Archive for January, 2010

Obama’s Bud Lite Budget Freeze

By NancySkinner, 26 January, 2010, No Comment

The news that President Obama will announce a three-year spending freeze has set off the usual fire storms on both the right and the left.

It’s like the beer commercial for Bud Lite.  Too light.  Too heavy.  Just right.

It’s Too Lite Crowd

Boehner and the boys are screaming that it’s not enough, a measly $250 billion over the decade and they should really be manly men and do something about the entitlement costs exploding the deficit.  Uhhmm you mean like healthcare?  Even the meek Senate bill was scored by CBO as reducing the deficit by $127 billion over the first decade and $650 over the second and the GOP went ape-do do over that.  A more muscular bill with a public option would have dramatically lowered healthcare spending by both the public and private sectors.  To my friends and deficit hawks on the right, the only way to stabilize debt to GDP to 60-70% over the next decade is through healthcare spending reductions. Your favorite “do-nothing” iTune will result in long-term mayhem – like seriously freaky fiscal territory of debt to GDP by 300% of GDP by 2050.  (The highest was 110% during WWII). So, Dick, deficits do matter.  Robert Greenstein, of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities testified in very simple terms (it was for congress) so you can get a primer on our history and future on debts and deficits if you care to face the facts.

But here’s some simpler math: Deficits = Revenues – Expenses

If you don’t think President Obama’s spending freeze of $250 billion is enough, then we have a way bigger hammer on the deficit called the Bush tax cuts.  Even the Heritage Foundation concurred that the 2001 and 2003 Bush tax cuts resulted in about $1.8 TRILLION dollars in revenues. Letting them expire would mean that revenues would increase by $4.4 TRILLION dollars over the next decade and now we’re talking serious deficit reduction. (For beginners: The right wingers always say that letting tax cuts sunset, which was their idea in the first place just in case we had a big deficit, is really raising taxes, even if you had to borrow from the taxpayers (because we were running deficits at the time) to pay for it and add lots more interest to the debt. I know it’s kooky logic but you need to know this stuff.

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Partisan Politics is the Real Pre-Existing Condition

By NancySkinner, 21 January, 2010, 2 Comments

I’ve been watching the autopsy reporting on the Massachusetts Senate race.  It’s simply mind boggling.  I was on CNBC and Fox Business Network the day of the election trying to predict “what a Brown win means” like everyone else.  The next day, we heard it all.  The right says it’s a revolt against Obama’s “big government” or his “government takeover of healthcare.” The left says that people were mad that the healthcare bill did not go far enough and should have included a public option or that Martha Coakley blew it by sunbathing in the Bahamas instead of shaking hands in Beantown.

Let’s fly above the whole situation at 40,000 feet and see what we learn.

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Clip of Nancy’s CNBC appearance January 19

By Sharon, 19 January, 2010, 1 Comment

Check out a clip of Nancy’s appearance with Howard Dean on CNBC this morning.

Reverse the Trigger on the Public Option!

By Sharon, 11 January, 2010, 1 Comment

By Nancy Skinner

Big, bold ideas.  That’s something that President Obama talked a lot about as a candidate and has tried very hard to deliver as President.

But it turns out that the old Democratic saying about herding cats is really more like herding rats.  There is a tiny club of Democrats who feel that voting for a “public option” will somehow limit their “re-election option” and have forced it out of the final bill in the Senate.

For many Democrats, it’s a tortuous choice: Voting for an insurance mandate for individuals without the aggressive competition of a public option could be just a huge windfall for insurance companies that does little to bend the cost curve.  On the other hand, “killing the bill” means risking losing a lot of the reforms, protections and insurance for 30 million Americans. 

For Republicans, it should also be a tortuous choice:  Are you a real fiscal conservative or do you just play one on TV?  Because if you are really a fiscal conservative, you know that without real competition in health care costs, the federal budget deficit will go bust.  One in six dollars is now spent on health care, and that will soon be one in three.  If costs don’t come down; the debt will be 415% of GDP by 2050. Obviously, we would “go banana republic” well before that.

Wall Street should be throwing Tea Parties, demanding the fiscal restraints of the public option to keep interest rates from looking like Argentina’s in the 80’s. It’s only insurance companies that should be “going Palin” on a public option to keep their 483% increase in near monopolistic profits over the last decade flowing.

So now the bill goes to conference with House Democrats having a public option;  Senate Democrats without one and the GOP absent a single profile in fiscal courage.

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