The Republican Debt

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Rachel Maddow has a nice chart up at her blog showing that two-thirds of the debt we now face was generated during Republican administrations.

Remember: Right-wing policies put us deeper in debt. Tell the Tea Party crowd.

-Chris

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Republican Policies Costlier

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Suzie Madrak posted a revealing item on the Crooks & Liars blog.

Back in the Bush years the Republicans, in an attempt to assuage the fury of the AARP crowd, passed a prescription drug plan addition to Medicare.

Medicare Part D was designed by GOP lawmakers to prevent the federal government from negotiating drug prices with pharmaceutical companies. The results were predictable.

Madrak cites a report from 2009 by Citizens for Tax Justice that compares Obamacare with the Bush fiasco. The title says it all:

The Bush Tax Cut Cost Two and a Half Times as much as the Democrats Health Care Proposal

In terms of serious proposals to rein in health care costs and provide coverage for those who cannot afford it, the Republicans come up empty.

They simply don’t care about the issue.

The GOP prescription drug plan had a number of other problems, including the famous “donut hole” gap in coverage. The gap was included for one cynical reason: to hide the true cost of the plan and make the Republicans look fiscally responsible.

Obama’s health care plan has stepped in to fix that debacle.

The only policy proposal they continue to flog is tort reform, which study after study has shown does absolutely nothing to bring costs down.

In fact, what tort reform does is bar regular people from recovering from actual negligent doctors. So much for Republican support for working Americans.

A 2009 article by Washington Independent writer Daphne Eviatar contains this passage regarding medical malpractice law reform from someone who has actually studied the issue:

“It’s really just a distraction,” said Tom Baker, a professor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and author of “The Medical Malpractice Myth.” “If you were to eliminate medical malpractice liability, even forgetting the negative consequences that would have for safety, accountability, and responsiveness, maybe we’d be talking about 1.5 percent of health care costs. So we’re not talking about real money. It’s small relative to the out-of-control cost of health care.”

One might suspect that the actual Republican agenda in this case is punishing  trial lawyers, who mostly donate to Democrats.

On issue after issue, Republicans show a distinct pattern to their policymaking — welfare and tax breaks for the wealthy, nothing for the poor and middle class.

And when conservatives make policy, it’s costlier and less effective.

-Chris

Related Articles

• AMA Medical Liability Study Provides Misleading Statistics, Illinois Attorney Says (prweb.com)
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Tea Party Nation

So it seems clear that the Republicans haven’t learned from the past — or simply think the gains outweigh the negatives.

Thomas Frank detailed in his terrific book What’s The Matter With Kansas? how the wealthy conservative elite used wedge issues in local Kansas politics to turn a formerly blue-collar state that voted Democratic into a GOP stronghold.

Frank outlines how the conservatives thought that abortion, gay-baiting, anti-science issues could be used as issues to turn the working-class away from bread and butter issues like jobs, healthcare and education. While they had folks in a lather, the Republican leadership found ways to fool workers into thinking progressive taxation and other policies that bolster the poor and middle class were evil.

The elite, monied conservatives didn’t really care about those issues. They did (and have done) nothing to achieve their stated goal of outlawing abortion. The war on science (teaching creationism, lying about global warming, halting stem cell research) were all just handles to move the uninformed masses to support tax cuts for the rich, eliminate regulation of their corporate masters, and line their pockets in lobbyist cash.

Then something happened. The whipped up rabble in Kansas started running candidates who actually believed the things that were only wedge issues for the elite. The old Republican guard was voted out, and the new, radical Republicans took over Kansas politics and sent these nuts to Congress.

With the news last night of wins by Tea Party candidates in Delaware and New York, it’s clear that the genie is out of the bottle again.

The Tea Party “movement” was started with Astroturf seed money from Dick Armey’s FreedomWorks. They and their sponsors in the health insurance industry thought they could whip up low-information voters to halt legislation that would put an end to the insurance fat cats’ practices of collecting money and providing little service.

Now, by golly, those folks are actually running candidates and sending Republicans packing.

In the short term, this may be good news for the Democrats.

However, the more the Tea Party mentality catches on, the harder it is for a representative democratic society to operate.

Tea Partiers have no serious proposals to better the country. They have a list of unfocused complaints centered on the black man in the White House.

You could ask why their concern for fiscal responsibility didn’t manifest itself until after January of 2009. After all, The Bush Administration created an unfunded entitlement program that added billions to the budget deficit Plus he started two expensive wars that have seen billions in taxpayer dollars disappearing into a cloud of incompetence and corruption.

Or take the idea of lost freedom (because providing access to healthcare is “socialist”). Were these people in a coma when Republicans very publicly supported the idea of warrantless wiretaps, imprisoning people without due process, kidnapping people from around the world and torturing them?

Dialogue and a free exchange of ideas isn’t possible with people this far gone. They know everything they “need” to know, and no amount of education or presentation of facts is likely to get a one of them to reconsider the nonsense they are spouting — or even offer any proposal of how to fix the very things they are complaining about. It’s a minor victory to get them past the factually challenged talking points they regurgitate like good little sheep.

And now these sheep feel empowered.

So, the more candidates like Christine O’Donnell (R-Venus) win primaries across the nation, the more the Republican party will lean in that direction to try and gather those voters under their rapidly shrinking tent — taking the dialogue further to the right, and away from an arena where discussion of liberal and progressive ideas will be countenanced by the rabidly partisan right wing.

I hope I’m wrong, but the cheering from Democrats rings hollow in my ears.

We need to bring the discussion back to reality, and the more we demand that real ideas and solutions be discussed by our lawmakers, the better off we will be as a society.

Update: Matthew Yglesias seems to agree with me.

Update 2: Andrew Sullivan, too:

I wonder if this doesn’t represent some kind of tipping point for the right, the moment their asinine, vacuous Palinist blather really did meet the reality of this country’s profound problems and the need to confront them rather than escape into a fantasy world of cultural paranoia, religious extremism and neurotic nationalism.

-Chris

Related Articles

• Christine O’Donnell brings unlikely Tea Party triumph to Delaware (guardian.co.uk)
• The spread of the TEA party movement (tfa.net)
• FreedomWorks Refuses To Endorse DE Tea Party Favorite Christine O’Donnell (huffingtonpost.com)

True Colors

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The Republicans couldn’t make it any clearer which side of the divide they are on.

They favor the wealthiest top three percent of Americans, versus the rest of us.

Yesterday, all of the reporting was about House Minority Leader John Boehner’s (R-Ohio) revelation that he would be willing to give up extending tax cuts for those making over $250,000.00 a year.

Almost immediately, a chorus of other Republican lawmakers said that they plan to fight tooth and nail to keep their rich friends happy.

The Washington Monthly posted:

While Boehner didn’t personally walk back his on-air remarks from Sunday, the rest of the Republican leadership made clear his position was unacceptable. House Minority Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.) distanced himself from Boehner’s remarks, as did Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), who questioned Boehner’s negotiating strategy during an interview with Sean Hannity.

It’s possible that this is starting to go sour for the party of “no”.

Politico reports:

Pollster Stan Greenberg, who will speak to the caucus, told POLITICO that a majority of independents, 53-38, support the Democrats’ tax position in his latest survey. And that taking a stand helps narrow the voter-preference gap between Democratic House candidates and Republicans, now leading on the generic ballot.

With news like this, you would think the Democrats would do the responsible thing and let the cuts expire — but they seem ready to give concessions to the GOP. Again.

On issue after issue, Republicans show they stand for big corporations and the wealthy, and care little for the poor and ever-diminishing middle class.

A real Democratic party would bring this truth to the forefront and run with it.

This isn’t that party.

-Chris

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