Medicare

President Obama’s parting gift to Speaker Boehner – a ‘grand bargain’ to clean out the barn?

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Barn“I don’t want to leave my successor a dirty barn,” John Boehner, the soon-to-depart Speaker of the House, told CBS News’ John Dickerson in September. “I want to clean the barn up a little bit before the next person gets there.” Mr. Boehner, Clean Up This Barn.

Word comes today that there may indeed be a “grand bargain” between the White House and Congressional leaders to “clean the barn” out of Tea-Publican hostage taking threats to shut down the federal government.

Roll Call reports Big Budget Deal Could Clean Out Boehner’s Barn:

Speaker John A. Boehner’s effort to “clean the barn” before leaving Congress is gaining momentum, with the four corners of congressional leadership and the White House hoping for a budget and debt limit deal.

The Republican from Ohio does not want to leave a crisis behind for Ways and Means Chairman Paul D. Ryan, R-Wis., who is expected to be elected as the new speaker on Thursday.

Under discussion is a deal that would suspend limits on the nation’s borrowing authority until March 2017, along with two years worth of partial relief from the budget caps known as sequestration. The package would also address the Medicare Part B issue, aimed at protecting millions of seniors from significant increases to their health insurance premiums and deductibles.

An agreement could be announced as early as Monday evening, according to two familiar with the talks. The House Republican Conference scheduled a meeting for 6 p.m. to discuss the “October agenda,” according to a GOP aide.

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50th Anniversary of Medicare/Medicaid, Republicans are still trying to kill it

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There is something surreal about Biggs, et al v. Brewer, et al. (CV2013-011699 Maricopa County Superior Court), the Medicaid (AHCCCS) expansion case brought by almost every Tea-Publican legislator in the Arizona legislature, being heard today in court on the 50th Anniversary of the The Social Security Amendments of 1965 creating the Medicare and Medicaid programs. Medicaid (AHCCCS) expansion case set for hearing on July 30, 2015.

These Tea-Publican legislators are seeking to take away Medicaid (AHCCCS) health insurance coverage for an estimated 300,000 recipients (est. 463,000 Arizonans are eligible). Arizona Medicaid: eligibility, enrollment and benefits. I hope that one of the attorneys will point out the significance of today’s date to the Court.

On July 30, 1965, President Johnson signed the Social Security Amendments which established Medicare and Medicaid, promising that they would “improve a wide range of health and medical services for Americans of all ages.”

Former President Harry S. Truman was at his side in Independence, Missouri. Johnson credited Truman with “planting the seeds of compassion and duty which have today flowered into care for the sick and serenity for the fearful.”

LBJ_Medicare_Bill_Signing34896web
Medicare bill signing,Date: 7/30/65, Harry S. Truman Library, Independence, Missouri.

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Bipartisan agreement in House for ‘Doc fix’

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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.

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No country for austerity pushing Democrats

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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.

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

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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.”

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