Medicare

Bipartisan agreement in House for ‘Doc fix’

by

Something unheard of since Tea-Publicans took control of Congress in January 2011 occurred on Thursday.

Congress overwhelmingly passed a bipartisan bill to actually fix a long-standing problem. The GOP gave up an annual hostage, the “Doc fix,” in a deal brokered between the TanMan, Weeper of the House John Boehner, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi. How Boehner, Pelosi surprised everyone with a $200 billion deal:

Screenshot from 2015-03-28 14:54:58A few days after the chaos of a failed vote to fund the Department of Homeland Security, Speaker John Boehner asked for a meeting, alone, with House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi.

Compromise was on his mind.

With automatic cuts to doctors under Medicare set to take effect at the end of March, Boehner (R-Ohio) wanted to explore the possibility of a deal that would end the Sustainable Growth Rate (SGR), and with it a problem that has dogged Congress for nearly two decades.

The March 4 meeting in Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) office on the second floor of the Capitol was brief, lasting only 11 minutes.

But on the central question that has for years thwarted deal making between the parties — whether to raise taxes — Boehner got the answer he was looking for.

Democrats would not insist on tax hikes in legislation ending the Medicare formula, Pelosi told Boehner.

“That was, from our point of view, the breakthrough,” said Michael Steel, a Boehner spokesman.

Read more

No country for austerity pushing Democrats

by

Crossposted from DemocraticDiva.com

deficit cutting

My biggest problem with centrist establishment Democrats has been their insistence on trying to prove they’re the bigger grown-ups in the room by embracing punitive conservative economic ideas and more successfully implementing them. Welfare reform was a perfect example of this. Democratic support for it, including President Clinton’s, was supposed to neutralize the issue for Democrats forever. Oddly, though, I never noticed the tendency of voters to associate Democrats with “welfare” to diminish. What happened was that the idea of “welfare” simply expanded to include any public assistance whatsoever, whether or not the recipient worked for wages, and then further to mean 47% of the country. People still defend welfare reform to me on the policy merits but no one can reasonably argue that it was a long-term political success for Democrats, unless they want to make the perverse case that Mitt Romney lost because at least half the country was offended that he thought they were on welfare.

President Obama embraced deficit reduction from the beginning of his presidency. And he did succeed in shrinking the deficit. Does he get any credit for it? Nope.

Read more

‘Silent Sally’ tells some whoppers to the Green Valley News

by

Two-time loser CD 2 GOP congressional candidate Martha McSally, who has been avoiding taking questions from the media (except the friendly confines of FAUX News) and even questions from her CD 2 constituents, was afforded an opportunity to “write about whatever you want” by Green Valley News editor Dan Shearer in advance of the one and only CD 2 GOP primary debate in which she will appear with her primary opponents this coming Saturday.

Liar-LiarMcSally has earned a national reputation for her unwillingness to state her position on issues and to simply answer the damn question from reporters, hence the “Silent Sally” moniker we have been testing out at this blog.

But after the op-ed McSally submitted to the Green Valley News, it’s time to drop the pretense and just call her what she is: a shameless liar willing to say anything without regard for the facts.

Let’s take a look at the whoppers told by Martha McSally in her op-ed:

Whopper #1. Social Security is going bankrupt

“Green Valley’s seniors have paid into Social Security and Medicare and they deserve exactly what they were promised. That has always been my pledge to seniors. To accomplish this goal, we must find common ground to stop these programs from going bankrupt.

At our current pace, Social Security will go bankrupt in 20 years; Medicare may run out even sooner.”

Read more

Arizona Dems Split on ‘Back to Work’ Budget Vote

by

by Pamela Powers Hannley On Wednesday, March 20, 2013, the US House of Representatives voted on a series of amendments to the Republican Majority Budget, penned by Rep. Paul Ryan.  The Congressional Progressive Caucus (CPC) amendment, dubbed the Back to Work Budget, was one of yesterday's votes. It lost 84 to 327, with no Republicans … Read more

Liberals to Dems: Just Say ‘No’ to Cutting Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid

by

300px-Keith_ellison-cropby Pamela Powers Hannley

In his recent talk in Tucson, John Nichols of The Nation warned against budget solutions proposed by the Fix the Debt Coalition, a group of 127 billionaires, "lesser millionaires," and corporate CEOs.

According to Nichols, this exclusive club of 1%ers is rolling out a $60 million advertising campaign to promote the new Simpson-Bowles Plan for debt reduction, according to Nichols. The original Simpson-Bowles Commission– dubbed the Cat Food Commission because of its cuts to senior citizen benefits– was infamously unpopular when it was proposed originally. The Simpson-Bowles redux may be even worse.  

How would the billionaires' club "fix the debt"? By reducing Social Security payments to the elderly and disabled, by raising the eligibility age for Medicare, by dramatically cutting Medicaid support for the poor, by eliminating the Affordable Care Act and changing Medicare to a voucher program for future recipients, by imposing austerity on 99%, and by [wait for it] lowering taxes on billionaires and corporations. 

This article (after the jump) from the Washington Post outlines exactly what Nichols warned Tucsonans about.