Tag Archives: Republicans

This Editorial Would Have Made a Good Blog Post

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Editorials in the New York Times tend to be rather restrained, befitting the dignified nature of the place (the Times still refers to Vladimir Putin as Mr. Putin and Nancy Pelosi as Ms. Pelosi, for example). But in an editorial called “Center Ring at the Republican Circus”, they’ve finally had enough, adopting a level of scorn and sarcasm befitting angry bloggers everywhere. Good for them!

Quote:

The hottest competition in Washington this week is among House Republicans vying for a seat on the Benghazi kangaroo court, also known as the Select House Committee to Inflate a Tragedy Into a Scandal. Half the House has asked to “serve” on the committee, which is understandable since it’s the perfect opportunity to avoid any real work while waving frantically to right-wing voters stomping their feet in the grandstand.

They won’t pass a serious jobs bill, or raise the minimum wage, or reform immigration, but House Republicans think they can earn their pay for the rest of the year by exposing nonexistent malfeasance on the part of the Obama administration. On Thursday, they voted to create a committee to spend such sums as may be necessary to conduct an investigation of the 2012 attack on the consulate in Benghazi, Libya. The day before, they voted to hold in contempt Lois Lerner, the former Internal Revenue Service official whom they would love to blame for the administration’s crackdown on conservative groups, if only they could prove there was a crackdown, which they can’t, because there wasn’t.

Both actions stem from the same impulse: a need to rouse the most fervent anti-Obama wing of the party and keep it angry enough to deliver its donations and votes to Republicans in the November elections. For a while it seemed as if the Affordable Care Act would perform that role, but Republicans ran into a problem when the country began to realize that it was not destroying American civilization but in fact helping millions of people.

The entire editorial is here.

Dollars and Poverty

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Republican Congressman Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, is worried that the federal government spends too much money trying to help poor people:

“The question isn’t whether the federal government should help; the question is how,” Mr. Ryan said at [a committee] hearing on Wednesday. “How do we make sure that every single taxpayer dollar we spend to reduce poverty is actually working?” 

Can you imagine someone like Ryan ever wanting to make sure that every single dollar spent on the military is actually working? I can’t.

The quote above comes from a New York Times article called “Changed Life of the Poor: Better Off But Far Behind”. The article describes the economic situation facing the poor today: 

Two broad trends account for much of the change in poor families’ consumption over the past generation: federal programs and falling prices.

Since the 1960s, both Republican and Democratic administrations have expanded programs like food stamps and the earned-income tax credit….

As a result, the differences in what poor and middle-class families consume on a day-to-day basis are much smaller than the differences in what they earn.

“There’s just a whole lot more assistance per low-income person than there ever has been,” said … a senior research fellow at the conservative Heritage Foundation. “That is propping up the living standards to a considerable degree,” he said, citing a number of statistics on housing, nutrition and other categories.

[At the same time], the same global economic trends that have helped drive down the price of most goods also have limited the well-paying industrial jobs once available to a huge swath of working Americans. And the cost of many services crucial to escaping poverty — including education, health care and child care — has soared.

So, for example:

Tammie Hagen-Noey, a 49-year-old living in Richmond, Va., tapped at an iPhone as she sat on the porch of the group home where she lives… She earns $7.25 an hour at a local McDonald’s, and makes a little extra money on the side from planting small plots of land for neighbors….A few months ago, she sold her car for $500 to make rent.

Almost everybody could manage their spending better (even members of Congress) and that woman in Virginia presumably didn’t spend hundreds of dollars to buy the latest iPhone. Human beings get into all kinds of trouble, because of their own mistakes or through no fault of their own, and will continue to need help from the rest of us, even if every single dollar intended to help them doesn’t “work”. Republicans claim that cutting taxes and reducing regulations will create lots of better-paying jobs, allowing us to spend less on government assistance for the poor. What they’re really advocating is a race to the bottom, with more inequality, dangerous workplaces, pollution and unsafe food. Since we have to compete in a global economy, we’ll end up closer to the economic middle in future decades (nobody stays on top forever), but we shouldn’t race to become worse off.

More Good News For America

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From the Los Angeles Times:

Driven by a last-minute flood of enrollments, particularly in California, sign-ups for health insurance through the Affordable Care Act’s online marketplaces hit 8 million in the law’s first year, President Obama announced Thursday.

That beats the forecast by 1 million people and caps a remarkable comeback from a disastrous rollout last fall that gave rise to predictions the law would collapse in its maiden year.

Instead, the health law, often called Obamacare, has helped bring about the largest increase in insurance coverage in the U.S. in half a century.

“This thing is working,” Obama said from the White House briefing room, taking a jab at Republican critics who continue to pledge to roll back the law. “The repeal debate is, and should be, over”….

Millions more Americans have signed up for health insurance without using the marketplaces, including through Medicaid, employers or directly from insurers. That has helped to dramatically drive down the nation’s uninsured rate, according to a growing number of national surveys.

Estimates of the total gain in insurance coverage nationally are still preliminary….But new Gallup survey data released this week suggest that as many as 12 million previously uninsured Americans have already gained coverage since last fall.

Republicans are still mouthing off about the numbers being inflated or misleading or whatever. To hell with them. And remember to vote in November.

“Obamacare” Not Such a Disaster After All; Republicans Reconsider Opposition

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The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has issued a document entitled “Updated Estimates of the Effects of the Insurance Coverage Provisions of the Affordable Care Act, April 2014”.

I quote (some posts are easier to write than others):

Relative to their previous projections, CBO and JCT [Joint Committee on Taxation] now estimate that the ACA’s coverage provisions will result in lower net costs to the federal government: The agencies now project a net cost of $36 billion for 2014, $5 billion less than the previous projection for the year; and $1,383 billion for the 2015–2024 period, $104 billion less than the previous projection….

CBO and JCT estimate that the insurance coverage provisions of the ACA will increase the proportion of the non-elderly population with insurance from roughly 80 percent in the absence of the ACA to about 84 percent in 2014 and to about 89 percent in 2016 and beyond… CBO and JCT project that 12 million more non-elderly people will have health insurance in 2014 than would have had it in the absence of the ACA. They also project that 19 million more people will be insured in 2015, 25 million more will be insured in 2016, and 26 million more will be insured each year from 2017 through 2024 than would have been the case without the ACA.

In other words, the Affordable Care Act will cost less and result in more people having health insurance than previously estimated. Given these very encouraging new estimates, leading Republicans are reconsidering their short-sighted, hypocritical opposition to “Obamacare”. (I made up that last part.)

The Plutocratic Party and Social Security

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The latest Republican budget plan has a section on Social Security. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t have read it, but Michael Hiltzik, a business columnist for the Los Angeles Times, wrote an article called “Paul Ryan Rehashes An Old Social Security Lie”. 

The lie in question appears in the second paragraph below. I think it’s worth reading the surrounding paragraphs too (all of which appear on page 66 of the Republican’s budget document):

An all-too-common reaction to the fiscal problem in Social Security has been denial that a problem exists. It is claimed that the Social Security Trust Fund will remain solvent for at least a decade, at which point the government could theoretically cover any shortfall by raising taxes. Others downplay the necessity for change, contending that sustained economic growth could take care of the problem all by itself.

Neither is correct. First, any value in the balances in the Social Security Trust Fund is derived from dubious government accounting. The trust fund is not a real savings account. From 1983 to 2010, it collected more Social Security taxes than it paid out in Social Security benefits. But the government borrowed all of these surpluses and spent them on other government programs unrelated to Social Security. The Trust Fund holds Treasury securities, but the ability to redeem these securities is completely dependent on the Treasury’s ability to raise money through taxes or borrowing.

Social Security is currently paying out more in benefits than it collected in taxes–in other words, running cash deficits–a trend that will worsen as the baby boomers continue to retire. To pay full benefits, the government must pay back the money it owes Social Security. In testimony before the House Budget Committee, CBO Director Doug Elmendorf stated that:

“Well, again, Congressman, on a unified budget basis, taking account of just the tax revenues, the dedicated tax revenues, and the benefits, [Social Security] is contributing [to] the deficit now. If one instead looks at just the balance in the Social Security Trust Fund, that balance is, the annual balance is positive now, but will be negative within about a half dozen years.”

Given how difficult it is to predict the future, it isn’t clear exactly when Social Security would have trouble paying 100% of everybody’s promised benefits. As Ryan’s document says, however, the government could “theoretically” raise Social Security taxes at some point to make up the difference. The “theory” in this case is arithmetic.

Not everyone knows this, but as of 2014, Social Security taxes are only applied to the first $117,000 of a person’s income. Here’s what the Center for Economic Policy and Research says about raising that threshold and thereby putting more money into Social Security:

There have recently been several pieces of proposed legislation to raise or do away with the payroll tax cap. Sen. Bernie Sanders and Rep. Peter DeFazio have sponsored legislation that would raise the cap to income above $250,000 while Sen. Mark Begich and Rep. Ted Deutch’s proposal  would fully eliminate the cap, with a small portion of earnings above the current cap going toward benefits. If enacted, proposals like these could almost entirely close Social Security’s projected long-term funding gap without reducing benefits nor increasing taxes on the vast majority of American workers.

Of course, applying the Social Security tax to the highest incomes would also partly address the problem of economic inequality in America, a worthy goal in itself.

The statement in the second paragraph that “any value” in the Social Security Trust fund is “dubious” is the one that Michael Hitzlik called a lie (it’s good that reputable journalists are finally getting around to using that word). I’ve heard this claim before – that somehow the Social Security Trust Fund doesn’t have real money in it – but never understood how such a thing could be true. As Hitzlik explains, the Trust Fund holds almost $3 trillion (not billion, but trillion) worth of government bonds. In fact, as of December 31, 2013, the Department of the Treasury said these bonds were paying an interest rate of 3.626% and were worth 2,765,212,571 dollars (give or take a penny).

So why aren’t these bonds worth anything, according to the Republicans? Their idea seems to be that since the Trust Fund paid cash for those government bonds, and the government used that cash for various non-Social Security purposes like watering the White House lawn and paying Paul Ryan’s salary, the government has already spent the money in the Trust Fund. So it’s gone!

However, in the real world, when someone purchases a bond, whether the buyer is the Trust Fund or an individual investor, the bond pays interest (for example, 3.6%) and can eventually be redeemed (converted back into cash). That’s how investing in bonds works. Whatever the government did with the cash it got from the Trust Fund is irrelevant, so long as the government keeps paying interest and redeems its bonds when they mature.

The second “reason” they offer for saying all those bonds are worthless is that the government could stop paying interest on them and not redeem them when they mature. That’s what’s known as the U.S. government “defaulting” on its financial obligations.

As the Republicans say, the government’s ability to meet its obligations depends on raising revenue, either by taxing or borrowing (or selling stuff like national forests). But that’s what the government has been doing for more than 200 years. Is there any reason to think that the federal government will eventually become unable to pay its debts, including its debts to the Social Security Trust Fund? No, the United States is the richest country in the world. Investors all over the world, including foreign governments, believe our government’s bonds are very safe investments.

In fact, the only remotely likely scenario in which the government fails to pay its debts is if Republican extremists somehow manage to shut down the government again for an even longer period of time, which stops the government from levying taxes and selling more bonds! That’s what the Republicans recently threatened to do, many of them arguing that a government default wouldn’t be a very big deal. So on one hand, the Republicans claim to worry that the government won’t pay its debts to the Social Security Trust Fund, but on the other hand, they think it might be o.k. if the government didn’t pay its debts. (These people truly are amazing.)

The quotation above ends with the Republicans making the point that Social Security is running a deficit and the deficit is expected to get worse. That’s true, and that’s why raising the income cap would “theoretically” be a good idea. They then quote some testimony from the head of the Congressional Budget Office. I had to read that paragraph several times to see if it somehow supported the Republican contention that Social Security is in deep trouble. It doesn’t.

What the head of the CBO is saying is that Social Security is affecting the overall federal deficit now (since the government is paying what it owes to Social Security) and the Trust Fund itself will start running an annual deficit in about six years. What the Republicans don’t bother mentioning is that the Trust Fund is expected to have money in it until 2033 (and that’s if nothing is done in the meantime to put more money into the Trust Fund). Plus, even if the Trust Fund were to run out of money, Social Security would still pay about 75% of everyone’s promised benefit, since working people would still be paying Social Security taxes (reference here).

The Republicans go on to suggest limiting benefits for upper income Social Security beneficiaries (certainly a possibility) and hint that maybe the retirement age should be raised because people are living longer (which is a bad idea, because it wouldn’t save much money and lots of people – unlike politicians – can’t keep working or can’t find jobs by the time they reach 65 or so).

For all their fear-mongering, Ryan and his colleagues don’t offer a solution to this supposed crisis, except to suggest that the President go first by making some specific recommendations (which they can then use to attack him as an enemy of Social Security). The Republicans even suggest that benefits should be increased for low-income retirees (another good idea, but one more often made by us “tax and spend” Democrats). 

Michael Hiltzik thinks this budget document is evidence that Republicans don’t want the government to make good on its debt to Social Security:

When you hear people like Paul Ryan talk as though the country can’t afford to pay back the money by redeeming the bonds in the trust fund, what you’re hearing is the sound of the wealthy preparing to stiff the working class. If the income tax has to be raised to turn those T-bonds into cash for payment of benefits over the next couple of decades, that’s how the rich will be made to repay the people who lent them the money. Some people love to claim that the government has “stolen” the trust fund. The correct reply to that is: “Not yet.” But if Ryan has his way, yes, the money will be stolen. It’s up to you and me to make sure that doesn’t happen.

The idea would be, I guess, that if the Trust Fund doesn’t have any real money in it now, we won’t miss it when it’s gone. I’m not convinced that’s the Republican plan. But I’ve given up trying to understand whether people like Ryan are knaves (unscrupulous and dishonest) or fools or both. What’s clear is that their principal goal as politicians is to serve the needs of the wealthy. The surprising thing is that so many voters, in particular, the Tea Party types who don’t want the government messing with their Medicare or Social Security, continue to vote for the Plutocratic Party. 

For more on Social Security (if you can stand it), there was a recent article at Salon written by a so-called “Millennial”. He rejects what most of his generation believe: that Social Security will go bankrupt before the Millennials can collect any benefits. He also argues that it makes no sense to be a “social conservative and economic liberal”.

PS — Ryan Budget Gets 69 Percent of Its Cuts from Low-Income Programs