Republicans
in the House have voted more than 30 times to repeal Obamacare -- a move that
would deplete the Medicare trust fund eight years early, kick 6.6 million young
adults off their parents' health insurance, annually cost seniors $700 more on
average for prescription drugs, and make it legal once again for insurance
companies to charge women more than men, and to rescind policies when people
get sick. This would provide a massive giveback to the rich, handing over nearly
$400 billion in tax revenues to those who earn above $250,000 a year.
To further
boost profits for insurance companies, the House passed a Ryan plan to
voucherize Medicare, thereby subjecting seniors to what you might call "profit
extractions" by the private market. In
the first year alone, according to the Congressional Budget Office, the cost to seniors would more than double,
to $12,500 -- and taxpayers would not save a dime, since private insurers would
be pocketing the extra money. By 2050,
as inflation took its toll, buying a policy as good as present-day Medicare
would cost an 85-year-old more than $50,000.
(So what kind of "voucher' is going to pay that kind of cost?) The Ryan plan would also eviscerate Medicaid
by turning federal contributions to the program into lump-sum "block
grants" that states can administer as they see fit. The trouble is that these grants, like
Medicare vouchers, simply can't and won't keep pace with soaring health care
costs. In the first decade alone, therefore, the plan would bilk states out of
$810 billion and deny health care to 30 million disabled Americans, seniors, and
children living beneath the poverty line,.
The last
time a Republican presidential candidate touted an agenda to cut spending,
lower taxes, boost defense and balance the budget was Ronald Reagan in
1980. Like Romney and Ryan, Reagan
didn't have an actual plan for his spending cuts -- they were merely an
accounting fantasy, openly joked about. In
the end, as promised, Reagan's tax cuts went through, and the Pentagon's budget
soared. But the compensatory spending
cuts never materialized -- so Reagan wound up tripling the nation's debt.
If it didn't
work for Reagan, says his former budget director, it would be foolish to assume
Romney and Ryan can do better. "The
Republican record on spending control is so abysmally bad," Stockman says,
"that at this point they don't have a leg to stand on." Indeed,
the last GOP administration turned $5 trillion in projected surplus into $5
trillion of new debt.
No one doubts
Ryan's determination to slash the social safety net: Of the $5.3 trillion in
cuts he has proposed, nearly two-thirds come from programs for the poor. But when it comes time to eviscerate the rest
of the federal budget -- i.e. funding for things like drug enforcement and public
schools -- David Stockman says Congress will "never cut those programs that
deeply." In other words, the rich
will get their tax cuts, the poor will be left destitute, and America will be
driven ever deeper into debt.
That, at
heart, is the twisted beauty of the plan being championed by Ryan and Romney: The higher Republicans manage to drive up the debt,
the more ammunition and excuses they have in their fight to slash federal
spending for the needy. And the more
time they waste trumpeting the cause of "fiscal discipline," the more
the nation's infrastructure will continue to crumble around them.
What you
have just read is a synopsis of Tim Dickenson's excellent article in a recent
issue of Rolling Stone.
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