t it apply to everyone?