| The Republican House plan seems to be reducing the deficit, while repealing the health care bill and cutting taxes for the wealthy. Those two goals are contradictory. That is simply a breach of logic. |
| Extending the [Bush] tax cuts, however, would add nearly $4 trillion to the debt by 2020, and hundreds of billions more in interest owed for the additional government borrowing, greatly complicating another Republican goal: balancing the budget.
Source: "For G.O.P., Big Ambitions Face Daunting Obstacles" By JACKIE CALMES - NY Times - November 4, 2010 CBO and the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimate that enacting both pieces of legislation -- H.R. 3590 and the reconciliation proposal [the health care bill]-- would produce a net reduction in federal deficits of $143 billion over the 2010–2019 period as result of changes in direct spending and revenues. Source: "Cost Estimate for Pending Health Care Legislation" - Congressional Budget Office (http://cboblog.cbo.gov/?p=546) - March 21st, 2010 First, there is no way to slow the rise in Medicare costs — essential to addressing the deficit — without some changes in the Medicare program. And despite all the talk of gutting, what reform calls for is a reduction in the rate of increase in payments to health care providers, to encourage more efficiency, and a scale back in the unjustified subsidies to the private Medicare advantage programs. That change will only affect some 11 million of Medicare’s 46 million beneficiaries. Most important, there will be no cuts whatsoever, and some improvements, in the benefits offered in the traditional Medicare fee-for-service program that covers three-fourths of Medicare’s beneficiaries. The areas for reducing spending have been chosen judiciously and are augmented by a host of measures to improve the delivery and quality of medical care. Source: "Medicare and the Republicans" -NY Times - November 4, 2010 Ronald Reagan told us he could cut taxes, jack up defense spending and balance the budget — all at the same time. How’d he do? As his biographer Garry Wills tells us, the Gipper “nearly tripled the deficit in his eight years, and never made a realistic proposal for cutting it.” People traveling in the real world understand that the federal budget deficits are sky high because of the Bush-era tax cuts, the costs of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the spending that was needed to keep the Great Recession from spiraling into another Great Depression. Even if deficit reduction right now were a good idea — which it is not, given the sorry state of the economy and the vast legions of the unemployed — the deficit zealots have no viable plan for getting their misguided mission accomplished. Source: The Impossible Dream" By BOB HERBERT - NY Times - November 8, 2010 |
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| Comments | Contributor | Date Submitted |
| Logic? From Republicans? I don't think so. | Linda Denton |
12/2/2010 |
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