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1501, 2013

The False Prophets of Dysfunction and the Social Security “Crisis”

By |January 15th, 2013|Budget, entitlement reform, Medicare, Social Security|

 Kudos to Jared Bernstein for this spot-on analysis of how we got here, specifically why is Washington now consumed with self-inflicted “crisis” after “crisis”.  We recommend you read the entire post but here is a sample:

“I’m reminded of a particularly pernicious rule of today’s politics: the self-fulfilling prophecy of dysfunction.  Many of today’s conservatives run for office on a platform that government doesn’t work.  And when they’re elected, they work their hardest to prove it true.  They say, “we’re Greece!” when of course we’re nothing like Greece, then they threaten default to make us Greece.

This is an alarmingly simple ploy, but once you tune into it you see it everywhere.  The prophets of dysfunction must convince us a spending crisis, an entitlement crisis, and debt crisis despite their factual inaccuracies.  It there’s no crisis—if, as is clearly the case—our fiscal challenges can actually be met with reasonable policies involving analysis (e.g., squeezing inefficiencies out of health care delivery) and compromise (spending cuts and revenue increases), these hair-on-fire-slash-and-burners have no use.

An important job of progressives throughout history is the exposure of such false prophets.  Of course, these prophets have huge profits riding on their ruse, so they won’t leave quietly.  But we must expose them nevertheless.  Our system is broken because a broken system works for the false prophets of dysfunction.  It doesn’t work for the rest of us.”


1401, 2013

Social Security Propaganda Advice for the GOP: Say Save When You Really Mean Slash

By |January 14th, 2013|Budget, entitlement reform, Medicare, privatization, Social Security|

GOP Pollster and spinmeister, Frank Luntz, is convinced the Republican party doesn’t have a problem with their ideas, just in being too honest when talking  about them.  Luntz wrote an Oped for the Washington Post this weekend that provides an incredibly cynical glimpse into the GOP propaganda strategy on Social Security and Medicare.  Basically, he says conservatives should avoid telling Americans  the whole story about the various plans to cut benefits, privatize or shift costs for seniors:

“Instead of entitlement reform or controlling the growth of Medicare and Social Security, talk about how to save and strengthen these programs so they are there when voters need them. After all, they paid for them.”  Frank Luntz, GOP Pollster

That’s right, they do pay for them — which is why the vast majority of Americans do not support cutting Social Security or Medicare benefits to pay down the deficit.  However, rather than address this massive disconnect between how the average American would address our fiscal mess and how Republicans would, the Luntz strategy is to cloak their plans in poll-tested propaganda.  

Orwellian double-speak offered by conservatives who say “save” when they mean “slash” and “preserve” when they mean “privatize”  isn’t new.  It was also the cornerstone of the Republican campaign against healthcare reform where the GOP continues to mislead seniors into believing the Affordable Care Act cut their Medicare benefits, even though the opposite is  true. 

“Do not say: ‘entitlement reform,’ ‘privatization,’ ‘every option is on the table,’ … Do say: ‘strengthen,’ ‘secure,’ ‘save,’ ‘preserve, ‘protect.’”  NRCC Medicare Memo

So, House Republicans will gather at their annual retreat this week —  and if they take their pollster’s advice —  crafting ways to ensure they don’t tell the American people exactly what they have planned for Social Security and Medicare and the millions of families those programs serve.

 


701, 2013

Cutting Medicare, Medicaid & Social Security in the 113th Congress

By |January 7th, 2013|Budget, entitlement reform, healthcare, Max Richtman, Medicare, Social Security|

 Max Richtman, NCPSSM President/CEO

Will the New Congress Save Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid or Cut Benefits? The Middle Class wants to know.

Members of the 113th Congress have now taken their oaths of office but their day of congratulatory celebrations and receptions will soon be a distant memory as a series of self-induced fiscal “crises” will demand this new Congress’ full attention. Over the next few months, Congress will face default, sequestration, and a possible government shutdown. We can be sure that the well-financed anti-entitlement lobby will not let these crises go to waste. Each one provides the perfect backdrop for their long-running campaign to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security benefits to pay down the federal deficit.

Already, Republicans in Congress are promising to — once again — hold the debt ceiling hostage to force benefit cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and even Social Security.  If they can’t get these cuts by threatening the solvency of our nation, their next opportunity will come as Congress attempts to craft a deficit reduction plan to avoid the $110 billion in automatic cuts delayed in the fiscal cliff legislation. Once again, many legislators have made it clear they expect seniors, retirees, the disabled, and the poor to pay down our deficit.  They will demand drastic changes such as raising the retirement age, means testing, or changing the cost of living allowance (COLA) formula to cut benefits to millions of middle class and poor beneficiaries in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security who are still struggling in this economy.

Democrats in Congress succeeded in keeping these devastating benefit cuts out of the short-term “fiscal cliff” deal.  Unfortunately, important leverage was also lost. Washington’s well-financed anti-entitlement lobby continues to pretend that “shared sacrifice” means that if a millionaire loses a tax break (which he or she doesn’t need and America can’t afford) then the middle-class and poor must also pay more for or risk losing their health care benefits in Medicare and Medicaid.  This false equivalency pretends that a tax dollar lost to a millionaire or huge corporation is the same as a benefit dollar lost to a retiree living on $14,000 a year in Social Security.  This fiscal myth permeates the deficit debate and explains why members, like Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, have no intention of addressing a full deficit package in a balanced way since the short-term fiscal cliff deal “was the last word on taxes. That debate is over.”  Using this political metric, cuts to Medicare and Social Security benefits will be used to pay for the majority of a fiscal mess these programs simply did not create.

Even if Congress is allowed to cut Medicare and Medicaid to the bone, the real challenge to our economy — skyrocketing health care costs – remains untouched.  For too long, conservatives in Congress have ignored the fact that if the U.S. paid the same costs per person for health care as other wealthy countries our nation would be looking at long-term surpluses, not deficits. If the rate of growth in overall health care is restrained so it is no longer growing faster than the rest of the economy, Medicare’s long-range financial deficit could be cut by well over one-half.  In fact, we may be seeing movement in that direction as former OMB Director, Peter Orszag reports, “health-care costs have decelerated over the past few years, and Medicare costs have decelerated more than other health costs.”

There are also ways to make Medicare and Medicaid more efficient and save money without cutting benefits to vulnerable Americans. In fact, many of these reforms have been implemented in the Affordable Care Act, the same legislation which many in Congress who claim to want to “save” Medicare have worked tirelessly to destroy.  Health care reform added eight years of solvency to Medicare and should be given time for full implementation.  Congress should also consider allowing Medicare to negotiate with drug makers for lower prescription drug costs in Part D and allowing drug re-importation which would save billions in the Medicare program. Unfortunately, both of these common sense proposals are opposed by conservatives, and many of the same so-called fiscal hawks, who’d rather reduce spending by cutting benefits to seniors than curtailing excessive Medicare payments to the highly profitable pharmaceutical industry. 

Claims that the only way to “save” Social Security is to cut benefits also ignores the fiscal facts. Social Security has not contributed one penny to the deficit and doesn’t even belong in a deficit debate. If solvency is truly the goal, then Congress needs to follow the advice of the vast majority of the American people who support lifting the payroll tax cap.  Modest and manageable changes will make Social Security stronger for generations.  In spite of this fact,  cutting benefits by raising the retirement age, means testing, or adopting a stingier cost of living formula still remain the favored approach for Wall Street CEO’s and the many deficit-scold lobby groups flooding the halls of Congress.

Iowa Senator Tom Harkin said it best when casting his vote against the fiscal cliff deal,

“Every dollar that wealthy taxpayers do not pay under this deal, we will eventually ask Americans of modest means to forgo in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits.” 

That’s billions of dollars America’s middle-class and poor families simply don’t have.

 

This article was orginal posted on Huffington Post


201, 2013

Washington Makes It Clear: Medicare Will Now Be Targeted to Pay Down Deficit

By |January 2nd, 2013|Budget, Medicare, Social Security|

“Official Washington was in celebration mode on New Year’s Day after kind of averting a completely unnecessary crisis that was entirely of its own creation.”  The Borowitz Report

This was our favorite headline from the hundreds of stories flooding our email boxes during the holiday “fiscal cliff” debate. The fact that it’s satire really doesn’t diminish the underlying message. Crisis creation seems to be what Washington does best these days.  Even so, there was good news in this deal for seniors including: the end of the Social Security payroll tax holiday (which should never have been implemented in the first place), a one year doc fix preventing a massive cut in doctors’ Medicare reimbursements and extension of a number of Medicare programs that would have expired December 31st.

So while America’s seniors can breathe a sigh of relief that Congress finally came to its senses and removed benefit cuts for millions of middle-class and poor Americans from the fiscal cliff deal, that relief will be short-lived. Tomorrow, with the swearing-in of a new Congress, the assault on Social Security and Medicare begins all over again.

As Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times correctly points out, this alleged quest for deficit reduction has really been about cutting Social Security and Medicare under the guise of debt reduction.

“Despite the lawmakers’ claims that the debate has been about closing the federal deficit and reducing the federal debt, none of the negotiating over the past weeks has dealt with those issues. Indeed, the tax and spending package will widen the deficit by some $4 trillion over 10 years, compared with what would happen if the tax increases and spending cuts mandated by existing law were implemented.

The House Republican caucus has consistently looked for ways to protect high-income taxpayers from a tax increase, at the expense of beneficiaries of government programs such as enrollees in Social Security and Medicare. If there’s a dominant preoccupation with cutting the deficit lurking somewhere in that mind-set, good luck finding it.”

The Huffington Post describes what’s coming next: 

“The fiscal cliff has not been averted. If anything, the U.S. faces an even more ominous deadline in a few months. The debt ceiling was hit as of New Year’s Eve. The U.S. Treasury will dip into its tool bag to keep the country’s borrowing ability going, but that will last only about two months. Also in early March, the sequestration — $110 billion in across-the-board spending cuts, half in defense and half in domestic programs — springs back, unless Congress finds a way to offset it with other spending cuts. Weeks later, the law that keeps the government funded expires. It all means that, in late February and early March, Congress will face a sequestration, a government default and a government shutdown. Republicans say they’ll use the leverage created by the debt ceiling to force Obama to accept spending cuts, particularly in entitlement programs. Obama resisted that notion on Dec. 31, saying he wants more tax increases and won’t accept Republican plans to “shove” spending cuts past him. “If they think that’s going to be the formula for how we solve this thing, then they’ve got another thing coming,” he said.

However, once the fiscal cliff deal passed, the President’s message changed making it clear cuts to Medicare will be offered up to pay down the deficit:

“I agree with Democrats and Republicans that the aging population and the rising cost of health care makes Medicare the biggest contributor to our deficit. I believe we’ve got to find ways to reform that program without hurting seniors who count on it to survive. And I believe that there’s further unnecessary spending in government that we can eliminate.” President Obama statement, January 1

There are ways to make Medicare more efficient and save money, in fact, many of those ideas were already implemented in the Affordable Care Act.  Going forward Congress should also consider allowing Medicare to negotiate with drug makers for lower prescription drug costs in Part D and allowing drug re-importation which would save billions in the Medicare program. Unfortunately, both of these common sense proposals are opposed by conservatives, many of the same fiscal hawks, who’d rather reduce spending by cutting benefits instead of curtailing the excessive payments to the highly profitable pharmaceutical industry. 

Winning the fiscal cliff battle is clearly just the first step in ensuring America’s seniors don’t lose the war about to begin in earnest against the nation’s vital safety net programs –Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

 

 


The False Prophets of Dysfunction and the Social Security “Crisis”

By |January 15th, 2013|Budget, entitlement reform, Medicare, Social Security|

 Kudos to Jared Bernstein for this spot-on analysis of how we got here, specifically why is Washington now consumed with self-inflicted “crisis” after “crisis”.  We recommend you read the entire post but here is a sample:

“I’m reminded of a particularly pernicious rule of today’s politics: the self-fulfilling prophecy of dysfunction.  Many of today’s conservatives run for office on a platform that government doesn’t work.  And when they’re elected, they work their hardest to prove it true.  They say, “we’re Greece!” when of course we’re nothing like Greece, then they threaten default to make us Greece.

This is an alarmingly simple ploy, but once you tune into it you see it everywhere.  The prophets of dysfunction must convince us a spending crisis, an entitlement crisis, and debt crisis despite their factual inaccuracies.  It there’s no crisis—if, as is clearly the case—our fiscal challenges can actually be met with reasonable policies involving analysis (e.g., squeezing inefficiencies out of health care delivery) and compromise (spending cuts and revenue increases), these hair-on-fire-slash-and-burners have no use.

An important job of progressives throughout history is the exposure of such false prophets.  Of course, these prophets have huge profits riding on their ruse, so they won’t leave quietly.  But we must expose them nevertheless.  Our system is broken because a broken system works for the false prophets of dysfunction.  It doesn’t work for the rest of us.”


Social Security Propaganda Advice for the GOP: Say Save When You Really Mean Slash

By |January 14th, 2013|Budget, entitlement reform, Medicare, privatization, Social Security|

GOP Pollster and spinmeister, Frank Luntz, is convinced the Republican party doesn’t have a problem with their ideas, just in being too honest when talking  about them.  Luntz wrote an Oped for the Washington Post this weekend that provides an incredibly cynical glimpse into the GOP propaganda strategy on Social Security and Medicare.  Basically, he says conservatives should avoid telling Americans  the whole story about the various plans to cut benefits, privatize or shift costs for seniors:

“Instead of entitlement reform or controlling the growth of Medicare and Social Security, talk about how to save and strengthen these programs so they are there when voters need them. After all, they paid for them.”  Frank Luntz, GOP Pollster

That’s right, they do pay for them — which is why the vast majority of Americans do not support cutting Social Security or Medicare benefits to pay down the deficit.  However, rather than address this massive disconnect between how the average American would address our fiscal mess and how Republicans would, the Luntz strategy is to cloak their plans in poll-tested propaganda.  

Orwellian double-speak offered by conservatives who say “save” when they mean “slash” and “preserve” when they mean “privatize”  isn’t new.  It was also the cornerstone of the Republican campaign against healthcare reform where the GOP continues to mislead seniors into believing the Affordable Care Act cut their Medicare benefits, even though the opposite is  true. 

“Do not say: ‘entitlement reform,’ ‘privatization,’ ‘every option is on the table,’ … Do say: ‘strengthen,’ ‘secure,’ ‘save,’ ‘preserve, ‘protect.’”  NRCC Medicare Memo

So, House Republicans will gather at their annual retreat this week —  and if they take their pollster’s advice —  crafting ways to ensure they don’t tell the American people exactly what they have planned for Social Security and Medicare and the millions of families those programs serve.

 


Cutting Medicare, Medicaid & Social Security in the 113th Congress

By |January 7th, 2013|Budget, entitlement reform, healthcare, Max Richtman, Medicare, Social Security|

 Max Richtman, NCPSSM President/CEO

Will the New Congress Save Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid or Cut Benefits? The Middle Class wants to know.

Members of the 113th Congress have now taken their oaths of office but their day of congratulatory celebrations and receptions will soon be a distant memory as a series of self-induced fiscal “crises” will demand this new Congress’ full attention. Over the next few months, Congress will face default, sequestration, and a possible government shutdown. We can be sure that the well-financed anti-entitlement lobby will not let these crises go to waste. Each one provides the perfect backdrop for their long-running campaign to cut Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security benefits to pay down the federal deficit.

Already, Republicans in Congress are promising to — once again — hold the debt ceiling hostage to force benefit cuts in Medicare, Medicaid, and even Social Security.  If they can’t get these cuts by threatening the solvency of our nation, their next opportunity will come as Congress attempts to craft a deficit reduction plan to avoid the $110 billion in automatic cuts delayed in the fiscal cliff legislation. Once again, many legislators have made it clear they expect seniors, retirees, the disabled, and the poor to pay down our deficit.  They will demand drastic changes such as raising the retirement age, means testing, or changing the cost of living allowance (COLA) formula to cut benefits to millions of middle class and poor beneficiaries in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security who are still struggling in this economy.

Democrats in Congress succeeded in keeping these devastating benefit cuts out of the short-term “fiscal cliff” deal.  Unfortunately, important leverage was also lost. Washington’s well-financed anti-entitlement lobby continues to pretend that “shared sacrifice” means that if a millionaire loses a tax break (which he or she doesn’t need and America can’t afford) then the middle-class and poor must also pay more for or risk losing their health care benefits in Medicare and Medicaid.  This false equivalency pretends that a tax dollar lost to a millionaire or huge corporation is the same as a benefit dollar lost to a retiree living on $14,000 a year in Social Security.  This fiscal myth permeates the deficit debate and explains why members, like Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, have no intention of addressing a full deficit package in a balanced way since the short-term fiscal cliff deal “was the last word on taxes. That debate is over.”  Using this political metric, cuts to Medicare and Social Security benefits will be used to pay for the majority of a fiscal mess these programs simply did not create.

Even if Congress is allowed to cut Medicare and Medicaid to the bone, the real challenge to our economy — skyrocketing health care costs – remains untouched.  For too long, conservatives in Congress have ignored the fact that if the U.S. paid the same costs per person for health care as other wealthy countries our nation would be looking at long-term surpluses, not deficits. If the rate of growth in overall health care is restrained so it is no longer growing faster than the rest of the economy, Medicare’s long-range financial deficit could be cut by well over one-half.  In fact, we may be seeing movement in that direction as former OMB Director, Peter Orszag reports, “health-care costs have decelerated over the past few years, and Medicare costs have decelerated more than other health costs.”

There are also ways to make Medicare and Medicaid more efficient and save money without cutting benefits to vulnerable Americans. In fact, many of these reforms have been implemented in the Affordable Care Act, the same legislation which many in Congress who claim to want to “save” Medicare have worked tirelessly to destroy.  Health care reform added eight years of solvency to Medicare and should be given time for full implementation.  Congress should also consider allowing Medicare to negotiate with drug makers for lower prescription drug costs in Part D and allowing drug re-importation which would save billions in the Medicare program. Unfortunately, both of these common sense proposals are opposed by conservatives, and many of the same so-called fiscal hawks, who’d rather reduce spending by cutting benefits to seniors than curtailing excessive Medicare payments to the highly profitable pharmaceutical industry. 

Claims that the only way to “save” Social Security is to cut benefits also ignores the fiscal facts. Social Security has not contributed one penny to the deficit and doesn’t even belong in a deficit debate. If solvency is truly the goal, then Congress needs to follow the advice of the vast majority of the American people who support lifting the payroll tax cap.  Modest and manageable changes will make Social Security stronger for generations.  In spite of this fact,  cutting benefits by raising the retirement age, means testing, or adopting a stingier cost of living formula still remain the favored approach for Wall Street CEO’s and the many deficit-scold lobby groups flooding the halls of Congress.

Iowa Senator Tom Harkin said it best when casting his vote against the fiscal cliff deal,

“Every dollar that wealthy taxpayers do not pay under this deal, we will eventually ask Americans of modest means to forgo in Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid benefits.” 

That’s billions of dollars America’s middle-class and poor families simply don’t have.

 

This article was orginal posted on Huffington Post


Washington Makes It Clear: Medicare Will Now Be Targeted to Pay Down Deficit

By |January 2nd, 2013|Budget, Medicare, Social Security|

“Official Washington was in celebration mode on New Year’s Day after kind of averting a completely unnecessary crisis that was entirely of its own creation.”  The Borowitz Report

This was our favorite headline from the hundreds of stories flooding our email boxes during the holiday “fiscal cliff” debate. The fact that it’s satire really doesn’t diminish the underlying message. Crisis creation seems to be what Washington does best these days.  Even so, there was good news in this deal for seniors including: the end of the Social Security payroll tax holiday (which should never have been implemented in the first place), a one year doc fix preventing a massive cut in doctors’ Medicare reimbursements and extension of a number of Medicare programs that would have expired December 31st.

So while America’s seniors can breathe a sigh of relief that Congress finally came to its senses and removed benefit cuts for millions of middle-class and poor Americans from the fiscal cliff deal, that relief will be short-lived. Tomorrow, with the swearing-in of a new Congress, the assault on Social Security and Medicare begins all over again.

As Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times correctly points out, this alleged quest for deficit reduction has really been about cutting Social Security and Medicare under the guise of debt reduction.

“Despite the lawmakers’ claims that the debate has been about closing the federal deficit and reducing the federal debt, none of the negotiating over the past weeks has dealt with those issues. Indeed, the tax and spending package will widen the deficit by some $4 trillion over 10 years, compared with what would happen if the tax increases and spending cuts mandated by existing law were implemented.

The House Republican caucus has consistently looked for ways to protect high-income taxpayers from a tax increase, at the expense of beneficiaries of government programs such as enrollees in Social Security and Medicare. If there’s a dominant preoccupation with cutting the deficit lurking somewhere in that mind-set, good luck finding it.”

The Huffington Post describes what’s coming next: 

“The fiscal cliff has not been averted. If anything, the U.S. faces an even more ominous deadline in a few months. The debt ceiling was hit as of New Year’s Eve. The U.S. Treasury will dip into its tool bag to keep the country’s borrowing ability going, but that will last only about two months. Also in early March, the sequestration — $110 billion in across-the-board spending cuts, half in defense and half in domestic programs — springs back, unless Congress finds a way to offset it with other spending cuts. Weeks later, the law that keeps the government funded expires. It all means that, in late February and early March, Congress will face a sequestration, a government default and a government shutdown. Republicans say they’ll use the leverage created by the debt ceiling to force Obama to accept spending cuts, particularly in entitlement programs. Obama resisted that notion on Dec. 31, saying he wants more tax increases and won’t accept Republican plans to “shove” spending cuts past him. “If they think that’s going to be the formula for how we solve this thing, then they’ve got another thing coming,” he said.

However, once the fiscal cliff deal passed, the President’s message changed making it clear cuts to Medicare will be offered up to pay down the deficit:

“I agree with Democrats and Republicans that the aging population and the rising cost of health care makes Medicare the biggest contributor to our deficit. I believe we’ve got to find ways to reform that program without hurting seniors who count on it to survive. And I believe that there’s further unnecessary spending in government that we can eliminate.” President Obama statement, January 1

There are ways to make Medicare more efficient and save money, in fact, many of those ideas were already implemented in the Affordable Care Act.  Going forward Congress should also consider allowing Medicare to negotiate with drug makers for lower prescription drug costs in Part D and allowing drug re-importation which would save billions in the Medicare program. Unfortunately, both of these common sense proposals are opposed by conservatives, many of the same fiscal hawks, who’d rather reduce spending by cutting benefits instead of curtailing the excessive payments to the highly profitable pharmaceutical industry. 

Winning the fiscal cliff battle is clearly just the first step in ensuring America’s seniors don’t lose the war about to begin in earnest against the nation’s vital safety net programs –Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.

 

 



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