Trump outlines massive cuts in Medicaid and Medicare in 2021 budget plan — Kevin Reed

A look at the plan to cut non-discretionary spending and increase the budgets of the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security.

WSWS
Trump outlines massive cuts in Medicaid and Medicare in 2021 budget plan

Kevin Reed

Newsday Editorial Board — First shots in war on Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security

Poverty is not a scam. Neither is old age or infirmity or serious illness. But making poverty and the need for help look like a scam is a common political strategy, and it’s one President Donald Trump’s administration sought to rekindle last week when it allowed states to impose work requirements on Medicaid recipients in “test” programs.

Such a change, based on fiction about who the 70 million Medicaid recipients are and how almost $550 billion in state and federal Medicaid funding is spent each year, won’t save any taxpayer dollars. Nor is it intended to. What it does is spawn news stories that reinforce a message Republicans have promoted since President Ronald Reagan: The GOP brings down mostly minority “welfare queens” riding high on government largesse in their Cadillacs...

Conservative policy rationale is to make it more painful to be poor by punishing poverty in order to incentivize those in poverty to be more "productive." Basic stimulus-response Pavlovian-Skinnerian behavioral psychology.

But this strategy also has a darker side in creating social divisions that can be exploited politically. The GOP sees "the poor" as a major Democratic constituency that Democrats shower with largesse when in power in order to curry favor to get votes and energize the base. The GOP sees that as a strategic opportunity to attack by creating scapegoats.

Democrats under Bill Clinton realized that the GOP base was really the moneyed class that provides the bribes contributions and so, attacking the rich is self-defeating. Clinton took GOP adviser Dick Morris advice to "triangulate" and attack the poor to please the donor-base. Robert Rueben had already suggested that the Democrats cozy up to Wall Street, since that is where the big money is.

So, now the proles and precariat are left out in the cold with the prospect of a colder season coming.

The new job requirements for Medicaid might not be legal and likely will be challenged in court. Either way, the rules won’t save much even if they do take effect. Since only 70 million Americans get Medicaid and 255 million don’t, the proposals might not cause much uproar. But be warned: As a statement of intent and a first shot across the bow, they should.

House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have been clear about wanting huge across-the-board cuts in Medicaid and Medicare. The cuts have been included in budget proposals they have introduced, and in their efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Ryan has said cuts to those programs, along with restructuring Social Security to save money, are his primary legislative objectives, although he concedes they probably won’t happen in 2018....

Newsday
First shots in war on Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security

The Editorial Board

Mark Weisbrot — Medicaid Saved Obamacare and Single-Payer May Be Back on the Agenda Sooner Than You Think

Some polls have shown majorities in favor of single payer health care. In the last election cycle we also went rather quickly from a widely believed politician-and-media-backed falsehood that Social Security was in serious financial trouble, to even Hillary Clinton saying that benefits needed to be expanded, not cut. That is the direction that the country is going, with Bernie Sanders, despite losing the Democratic presidential primary, being one of the most popular politicians in the country; and Trump in the doghouse with 37 percent approval....

Counterpunch
Medicaid Saved Obamacare and Single-Payer May Be Back on the Agenda Sooner Than You Think

Mark Weisbrot

Ed Dolan — Universal Healthcare Access is Coming. Stop Fighting It and Start Figuring Out How to Make It Work.

Fairly detailed analysis of the issues involved in a transition to universal access to health care in the US.

Ed Dolan's Econ Blog
Universal Healthcare Access is Coming. Stop Fighting It and Start Figuring Out How to Make It Work.
Ed Dolan

Chye-Ching Huang — Ryan Makes It Clear That Cutting Medicaid to Pay for the Health Bill’s Tax Cuts for the Wealthy Enables Deeper Corporate Tax Cuts in Tax Legislation to Follow

House Speaker Paul Ryan has made a key Republican motive for pushing ahead with the House GOP health plan explicit in recent interviews:[1] passing the health package first facilitates deeper tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations in subsequent tax legislation.
That’s because the House GOP health plan reduces revenues by nearly $900 billion over the decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), including $592 billion in tax cuts largely for the wealthy. Passing these tax cuts now as part of a health package allows the GOP to offset their cost through cuts to health care spending — particularly in Medicaid, which CBO estimates the House health care bill cuts by $880 billion over ten years. If these tax cuts were part of tax reform legislation rather than being in the health bill, Republican leaders would have to offset their cost on the tax side to maintain revenue neutrality, as they have said they would do, limiting how sharply they can cut tax rates.

Instead, because these tax cuts are in the health bill, Republicans can, in writing their tax bill later this year, make much deeper cuts in tax rates — particularly for corporations — than they otherwise could do....

Soak the poor.

House Republicans intend to enact both their health and tax packages using a special budget process called “reconciliation.”[4] The key advantage is that reconciliation bills cannot be filibustered in the Senate and so can pass with a simple majority vote, allowing Republicans to pass their health and tax packages without needing the support of a single Democrat. But reconciliation bills must meet certain criteria, including that they not increase the deficit after the ten-year budget “window.” The House GOP health plan meets this standard because it pays for its revenue losses with deep cuts to health coverage for low- and moderate-income families, especially Medicaid.

Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
Commentary: Ryan Makes It Clear That Cutting Medicaid to Pay for the Health Bill’s Tax Cuts for the Wealthy Enables Deeper Corporate Tax Cuts in Tax Legislation to Follow
Chye-Ching Huang | Deputy Director, Federal Tax Policy with the Center’s Federal Fiscal Policy Team

Dylan Matthews — The Republican plan to slash Medicaid, explained

The cumulative effect, according to an analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, is a $370 billion cut to federal funding to Medicaid over 10 years. Some of that money could be made up for by states, but most of it won't be.

And because Medicaid is already the cheapest insurance there is in America — cheaper per person than either Medicare or private insurance — cuts of that scale will necessitate kicking millions of people off the program.

VOX
The Republican plan to slash Medicaid, explained
Updated by Dylan Matthews

Here's why bull market in stocks and economic expansion guaranteed for next 20 years

There's only one statistic that you need to know to in order to understand what the outlook is for the economy and the stock market for the next 20 years and it's not how big the deficit is,

It's the fact that for the next 20 years 10,000 baby-boomers PER DAY will be retiring and becoming eligible to receive Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Those problems are already 42% of annual Federal spending. ($1.8 trillion out of $4.3 trillion.) However, they're just going to continue to grow and grow and grow for the next 20 years.

You know what that is? It's government guaranteed income support. Just like what they're proposing in Switzerland only maybe half. Still, it's something and in the aggregate, when you consider the numbers--tens of millions of people--it's a massive and ongoing fiscal transfer to the economy.

This is why this recovery has lasted longer without a recession than anyone predicted (other than us, here). And it's why stocks keep going up.

With those kind of guaranteed flows the companies in the S&P 500 can ALWAYS squeeze out their trillion and a half or trillion eight of earnings.

Bull market...next 20 years.

Robert Waldmann — Diabetes Diagnoses Surge in States Which Expanded Medicaid

Another life-saving and cost-reducing no-brainer. Cutting medical costs and related costs, which are much higher than medical cost to society, involves increasing availability and use of medical care not limiting it or using less. Early care and preventive care costs far less than later and more complicated care. 

In addition, there are three aspects of health care — treatment, prevention, and perfection — in declining order of expense. An ideal society aims at achieving perfect health for its members first and foremost, and then focusing on prevention, and finally treatment as a last resort.

Angry Bear
Diabetes Diagnoses Surge in States Which Expanded Medicaid
Robert Waldmann | Professor of Economics, University of Rome

Paul Ryan ascendant, proposes additional $5 trillion in cuts

Nothing left to say about this guy other than he's a very dangerous quack.

Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) on Tuesday unveiled a budget that proposes to cut $5.1 trillion over a decade in a bid to erase the federal deficit, while calling once again for dramatic changes to Medicare, Medicaid and the tax code. Read more. 

Now he's about to become even more powerful as he ascends to the role of Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee as Dave Camp (R-Mich) just announced his retirement.

And throw in the fact that the Balanced Budget Convention is gaining steam. Europe, here we come!

karoli — Obamacare Is Right-Wing Proxy For Social Security and Medicare

Despite all the sound and fury about Obamacare, here's the truth: It's not the prime target of the right. The real targets are Medicare and Social Security, as Rep. Barton admits in the video above when he says he wants "real reforms in entitlements".

Over the past couple of weeks, it's become apparent to me and many others that this entire showdown is not over Obamacare. The ACA is a convenient patsy because it is new, untested, and they've managed to poison public opinion around it over the past three years.
The real target is Social Security and Medicare. From a political standpoint, waging a war using those programs as hostage would be so wildly unpopular no sane or insane politician would dare choose that route. And so Obamacare has become the convenient stand-in, a cardboard stand-in for their real goals.

As Diane noted in her post here, the New York Times published an exposé showing how this strategy formed over the months since Barack Obama's re-election. As usual, it was financed and formed by the Kochs and their right-wing partners. But the Kochs are hardly the only players in this particular round of attacks.

Attacking the safety net from the 'left'

Billionaire Pete Peterson has been instrumental in creating a campaign to kill Social Security and Medicare that gives the appearance of coming from the left. His "FixTheDebt" campaign launched in 2011 was crafted to fool centrists and even those calling themselves liberals into believing there was a crisis afoot that must be fixed.

In many ways, Peterson's astroturf campaign has been far more insidious than the Koch effort, if for no other reason than the way they try to disguise themselves as "independent" and "centrist" with left-leaning roots.

Read the rest. The real rightist agenda and strategy exposed. "Disaster capitalism" as articulated in her eponymous book is the favored tactic of neoliberalism in attacking popular programs. Now they are going for the throat of the welfare state all out in order to replace it with the neoliberal "market state" run by crony capitalism to complete the process of enclosure through privatization in the name of "freedom" (theirs) and "efficiency" (in looting).

Crooks & Liars
Obamacare Is Right-Wing Proxy For Social Security and Medicare
karoli

See also

The Wichita Eagle

Rep. Pompeo: Shutdown is about substantial entitlement reform
Bill Wilson

In a wide-ranging interview, the Republican congressman from Wichita voiced his discomfort with the ongoing shutdown, while dismissing the Oct. 17 debt ceiling deadline set by Treasury Secretary Jack Lew as “not a magical date” and proclaiming that Republicans will agree to raise the debt ceiling when Democrats agree to reform Social Security, Medicare and the president’s signature health care law.

Michael Stephens — One More Reason to Stop Panicking About the Long-term Deficit

Evidence that long term health care cost curve is bending downward.

Multiplier Effect
One More Reason to Stop Panicking About the Long-term Deficit

Michael Stephens

Kevin Drum — Some Miscellaneous Monday Morning Poll Results

The most interesting result: "Democracy Corps pollsters asked people to name their two most important political concerns. Answer: (a) protect entitlements, and (b) cut the deficit."  Cognitive dissonance.

Mother Jones

Some Miscellaneous Monday Morning Poll Results
Kevin Drum

Galbraith on the Great Depression and the 'Great Recession'

A new interview with Jamie Galbraith (and also Leo Panitch), on the possibilities of a New 'New Deal' (part II here). Not much of chance, by the way. Part of the story is that the New Deal was fundamental in institution building, and these very institutions saved us from a crisis similar to the Depression, creating less of a perceived need for continuous reform.

Naked Keynesianism
Galbraith on the Great Depression and the 'Great Recession'
Matias Vernengo | Associate Professor of Economics, University of Utah

Joan Walsh — Is the GOP playing Obama? (VIDEO)

Luke Russert reveals the sad truth why Republicans won't propose unpopular entitlement cuts 

Salon
Is the GOP playing Obama? (VIDEO)
Joan Walsh

Will Obama take the bait to get a deal?

David Edwards — Sen. Corker: Debt ceiling is Republican ‘leverage’ to cut ‘entitlements’

Sen. Bob Corker (R-TN) says that his party should agree to raise taxes on the wealthy before January because Republicans can force cuts to earned benefits like Medicare and Social Security next year by holding the debt ceiling hostage.... 

“The shift to focus in entitlements is where we need to go,” the Tennessee Republican added. “And again, it’s a shame that we’re not just sitting down and solving this, but Republicans know that they have the debt ceiling that’s coming up right around the corner and the leverage is going to shift as soon as we get beyond this issue.”

Corker pointed out that Republicans could use the debt ceiling to “do the same thing we did last time.”“If the president wants to raise the debt limit by $2 trillion, we get $2 trillion in spending reductions. And hopefully this time it’s mostly oriented towards entitlements,” he insisted.

The Raw Story
Sen. Corker: Debt ceiling is Republican ‘leverage’ to cut ‘entitlements’

David Edwards

Moron of the week award goes to Senator Tom Coburn

“It doesn’t really matter what happens at the end of this year because ultimately the numbers and the bond holders throughout the world will determine what we’ll spend and what we won’t. So, we can play the political game that is being played out in Washington right now or we can be absolutely honest with the American people and say, ‘Medicare is going bankrupt, Social Security disability will be bankrupt in two years, Social Security trust fund will be bankrupt in five years, Social Security total will be bankrupt in 16,17 years.’”

“The fact is we are spending money we don’t have on things we don’t absolutely need,” he concluded. “And there’s no grownups in Washington that will say, ‘Timeout, stop the politics, let’s have a compromise rather than play the game through the press and hurt the country.’ We’re already going to get another debt downgrade just from what’s happening now because nobody in positions of power are willing to do what’s important and necessary for our country.”

The Raw Story
Coburn: Medicare and Social Security ‘are things we don’t absolutely need’ (video)

New Deal democrat— A thought for Sunday: PEOPLE WILL DIE

If you make the simple, straightforward, and eminently reasonable assumption that people prefer to live rather than die, then the economic situation which saves lives is always an efficient, Pareto-optimal solution.

You'll never hear that simple fact pointed out no matter how far you go in your academic economic training.

The Bonddad Blog
A thought for Sunday: PEOPLE WILL DIE
New Deal democrat

Hey, Paul Ryan...we can't run out of money!

Hey, Paul Ryan...we can't run out of money. Dollars are created when the government spends and that's the only way they can be created, so there's no risk of not being able to "pay" for entitlements.

That's point number one.

Point number two is that Medicare is eminently sustainable so long as we have the real assets (hospitals, doctors, nurses, technicians, medicine, etc) for people to consume. The only possible way that Medicare could not be sustained is if these assets were unavailable for some reason and that is not the case. And by the way, Alan Greenspan schooled you on this a while back.

Paul Ryan will never wake up to these facts. He's a blind, ideologue. He's a little boy who read a book a long time ago and now has the crazy beliefs of that book deeply embedded in his mind.

The sad part is that the people of this country beleive him. They believe him because they have been brainwashed into believing all that hogwash about running out of money and "not being able to afford" Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. These have been some of the most succesful social programs this country has ever seen and millions of Americans have been kept out of poverty thanks to them. Yet despite this, Ryan and the GOP want to do away with them for reasons that are both ideological and irrational.

The powers that be love Ryan. He's their handome and "brilliant" messenger. But when we have millions of sick and homeless, then and only then will we will feel the REAL cost to society. It will be a burden that dwarfs any purported burden we face now.

In Paul Ryan the GOP have chosen a plan, but is it a plan whose ultimate consequences they truly understand?

Susan J. Douglas — The War on Old Folks

Too many wars — war on drugs, war on crime, war on terror, war on women, now war on old folks. Where will it all end. Right — war on war.

In These Times
The War on Old Folks
by Susan J. Douglas

Summary of the numbers for those who haven't been paying close attention.

The blatant lies of Peterson, Walker, Simpson, Bowles

By now we have all seen the sheer, blatant, empty, vicious lies of the likes of Pete Peterson, David Walker, Erskin Bowles, Alan Simpson and the rest of the subversive Deficit Terrorists clan.

This dangerous and destructive group is on course to decimate a national standard of living that was once the envy of the world. Their program is all based on filthy lies and the worst part is, they're going to get away with it.

I'm sure you're all familiar with the clever soundbites and dogmatic propaganda points they use:

"Stabilize the debt, unfunded liabilities, fiscal sustainabillity..."

Listen to that snake, Bowles, as he spews forth his lies in an interview with Charlie Rose

Erskine Bowles: I would say that any of these budget proposals that don't reduce the deficit by at least four trillion dollars over the next decade because that's the minimum amount you need to stabilize the debt and get it on a downward path as a percent of GDP, any of them that don't do that, any of them that don't address defense, any of them that don't address Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, and don't reform the tax code, and aren't balanced in some way between that aren't serious. Charlie Rose: Then why do you think people have not come to support Bowles-Simpson? Erskine Bowles: Because it's politically painful. The problems are real. The solutions are all painful. There's no easy way out. And everybody gets the arithmetic, everybody understand the economics, but they have to make tough political choices in order to do it. And as long as people are worshipping the great god of reelection, then we're going to have a hard time getting to the promised land. Erskine Bowles: You know, you got to respect the fact that this is tough, you know, for one side or the other. It's going to be tough for the Republicans to concede the fact that we have to have some additional revenue. It's going to be tough for the Democrats to make the kind of concessions you have to make to make Social Security sustainably solvent. But, we have to do these things in order to put our fiscal house in order for our kids.

They're lies, damn lies and nobody even questions them outside of these pages (and a few other MMT sites).

The other day I showed you how the U.S. redeemed ("paid back") $32 TRILLION in debt in the past six months alone. That's more than twice the entire national debt. Done. Paid off. In six months.

Or how about the fact that we paid back $64 trillion in 2011? That's four times the national debt PAID BACK in just 12 months.

How did we do it? Where did all that money come from? China? Japan? Taxes? Savers? There's not that many dollars in the whole world.

We "got it" by changing numbers in bank accounts. Simple as that. Keystrokes. Or, if you prefer...we "printed" it. Yes, we printed it and guess what? No hyperinflation, no collapse in the dollar, no spike in interest rates. In fact, inflation has been tame, the stock market has been going up, the economy has been growing, jobs were created, interest rates remained at historically low levels and yes, even the dollar rallied.

All the fear mongering and all the hysteria about hyperinflation or us becoming the next Zimbabwe is pure bullshit.

Yet nobody looks at the facts. They just swallow the poisonous Kool Aid of the Debt clan.

Where is Geithner or Bernanke, who surely know that the U.S. paid back that $32 TRILLION?

Timothy Geithner is the Secretary of the Treasury for God's sake!!! Are you kidding me, he knows these figures! These numbers are compiled and reported by his own department. Ben Bernanke knows this, too! But they stay silent. They say nothing, other than to repeat the lies of their masters: "We need to get our fiscal house in order." And this is all the excuse they need to gut Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, Veterans benefits, education, food stamps, etc.

What a sham!

Now we have this ridiculous debt commission that is proposing their hugely destructive policies designed to address the so-called "unfunded liabilities" of Social Security. Do you know just exactly what those "unfunded liabilities" amount to? They amount to some supposed shortfall of $4.32 trillion 75 years from now! That's right, we just put a bunch of clowns in place to deal with a supposed shortfall of $4.32 trillion SEVENTY-FIVE FUCKING YEARS FROM NOW even though we just paid off 8 times that amount in the last six months!!

The stuff I am telling you is the truth. The stuff you are hearing out of the mouths of Peterson, Walker, Bowles, Simpson and the rest of the Deficit Terrorists clan is not. Nor are the words of the lackey, subservient, politicians who parrot their crap for the promise of some campaign donation, true either.

The bottom line is, the fiscal crisis is a myth. It's a myth manufactured by a bunch of ideological zealots who want nothing more than to steal the wealth of this nation for themselves so they can lord over a bunch of powerless, servile peasants. That would be us.

We have no fiscal crisis in this country. The only crisis we have is that these bastards are in charge. It's time to make that stop.

-Mike Norman