Education Social Security

Richard Eskow of the Center for the American Future, posted a very good one a couple of days ago. He used the old union meme “which side are you on” to beat up the President and Congress about Social Security being placed on the negotiating table. I thought his writing on it was striking. Here’s some of it:

“This is a moment of moral clarity. Right now there are only two sides in the Social Security debate: the side that says it’s acceptable to cut benefits – in a way that raises taxes for all income except the highest – and the side that says it isn’t.

“It’s time to ask our leaders – and ourselves – a simple question: Which side are you on?”

“Nancy Pelosi says she can convince most Congressional Democrats to “stick with the President” as he pursues his gratuitous and callous plan to cut Social Security benefits as part of a deficit deal – even though Social Security does not contribute to the deficit.”

I certainly hope that Nancy Pelosi cannot convince most Democrats to risk their seats and prepare the way for a Republican sweep in 2014 by voting to cut SS. The Republicans will respond to this by casting themselves as the protectors of SS, and while this is ridiculous, the Democrats will not be credible in claiming that they are its protectors, and they will lose their identity as the protectors of the safety net, a very high price to pay for the sake of raising taxes on the rich by an amount that is insignificant in the greater scheme of things. Eskow goes on:

“Excuse me: Stick with the President? What about sticking with our seniors and our veterans? What about sticking with our disabled fellow Americans? What What about sticking with the more than 4,000 children on Social Security who lost a parent in the Iraq War?

“If you want to “stick with” Americans on Social Security, it’s time to call everybody who represents you in Washington – your Representative, your Senator, your President – and tell them that they’ll lose your support if they do this deal.

“It’s time for an end to the Orwellian doublespeak. Cutting benefits won’t “strengthen” Social Security, as Nancy Pelosi claims. Cuts of 6.5 percent for a 75 year old and 9.2 percent for a 95 year old aren’t so small that “folks won’t even notice ‘em,” as President Obama claimed. They’re not a “technical” adjustment, as his press secretary argued, nor do “most economists believe … this about getting a proper measure of inflation.

“The smart economists know that even today’s cost of living formula isn’t enough. It undercounts the things older and disabled people use the most, like health care and public transportation. Some other people know the formula’s inadequate, too: Seniors. They live with the costs every day.

“So let’s stop all the double-talk and get down to the real question at hand: Which side are you on?”

The framing is “which side are you on”? Will you stick with the President and the people, who will do a deal at any costs, or will you stick with seniors and the American people. This reminds me of the frame Randy Wray recently used in one of his posts on re-framing MMT. That framing came from Bruce Springsteen: Read the rest of this entry →

Every once in a while, Richard Kirsch, does a "happy dance" article celebrating his own Health Care for America Now campaign for health care reform, whose outcome of course was the wonderful bill legislated by the Congress last Spring. Kirsch, who is now a Senior Fellow at The Roosevelt Institute, posted his latest happy dance at The Nation, whose "liberal media bias" was nowhere in evidence near his article.

I have only a few comments to make on his description of the process of bringing this "progressive victory" to us all, since, no doubt, Kirsch is the leading expert on this process. However, I will say something about an aspect of the process which he’s neglected to describe and then go on to talk about the results of his noble efforts.

On process, Richard fails to talk about the successful efforts of HCAN to work with the Obama political team and other "progressive" organizations in Washington, to take Medicare for All "off the table" as an option that would receive serious consideration in Congress. HCAN persuaded most other progressive organizations based in Washington with significant funding to shut up about single-payer and get behind the public option proposal.

At first a comprehensive version of a public option bill outlined by Jacob Hacker was used to seduce the left organizations. It was claimed that it would be much more acceptable to the health insurance industry than single-payer, and had a much better chance to pass. Then as the public option alternative was de-fanged, a little more at each stage of the political process, HCAN held the coalition of progressive organizations together, in the "veal pen," and prevented the resurrection of single-payer as a viable alternative.

In order to carry out its effort, HCAN and its predecessor organization, The Herndon Alliance conducted biased polling, manipulated the media, used its very substantial funding to flood the media with PO-based stories, did its best to label single-payer advocates as "unrealistic," and, generally, to tell people that "the perfect is the enemy of the good," while preparing to support legislation that was very far from being either perfect or good.

The story of the efforts and manipulations of HCAN, the "bait-and-switch tactics;" the lack of honesty with the public about the continued diminution of the public option as the legislative process moved forward; it’s unwillingness to say a loud "no" as the bill moved farther and farther away from either single payer, or the original public option compromise, and closer and closer to its final state as a pure bail-out for the insurance industry, delivering very little value to people, can be traced at the Physicians for a National Health Program (pnhp) web site. Please read Kip Sullivan’s many blogs to see a picture of real perfidy on the left, and to understand that the worst thing that could have happened to the left’s campaign for national health insurance was to have it led by HCAN and its objective of getting the Public Option "sparkle pony" passed into law.

A more general account, from the viewpoint of George Soros’s favorite notion of reflexivity, of the multi-stage de-generative political process engaged in by the left, under the leadership of HCAN is here. In short, the process engaged in by HCAN, under Richard’s leadership was, in my view, nothing short of a progressive disaster. It is one we must never duplicate, if we value the continued existence of the progressive movement and progressive values.

Moving on to the outcome of HCAN’s process, the Administration’s final health care reform bill, which Richard is pleased to call a "victory;" I doubt that there are very many progressives who would characterize it that way outside the land of Washington organization spin. Most people blogging or commenting at FireDogLake certainly thought it was a defeat and that it was worse than no bill at all. Of course, everyone in the Medicare for All movement thought it was a great betrayal, and there were many in the blogosphere generally, who thought the bill was a great failure, and that progressives should have been hanging their heads in shame over it, rather than doing happy dances.

I posted my own opinion of the bill in a piece called "J’Accuse" here and here, before the final compromise occurred, but none of my central criticisms were blunted in the final bill. The bill that Richard Kirsch calls a victory, is one that fails to stop hundreds of thousands of fatalities, and millions of bankruptcies, and home foreclosures, before it goes into effect in 2014, and even then dooms people to an additional 127,000 fatalities between 2014 and 2019, if there is no further reform.

The outcome of Richard’s process, which he celebrates, is not the victory he also celebrates, but a travesty of progressivism, a true failure and a catalog of sell-outs to corporate interests at every step of the way. Further, Richard’s "happy dance," constituting a self-evaluation of the significance of his own efforts, holding it forth as a model for others to follow is itself a travesty, reminiscent of the efforts of Dick and Lynne Cheney to recast Dick’s own legacy of failure.

One of the most disturbing trends in Washington in past years has been the increasingly frequent efforts of politicians and those associated with them to give themselves credit for outcomes that only they and very few others recognize as worthy of praise. It would be in much better taste, and also much more conducive to learning the real lessons of the past, if they waited for others to praise them, and until then, kept a respectful silence, before they began "the happy dance."

(Cross-posted at All Life Is Problem Solving and Fiscal Sustainability).

In an earlier post evaluating the House Health Care Reform Bill, I raised the question of the morality of voting for the bill, and argued that voting for it was an immoral act. Now that the Senate bill has been passed and includes many of the same features of the House bill including a “band-aid” period before the bill takes full effect in 2014, and the likelihood that a final Conference compromise will incorporate features of both bills, it’s time to raise the question of morality again. In connection with the House bill I said:

”So, what should we think of this bill, evaluating it from the perspective of what it provides in the band-aid period. Does it improve things in that period or not? Is it better than nothing at all? Is it an immoral and an intolerable bill, in some ways like Alan Grayson’s Republican plan saying to thousands of people each year, “If you get sick then die quickly.” Read the rest of this entry →

Absent a substantial change in direction by Congressional Leadership and the President, I think it’s time to do whatever progressives can to kill the health care reform legislation currently moving through Congress, and then to immediately reset to Medicare for All, single payer.

As HR 3962 bill sits now, it’s worse than no bill at all, and the Senate and Conference versions are likely to make a final bill still worse. If so, that bill will destroy progressive and Democrat credibility by associating us once again with reforms that don’t solve problems, and corporate interests, in opposition to the American people. Read the rest of this entry →

On reading my evaluation of the “band-aid” period between 2010 and 2013, specified in Nancy Pelosi’s compromise bill, Bonnie commented:

”I think the House ought to include a special subsidy for the 31,000 families of uninsured people who will die annually from lack of insurance during the band-aid period, so that they can afford to bury their loved ones.”

When I asked why, Bonnie replied by saying that: Read the rest of this entry →

We’ll see many policy analyses and evaluations of Nancy Pelosi’s compromise health care reform bill as it gets closer to a final vote. This one won’t be thorough, since the bill is one of daunting length (1990 pages) and complexity, and I haven’t had the time to do a really detailed analysis. But I’ll do the best I can now, because enough detail is available to get a general impression of the bill, and evaluations that are timely are sorely needed, if only to feed the very essential debate that must go on before such a consequential bill becomes final.

The thing that sets this bill apart from most, is that it specifies two distinct periods in which the legal structures created by the bill will be different. The first period is from January 1, 2010 to the date in 2013 when the exchange, the public option, the mandates, the subsidies, and the outlawing of denials due to preexisting conditions become relevant, and the period thereafter, when most of these conditions take effect, and when eligibility for the exchange and the public option will be gradually expanded.

I’ll begin this analysis and evaluation with the first “band-aid” period. Speaker Pelosi’s office has conveniently produced a list of 14 provisions that take effect immediately. There are three categories of provisions: those mainly focused on addressing the problems of coverage and cost we see in the present system, provisions which provide “goodies” to Medicare recipients, and provisions providing miscellaneous “goodies” to sub-groups in the population, or address long-term but not the current central issues of health insurance reform. Read the rest of this entry →

Alan Grayson been making waves lately. His characterizing the Republican health care plan as: “if you get sick, die quickly, and then calling out members of the Republican Party as “foot-dragging, knuckle-dragging neanderthals,” were both good for a laugh. And then, when they howled and demanded an apology, he refused to apologize to them, but instead said that he would only apologize to the 44,000 annual dead and their families for Congress’s inaction failing to fix the health insurance mess.

On Friday’s installment of Countdown, Lawrence O’Donnell, substituting for Keith, played a clip of Grayson’s recent speech on the floor of the House (above), and then also had him on the program for a softball interview (below). In both performances Grayson exuded confidence, comfort, and humor. In the interview he was just “basking,” a really “happy warrior” in the tradition of Al Smith, Franklin Roosevelt, and Harry Truman. Read the rest of this entry →