BlogFight

I link to my buddy Max a lot. Max is more libertarian-leaning than I am. In fact, he changed his answers on a questionnaire so that his result would make him libertarian. BUSTED!!

This is his response to something I wrote earlier.  Money quote: "at the core, the debate is over what level and type of spending we want.  Once that is figured out, the math of tailoring tax rates to our spending is indeed as simple as Dave makes it sound."

Agree! But unfortunately, one party just ain't doing that.  We're not having an honest debate about the level and type of spending we want at all, mainly because Republicans are basically lying.

Untruth 1: Telling the American people that the Ryan budget does not dismantle Medicare.  Medicare right now guarantees that once you hit a certain age, the government will pay for your bills.  It is one of the most popular programs in the country.  Ryan's plan is entirely new - it just gives seniors a lump sum of money, and then they buy their own plan.   Unfortunately, that lump sum of money is about half of what Medicare currently pays (which means that you'd get about half the amount of care). You can say market forces will bring this down, but there's really no evidence that that has worked ever.

If you wanted to have a "debate" about whether we should cut it or not, you can try, and you would probably lose - that just happened in NY-26.  So instead Ryan is just saying that his plan actually "saves" Medicare - when really all it does it shifts costs to seniors and then makes them pay twice the amount they currently would. See?

So this isn't really an honest "debate," when your argument is "My plan is the only way to save Medicare," but it actually just cuts the amount of health care seniors would get by a lot.

Again, to reiterate - if we were having the debate Max wants, Ryan would stand up and give a speech saying "We can't afford Medicare, so we're going to have to cut your benefits significantly." Obama would answer "Yes we can, we'll just have to implement my health care reform bill, and raise taxes a bit." That's really not what's happening - Ryan and the Republicans are saying their plan "saves" Medicare, when it just starts a whole new program and pays you less.  So that's not an honest debate.  Fortunately, the American people see right through it.

Lie 2: This isn't really a lie but it's a big problem.  Republicans' stated strategy is literally to stack the deck in their favor for this so-called honest "debate."  Here's what I mean, and this is the big takeaway from the original post: the cause of our big deficits/debt is NOT entitlements up to now - it's unpaid-for Republican policies.

1) Bush tax cuts - unpaid for
2) Two huge wars - unpaid for
3) Medicare Part D (which Max obliquely criticized the Obama administration for extending today, but they extended it by PAYING FOR it)

So then we get these giant budgets and all of a sudden republicans start screaming about "omg you guys we're living beyond our means we spend sooooooo much we have to cut these programs which btw we've always hated and have wanted to get rid of!"

That's not an honest debate.  That's taking advantage of the fiscal mess that you've created to scare people into thinking that we can't pay for programs that we can actually afford.

I guess my closing thought is - we live in a democracy.  These programs are really, really popular, among basically everyone.  You know what else is really, really popular? Raising taxes on the rich.  I trust the wisdom of my people - that should be the priority of the government. Republicans are just wrong, so they have to lie to convince people their plans are ok.

I'll have more later.