Paul Ryan Vs. The President
We covered it ourselves last week. This morning Ryan demands again in the WSJ -- that Obama and Democrats stop LYING about the real costs of Obamacare.
Watch it yourself (or read the transcript) >>
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'Every argument has been made. Everything that there is to say about health care has been said, and just about everybody has said it," President Obama declared yesterday as he urged Democrats to steamroll his plan through Congress. What hasn't been heard, however, is even a shred of White House honesty about the true costs of ObamaCare, or its fiscal consequences.
Nearby, we reprint Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan's remarks at the health summit last week, which methodically dismantle the falsehoods—there is no other way of putting it—that Mr. Obama has used to sell "reform" and repeated again yesterday. No one in the political class has even tried to refute Mr. Ryan's arguments, though he made them directly to the President and his allies, no doubt because they are irrefutable. If Democrats are willing to ignore overwhelming public opposition to ObamaCare and pass it anyway, then what's a trifling dispute over a couple of trillion dollars?
At his press conference yesterday, Mr. Obama claimed that "my proposal would bring down the cost of health care for millions—families, businesses and the federal government." He said it is "fully paid for" and "brings down our deficit by up to $1 trillion over the next two decades." Never before has a vast new entitlement been sold on the basis of fiscal responsibility, and one reason ObamaCare is so unpopular is that Americans understand the contradiction between untold new government subsidies and claims of spending restraint. They know a Big Con when they hear one.
Mr. Obama's fiscal assertions are possible only because of the fraudulent accounting and budget gimmicks that Democrats spent months calibrating. Readers can find the gory details in Mr. Ryan's pre-emptive rebuttal nearby, though one of the most egregious deceptions is that the bill counts 10 years of taxes but only six years of spending.
The real cost over a decade is about $2.3 trillion on paper, Mr. Ryan estimates, and even that is a lowball estimate considering how many people will flood to "free" health care and how many businesses will be induced to drop coverage. Mr. Obama claimed yesterday that the plan will cost "about $100 billion per year," but in fact the costs ramp up each year the program exists. The far more likely deficits are $460 billion over the first 10 years, and $1.4 trillion over the next 10.
What Mr. Ryan calls "probably the most cynical gimmick" deserves special attention, which is known in Washington as the "doc fix." Next month Medicare physician payments are scheduled to be cut by 22% and deeper thereafter, though Congress is sure to postpone the reductions as it always does. Failing to account for this inevitability takes nearly a quarter-trillion dollars off the ObamaCare books and by itself wipes out the "savings" that the White House continues to take credit for.
Some in the liberal cheering section now claim that this Medicare ruse isn't Mr. Obama's problem because it was first promised by Republicans and Bill Clinton in 1997. But then why did Democrats include the "doc fix" in all early versions of the bill to buy the support of the American Medical Association, only to dump this pricey item later when hiding it would make it easier to fake-reduce the deficit?
The President was (miraculously) struck dumb by Mr. Ryan's critique, and in his response drifted off into an irrelevant tangent about Medicare Advantage, while California Democrat Xavier Becerra claimed "you essentially said you can't trust the Congressional Budget Office." But Mr. Ryan was careful to note that he didn't doubt the professionalism of CBO, only the truthfulness of the Democratic gimmicks that the budget gnomes are asked to score.
Yesterday Mr. Obama again invoked the "nonpartisan, independent" authority of CBO, which misses the reality that if you feed the agency phony premises, you are going to get phony results at the other end.
The President also claimed the reason his plan is in trouble, and the reason Democrats must abuse the Senate's rules to ram this plan into law, is that "many Republicans in Congress just have a fundamental disagreement over whether we should have more or less oversight of insurance companies." So most of Mr. Obama's first year in office has been paralyzed over nothing more than minor regulatory hair-splitting. This is so preposterous that the President can't possibly believe it.
Congress's spring break begins on March 29, and Democratic leaders plan on jamming this monster through Congress before then. Americans have to hope that enough rank-and-file Democrats aren't as deaf to fiscal honesty as this President.
Mar 4, 2010 at 4:45 PM
Reader Comments (18)
http://dailybail.com/home/us-headed-toward-bankruptcy-says-top-budget-committee-member.html
http://dailybail.com/home/us-headed-toward-bankruptcy-says-top-budget-committee-member.html
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Welfare didn't work and Welcare won't work either. And for the exact same reasons. The exact same f-ing reasons.
When something of any value, even the most miniscule, is given away for free, there are always a lot of buyers. And, there is never any respect for its value. How could there be?
Then #3) there's the thorny issue of Rep Paul D Ryan's credibility on the subject of costs associated with health legislation, national deficits and deficit-reduction.
You see - Rep Paul D. Ryan VOTED "YES" for GOP's UNFUNDED Dec 2003 Medicare Rx Modernization Act (MMA)a masive 700-page entitlement bill that benefitted drug & insurance industries with $200+ billion windfall profits, enabled Big Pharma's High "price-fixing" by denying the government the right to negotiate lower Rx prices, outlawed cheaper imported Rx drugs etc etc.. Not only did MMA have ZERO FUNDING PROVISION, to get it rammed through Republicans lied to Congress that it would cost only $400 billion. In Feb 2004, a Duke Law & Technology Analysis reported “the estimated $540 billion price tag on MMA will have far-reaching economic effects that will likely force legislators to make fundamental changes to the tax system in the future and MAY ULTIMATELY CAUSE THE HEALTHCARE SYSTEM IN THE US TO FALTER".
MMA cost to-date is estimated at $1.2 trillion and has added between $7 - $10 trillion to Medicare's unfunded liability, it also shafted America's seniors with unreasonably high Rx prices & US taxpayers with funding extra profits for health industry fact cat corps. Cato Institute called it a "fiscal trainwreck".
ALL THE REPUBLICANS AT OBAMA'S HEALTH CARE SUMMIT VOTED "YES" IN 2003 FOR UNFUNDED MMA, but only one, Rep Paul D Ryan, has come out with his own critical cost analysis of FUNDED Obamacare, claiming expertise in deficit reduction which can see through "the REAL COST" of FUNDED Senate version of Obamacare, which CBO scoring showed would reduce national deficit by $138 billion over 10 years.
Over 8 years, suddenly fiscally responsible Rep Paul D Ryan voted "YES" for UNFUNDED Medicare Rx Act, 5 UNFUNDED Bush tax bills, the UNFUNDED Iraq war, to name but a few that added $4 trillion to US National Debt....and NEVER once did he issue an alternative plan or cost analysis, or exhibit a modicum of concern for the debt burden to future generations.
I conclude that Rep Paul D. Ryan has no standing to present his own inflated partisan cost analysis of Obamacare, however many charts he posits as supporting evidence. Rep Paul D. Ryan's voting record shows a hypocritical insouciance for America's deficit's and absenteee motivation to to do anything to curb government spending & reduce deficits....until the Democrat health reform agenda.
Rep Paul D Ryan has no credibility in this matter.
There is an business saying..."You are given the options of Fast, Good and Cheap, and told to pick any two. Here Fast refers to the time required to deliver the product, Good is the quality of the final product, and Cheap refers to the total cost of designing and building the product. This triangle reflects the fact that the three properties of a project are interrelated, and it is not possible to optimise all three – one will always suffer." This refers to the private sector.
With regards to the government, at best we will only be able to get one option. Right now, Obama is trying to give us nationalized healthcare as soon as possible and the result will be the slow delivery of health services, less quality care but cheaper healthcare on average if you ignore the cost to the government (tax the rich if possible).
Right now, our healthcare is fast, good but expensive.
So RLR...So DB...So Gomp...So James...
What do you want?
Fast, Good and Expensive or Slow, Not as Good (optimistic) and At Best Less Expensive Per Capita (at face value ignoring the increase in taxes and the fact that costs will go up). Let's face reality, we may not get any of the three. Healthcare will look a lot like our public schools. Yes AB, like the one you go to.
The GOP is saying NO, the Dems are saying YES to the takeover. How are they the same? Time to pick a team!
Capitalism or Socialism, pick one...
Totalitarianism or Democracy...
1 I do not believe in criminalization of people without benefits. When someone loses a job they would be forced to choose between continuing insurance or starving their children. Contrary to popular belief, U.I. does not pay good enough to do both. Criminalization of people who would like to work, while providing care for welfare is stupid. If we put the people in jail who would really only want to work, and provide for themselves, who would pay for all the entitlement programs for the rich and poor? Certainly not the rich or poor.
2 I have stated numerous times, show me one Goobermint program that both parties have not FUBARed in the past, emphasis on BOTH parties.
"we may not get any of the three. Healthcare will look a lot like our public schools. "
We will never have any of the three. All you have to do is look at our VA hospitals to see how Goobermint involvement in the treatment of our finest sons and daughters has been debauched. No sheets on our wounded veterans beds, just plastic slip covers, ever try to sleep or get comfortable on plastic? Denying real treatments, reusing needles to save money, now hepatitis may kill more than the Taliban, at the hands of our countrymen. The list goes on...
If the Goobermint feels this is the way veterans should be treated, what do the rest of you think they have in mind for you. The issues above have gone on for many years, I myself have experienced it more than twenty years ago in a military hospital, and many friends are still fighting for treatment of injuries from that many years ago, or more.
And yes Gobie, the GOP was involved... It is called cost savings, to pay for tax cuts for the rich, another entitlement program...
You are not picking Capitalism or Socialism, you are picking yellow or red Socialism. Both roads will meet together in the end.
http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2009/08/third-party-and-independent-candidates-for-office-2010/
http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2010/01/many-texas-independent-candidates-for-congress-file-notice-of-intent/
http://www.independentpoliticalreport.com/2010/01/anybodys-game-utahs-independent-candidates-for-congress-2010/
http://www.search.com/reference/Independent_%28politician%29#United_States
Your psychosis is no excuse to be a yellow bashing reds, you are all the same in the end. This is America, and what you do not understand is that people are allowed to have their own thoughts, ideas, etc. Thank God for that because if everyone thought like you we would have a cross dressing extreme left president claiming to be a Reagan revolutionary (Judy).
So the system does work, unfortunately not as well as it could. That is due to lack of voter education and participation.
So in the end it falls back to all our shoulders, including yours (education), and Kens (participation)...
As to RLR, DB, and James, Their views are uniquely their own, and they are entitled to them, and it is their choice if they want to share them with you, and their choice only, not yours.
I do find it interesting that you always ask a question, disregarded the answer, and respond with a simpleton rhetorical response. If you don't want an answer, don't ask the question, You have shown all here that you are the King of preconceived notions.
You may go back to ruling the sweaty socks now...