Frum

Gentlemen, start your bitter recriminations!

This piece is from David Frum, a former Bush speechwriter.

barfo

 

Democrats fully own this one. They destroyed the economy while in control of the House and Senate, but that's short lived come November.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/20/AR2010032003349_pf.html

But there is a major difference between this health-care battle and the debates that preceded passage of Social Security and Medicare. Although there was opposition to those measures -- conservative opponents called Medicare socialized medicine -- in the end they passed with overwhelming, bipartisan majorities.

The House approved the Medicare bill on a vote of 313 to 115, including 65 Republicans -- nearly half the GOP caucus at the time. The Senate approved the measure by 68 to 21, including 13 of the 27 Republicans.

Social Security passed the House in 1935 by 372 to 77. On that vote, 77 Republicans joined the majority and 18 Republicans opposed it. In the Senate, the vote was 77 to 6, with five of 19 Republicans in opposition.

 

Yes, they do.

That sentence doesn't even make sense.

Republicans were smarter in the past.

Like Frum says, Republicans decided to try to nuke it instead of compromise. Too bad for them, they failed.

Would you like to quote the gallup poll of Obama's job approval for today?

barfo

 

Wait a second, Bush had speech writers?


That was really good , thanks for posting it.

 

You don't understand my sentence? Re-read it. Democrats controlled the house and senate since 2006. The economy tanked on their watch, and got worse the whole time. Make sense now? They own that, too.

Why don't we both watch Obama's numbers tank by the time he's not reelected?

Unless the republicans save his presidency after the November elections.

I happen to think this will be one of the final nails in the coffin of the nation, literally. We're staring bankruptcy in the face, and it's not long from now. Rejoice, you got your wish.

 

Whew, thanks for clearing that up for us. All the problems with the economy are the Democrats fault. Yes, lets not take a look at what really went wrong and try and learn from our mistakes when it's easier just to blame a political party.

 

This would be my campaign ad in November:

http://74.125.153.132/search?q=cach...ocrats economy 2006&cd=13&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

(Posted in 2006, and quite prophetic)

Since 2003, when the Bush tax cuts went into effect, the economy’s growth rate has been better than the average of the 1980s and 1990s.

The current economic growth rate for 2006 is 3.5%

The average economic growth rate for the 1990s under Clinton was 3.3% and this was during the irrational exuberance of the dotcom bubble.

The average economic growth rate for 1980s was 3.1%

If the Democrats take control and eliminate the Bush tax cuts and raise taxes, economists predict this will slow the growth rate for the economy.

Here's another "story" the Democrats are telling.

Democrats say that the Bush tax cuts reduced federal tax revenue and they will eliminate the Bush tax cuts and increase taxes to increase federal revenue.

The truth...

For fiscal year 2006, federal revenue as a share of Gross Domestic Product was 18.4%.

The post 1962 average for federal revenue was 18.2% of Gross Domestic Product.

The federal budget deficit for 2006 was $247.7 billion.

This represents 1.9% of the Gross Domestic Product which was 13.1 trillion dollars.

That is below the average for the 1970s, 1980s, and the 1990s.
The deficit as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product for 2006 was 1.9%

The deficit as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product for the 1990s was 2.2%

The deficit as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product for the 1980s was 3.0%

The deficit as a percentage of the Gross Domestic Product for the 1970s was 2.1%

Economists state that Democratic tax increases will reduce federal revenue and increase the deficit as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product.

In addition, the Democrats don't want you to know that the current unemployment rate which is 4.6% is lower than the average for the 1990s which was 5.8% and lower than the average for the past 40 years at 6.0%.


Real After-Tax Income Has Risen 15.0 Percent Since January 2001.

Real after-tax income per person has risen by 9 percent since January 2001.

The US homeownership rate reached a record 69.2 percent in the second quarter of 2004. The number of homeowners in the United States reached 73.4 million, the most ever. And for the first time, the majority of minority Americans owns their own homes.

 

Oh, sorry. I thought you were trying to say something about the healthcare bill. I now see that you were hoping to change the subject. My bad.

So you aren't going to post today's numbers? Why not? You thought they were so very important yesterday.

Frum and I think they've already done that.

Literally literally? Or figuratively literally?

barfo

 

I'm not changing the discussion from health care, just pointing out that there's no free lunch. On top of numerous disastrous policies, this one is the literal nail in the coffin.

Rejoice, you got your wish.

 

Obama got a 3.5 point bounce from 47-47 to 50-43, according to Gallup. Short lived is my prediction.

 

2 point bounce in the Rasmussen poll, from 43% to 45% (54% disapprove)

 

We all knew this would happen sooner or later after those damn Democrats rammed socialized sewers and waste disposal down our throats. Why must the government feel the need to tell me where I can or can't flush a turd?

 

Me, no. Members of my family have served with honor. My father came to the country (legally) and immediately join the US Air Force and became a citizen. After putting himself through college he went on to become a vice president of US Bank which he eventually left to become the Portland branch chief of Housing and Urban Development. After retiring from HUD he became head of the ESL program for the Reynolds school district.

Now let me ask you this, when you make a post about wanting government to wipe your ass did you really expect serious replies? Would it have been better if I had just asked if you were talking out of the ass you wanted the government to wipe instead?

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/21/opinion/21holtz-eakin.html?ref=opinion

The Real Arithmetic of Health Care Reform

By DOUGLAS HOLTZ-EAKIN
Arlington, Va.

ON Thursday, the Congressional Budget Office reported that, if enacted, the latest health care reform legislation would, over the next 10 years, cost about $950 billion, but because it would raise some revenues and lower some costs, it would also lower federal deficits by $138 billion. In other words, a bill that would set up two new entitlement spending programs — health insurance subsidies and long-term health care benefits — would actually improve the nation’s bottom line.

Could this really be true? How can the budget office give a green light to a bill that commits the federal government to spending nearly $1 trillion more over the next 10 years?

The answer, unfortunately, is that the budget office is required to take written legislation at face value and not second-guess the plausibility of what it is handed. So fantasy in, fantasy out.

In reality, if you strip out all the gimmicks and budgetary games and rework the calculus, a wholly different picture emerges: The health care reform legislation would raise, not lower, federal deficits, by $562 billion.

Gimmick No. 1 is the way the bill front-loads revenues and backloads spending. That is, the taxes and fees it calls for are set to begin immediately, but its new subsidies would be deferred so that the first 10 years of revenue would be used to pay for only 6 years of spending.

Even worse, some costs are left out entirely. To operate the new programs over the first 10 years, future Congresses would need to vote for $114 billion in additional annual spending. But this so-called discretionary spending is excluded from the Congressional Budget Office’s tabulation.

Consider, too, the fate of the $70 billion in premiums expected to be raised in the first 10 years for the legislation’s new long-term health care insurance program. This money is counted as deficit reduction, but the benefits it is intended to finance are assumed not to materialize in the first 10 years, so they appear nowhere in the cost of the legislation.

Another vivid example of how the legislation manipulates revenues is the provision to have corporations deposit $8 billion in higher estimated tax payments in 2014, thereby meeting fiscal targets for the first five years. But since the corporations’ actual taxes would be unchanged, the money would need to be refunded the next year. The net effect is simply to shift dollars from 2015 to 2014.

In addition to this accounting sleight of hand, the legislation would blithely rob Peter to pay Paul. For example, it would use $53 billion in anticipated higher Social Security taxes to offset health care spending. Social Security revenues are expected to rise as employers shift from paying for health insurance to paying higher wages. But if workers have higher wages, they will also qualify for increased Social Security benefits when they retire. So the extra money raised from payroll taxes is already spoken for. (Indeed, it is unlikely to be enough to keep Social Security solvent.) It cannot be used for lowering the deficit.

A government takeover of all federally financed student loans — which obviously has nothing to do with health care — is rolled into the bill because it is expected to generate $19 billion in deficit reduction.

Finally, in perhaps the most amazing bit of unrealistic accounting, the legislation proposes to trim $463 billion from Medicare spending and use it to finance insurance subsidies. But Medicare is already bleeding red ink, and the health care bill has no reforms that would enable the program to operate more cheaply in the future. Instead, Congress is likely to continue to regularly override scheduled cuts in payments to Medicare doctors and other providers.

Removing the unrealistic annual Medicare savings ($463 billion) and the stolen annual revenues from Social Security and long-term care insurance ($123 billion), and adding in the annual spending that so far is not accounted for ($114 billion) quickly generates additional deficits of $562 billion in the first 10 years. And the nation would be on the hook for two more entitlement programs rapidly expanding as far as the eye can see.

The bottom line is that Congress would spend a lot more; steal funds from education, Social Security and long-term care to cover the gap; and promise that future Congresses will make up for it by taxing more and spending less.

The stakes could not be higher. As documented in another recent budget office analysis, the federal deficit is already expected to exceed at least $700 billion every year over the next decade, doubling the national debt to more than $20 trillion. By 2020, the federal deficit — the amount the government must borrow to meet its expenses — is projected to be $1.2 trillion, $900 billion of which represents interest on previous debt.

The health care legislation would only increase this crushing debt. It is a clear indication that Congress does not realize the urgency of putting America’s fiscal house in order.

Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who was the director of the Congressional Budget Office from 2003 to 2005, is the president of the American Action Forum, a policy institute.