How about proposing a reduction in wars? A 33% cut in wars, perhaps? Seriously, let's get the ******** out of Iraq. That's obvious. And because I'm so serious about the budget, let's grow the ******** up and realize A-stan is a lost cause and get the hell out of there, too.
LOL. I guess it is relevant to note that according to Ezra Klein, Democrats in the House are planning on releasing their proposed budget next week.
Wow, that's some heavy-duty research they do over in Republicanland. Turn in a high school AP Econ paper with that lack of due diligence, with an assumption that you can't explain so you have to backtrack when asked about it, and you'd get your ass handed to you. Seroiusly, how the hell did Ryan's Congressional staffers to let him embarrass himself like that?
Nancy did it a day before the plan was even released. But that's what makes her such a great leader, she is always proactive.
The irony is that it would need a significant extension of Obama's healthcare reform law to stop large numbers of seniors being ********ed. Absent that law's provisions to stop policy discrimination on the basis of pre-existing conditions, insurance companies aren't exactly going to be rushing to sign up seniors with vouchers in hand. Of course, the Republicans actually want to repeal those provisions rather than extend them...
I like Ryan making a rationing proposal. If we can talk straight up about what rationing means, that is what people we will let die, rot, or fester, then maybe we'll build up the collective will to clean up the health-care system. But I do wish Ryan would say what he is doing. He's rationing. FYI, The Economist just ripped Ryan a new one for claiming that Obama's energy policies have doubled gas prices. As The Economist points out, either you're a serious man with big ideas, in which case you can't make flimsy arguments that fail at a very basic level, or you're a hack who is looking to score on the President, in which case you can't present yourself as a serious man with big ideas.
THE PURPLE HEATHCARE PLAN Dear Fellow Economists and Other Concerned Citizens, As you know, our healthcare system remains deeply troubled. It leaves one in six Americans uninsured, and its costs threaten our nation's solvency. The new health exchanges, meant to expand coverage, are being challenged in the courts and may not be funded, in part because of concern about their ultimate price tag. And we have no reliable mechanism to contain the exploding explicit and implicit fiscal costs of Medicare, Medicaid, and employer-based healthcare. We are at a crossroads. Neither piecemeal reform nor maintenance of the status quo will suffice. Economists and other concerned citizens can play a pivotal role in providing our political leaders with a set of principles to guide fundamental healthcare reform as well as a specific plan to fix our healthcare system from the ground up. To that end, I seek your endorsement of The Purple Health Plan, where "Purple" reflects the belief that both sides of the political aisle can agree to this plan. Please join me and other signatories, including economics Nobel Laureates, George Akerlof, Edmund Phelps, Thomas Schelling, William Sharpe, and Vernon Smith, in endorsing this plan by clicking the Show Your Support tab. Also, please send the url (www.thepurplehealthplan.org) to other economists you know. Sincerely yours, Laurence J. Kotlikoff Professor of Economics, Boston University
Ryan was similarly disingenuous about Ireland's budget woes: http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/01/austerity_measures
Oh well, I guess that means I can't support it. <Sigh> Oh wait, here comes some praise from an unlikely source: Good Plan! Republican Paul Ryan's budget proposal is brave, radical, and smart. Someone has finally put a serious fiscal plan on the table that deals with our long term problems. Now it is up to the Dems to do the same. Of course they are still grappling with the 2011 fiscal budget which is already half over. It is impossible to believe the largest entity on the planet, the US Government, can't plan more than a week in advance.
Um, that's exactly my point. Medicare works because it provides those within the highest risk pool an avenue towards affordable insurance. Take Medicare away and suddenly those higher risk folks are going to see healthcare costs rise incredibly.
The short version: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sgpa7wEAz7I&feature=player_embedded"]YouTube - Dead Kennedys - Kill the poor[/ame]
I'm going to use the term "war" fairly freely here (to include any and all use of military force by the United States armed services). When was the last time we weren't at "war" in this country? Using that metric, and saying we can only cut military spending when we're not at "war," a problem emerges almost immediately with your argument.
And for this to work, you'd have to have not only this president, but all future presidents, agree to this philosophy, because it only takes one guy to (metaphorically) blow this out of the water.
And Ryan is considered the boy wonder when it comes to "serious" Republican budget proposals. Hate to see what the junior varsity comes up with.
Ryan tutored the junior varsity in March by showing them slides that revealed that Medicare/Medicaid was the big budget issue. Apparently, this was news to many. On a side note, if you read the comments on David Brooks's column on Paul Ryan, you'll feel a bit better about things. Brooks ... well I don't know what he was doing, it was a peculiar column about brave, intelligent, serious Paul Ryan the Camelot hero, and to judge from comments he wasn't fooling anybody. I mean he got savaged -- people were honing in on all the stuff Brooks missed: the partisan elements, the 55-year deal, the refusal to touch defense spending, the additional tax cuts, the rosy economic projections from the Heritage Foundation. Nice to see the readership got it. Worrisome that every one of them would have written a better column than the Times' actual columnist.
We're becoming Greece, and there won't be any European Union to bail us out. Listen or don't listen to Paul Ryan. But eventually the capital call will come, and in the mean time, inflation....wait till about June, you're gonna love it!
Per Forbes, hardly a left-wing publication, Greece wouldn't have fiscal problems if it collected its taxes.
Yes, but my personal favorite part of the song goes: Jane Fonda on the screen today convinced the liberals "it's ok!"
OK, so WE know better. How has Ryan's proposal been received by the media elite? THAT'S the audience he cares about, not us. And the conservatively biased media elite, the same ones who created this image of Ryan the Intellectual, are not laughing this proposal out of the room. At least not yet. That's the thing about this asymmetric media environment. You might say, superdave, it's up to Pelosi and the Dems to fire back. Fair enough. But if the Dems proposed something this childish, would the media praise the plan until the GOPs fired back? No, they do the GOPs' work for them. This kind of bullshit is the inevitable result of nearly 50 years of the GOP mau-mauing the media.
Of course you are correct. The two big newspapers are the NY Times on the left and the WSJ on the right. The NY Times printed an article by its in-house writer praising the Republican budget. Will the WSJ print an article by its in-house writer praising an Obama budget? Nope. Never. Won't happen.
I'm sensing from Obama's frustration that talking to Republican party leaders is like talking to you.