McIlheran Watch: Lyin' for Ryan

by folkbum

So earlier this week, a heavily Republican Congressional district somewhere in New York elected a Democrat. The dynamics of any one local race* are seldom indicative of any greater theme, despite everyone's best attempt to say, see, this proves what I've been claiming all along! There are always local issues to consider, individual dynamics of the race and, in this case, an utter wingnut tea-party candidate who may have been a spoiler. But one thing is certain: The DCCC, Democrats' House election arm, did everything it could to make the election about Paul Ryan (R-Galt's Gulch) and his plan to destroy medicare, because the Republican in that race voiced her support early and often for Ryan's plan.

Right there, what I just did, saying that Ryan's plan would destroy Medicare, is what those who have always wanted to destroy Medicare (except in election years, when in a fit of black-is-whiteism the GOP asserts it's Democrats who will destroy Medicare) would call a "mediscare tactic." Funny, eh? But please, recall that since Medicare's inception, the Republican Party has stood for its end, with St. Ronald de Tampico even making a record--yes! a record!--in 1961 opposing the plan and claiming that within a generation the federal government would be telling doctors where they could live and what kind of medicine they could practice. Like Harold Camping's predictions of Armageddon, Reagan's opposition to Medicare seems laughable now.

Except not to Paul Ryan. As we have discussed before on this very blog Ryan is not afraid to invoke Reagan's rhetorical style when it suits him, and for basically the same purposes. So let's be clear: Ryan's plan does destroy Medicare. This is not an exaggeration designed to "scare," but an accurate description of Ryan's plan to institute a completely different system under the same name. (Politi"Fact" finds the semantics of the argument--Ryan still calls his plan Medicare, they say--persuasive enough to call honest opposition to the idea false, which is just mind-boggling.)

And this is where Patrick McIlheran comes in: He blogs to throw out the "mediscare" label and defend Ryan's plan. But he can't do that without lying, because, let's be honest here, a whole lot of Ryan's plan is indefensible. McIlheran:

As Ryan has endlessly pointed out, his plan leaves Medicare completely unaltered for anyone now on it or who is now 55 or older. It manages this feat [. . .] by changing the deal for people 54 or younger into a subsidized selection of insurance plans more or less identical to what Congress gives itself as coverage. This is an “end” to Medicare only if you imagine that our lawmakers have left themselves destitute and tubercular in a gutter when it comes to their own health care.

Of course Ryan's plan doesn't touch the Boomers' and the WWII generation's Medicare; those people vote and they really like Medicare, giving it just about the highest satisfaction rates of any insurance provider in the country. But the next part, about giving everyone else the same health care coverage that Congress gets? That's baloney:

In many ways, the federal plan works a lot like the run-of-the-mill employee-sponsored health insurance plan. The bulk of the costs are picked up by the employer--in this case, the government--with the employee contributing his or her share according to a set or negotiated rate. Under a 1997 law, the government pays a set rate of 75 percent of the costs of the health plans selected by federal employees and members of Congress. The employee (and members of Congress) pick up the other 25 percent. [. . .] The Congressional Budget Office, the nonpartisan arm of Congress, analyzed Ryan’s plan and estimated that, by 2030, the government would pay just 32 percent of the health-care costs, less than half of what it currently pays. The other 68 percent of the plan would have to be shouldered by the retiree.

That just-like-Congress tale ends up a two-Pinocchio lie. But happily spread by local huckster McIlheran. Who goes on:

And since the alternative, according to Medicare’s own accountant, is leaving things alone until it all goes bankrupt in 2024 and doctors stop seeing recipients, then Ryan’s plan is “immoral” only in the way that it’s somehow wrong to disturb a drunk’s calm by telling him he’s driving onto the wrong-way off-ramp of a freeway.

This is what we call a false dichotomy (and the word false, you know, tells you McIlheran is lying again). This is the new Republican tactic, seen all over the place lately, which is to pretend that Democrats don't have a plan. They do. It's called Medicare--you may have heard of it, and it's a pretty awesome deal.

But not merely the unaltered Medicare that will, indeed, drive federal debt ever higher. Rather, Democrats have been trying to build on Medicare's signature strength, which is that it holds costs down better than private-sector insurance; over the years, Medicare inflation has been significantly lower than inflation in the health-care market as a whole. Ryan's plan, on the other hand, holds payments down, which does nothing to control costs. Indeed the CBO's analysis is devastating:

[T]he CBO conclusion is shocking: The plan would not only fail to decrease health-care costs per beneficiary, it would increase them–-by an astonishingly large amount that grows over time. By 2030, health spending on the typical beneficiary would be more than 40 percent higher under the Ryan plan than under existing Medicare, according to the CBO report.

The short version is that the end of Medicare as we know it under Ryan means an end to the government's ability to make big deals with doctors and hospitals and other providers: When you're on your own with a voucher, you do not have the negotiating power of 40 million other patients behind you. Just you. So where Ryan's plan allows actual costs to skyrocket (but not the size of your voucher), Medicare as is holds actual costs down.

But there's more: Democrats want to further bend that cost curve downward, and the Affordable Care Act starts that process. The ACA establishes an Independent Payment Advisory Board, which is all about finding the most effective and most cost-effective treatments to pay for instead of expensive stuff that doesn't work. However, there's a giant obstacle to this board, and if you guessed the House GOP you'd be right: They want to abandon the additional cost controls that the IPAB would bring in favor of, as we've seen, destroying Medicare instead.

The truth of the Ryan plan and the destruction it would bring to one of the most important entitlement plans we have today is what's really scary. And that's why Ryan and his media enablers like McIlheran have to lie to you in order to sell the plan.

* Steve Benen argues that this is not an isolated case, and that Democrats have been making significant gains, including flipping Mike Huebsch's GOP-heavy Assembly district here in Wisconsin a few weeks ago.

Quote of the Day: Actually, it's about Paul Ryan edition

by folkbum

Now if you happen to be operating in a low-trust environment like a prison these downsides may be small relative to the logistical hurdles involved in setting up a central bank. But if you already have a functioning central bank and a widely accepted currency, it’d be kind of crazy to give it up and revert to prison conditions.

--Yglesias, writing about how Paul Ryan (R-Galt's Gulch) wants to make America into "Oz," and I don't mean the land of Munchkins and poppies

Paul Ryan calls Paul Ryan's power grab "unprecedented," "breathtaking"

by folkbum

I have written previously about Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Galt's Gulch), and the trouble the GOP is likely to have putting him, a True Believer, in charge of writing its budgets. As much as Republicans like to campaign on things like deficit reduction, they have never been much for rubber meeting the road in that regard.

However, they are about to do something quite amazing: When they vote on House rules tomorrow, they will give Ryan, one representative in a House of 435 voting members, singular authority:

Another aspect of the proposed rules also seems at odds with promises made in the campaign about what a new Republican majority would do. There was much talk about increasing the transparency of the legislative process, and some proposals in the new rules package would do that. But the new rules also include a stunning and unprecedented provision authorizing the Chairman of the Budget Committee elected in the 112th Congress, expected to be Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, to submit for publication in the Congressional Record total spending and revenue limits and allocations of spending to committees — and the rules provide that this submission “shall be considered as the completion of congressional action on a concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2011.” In other words, in the absence of a budget resolution agreement between the House and the Senate, it appears that Rep. Ryan (presumably with the concurrence of the Republican leadership) will be allowed to set enforceable spending and revenue limits, with any departure from those limits subject to being ruled “out of order.”

This rule change has immediate, far-reaching implications. It means that by voting to adopt the proposed new rules on January 5, a vote on which party discipline will be strictly enforced, the House could effectively be adopting a budget resolution and limits for appropriations bills that it has never even seen, much less debated and had an opportunity to amend.

In other words, Ryan can pick a number without telling anyone, at random if he wants, and that number is the spending limit for the year. Period. No debate, no vote, no transparency to the process.

How are Republicans able to make such a thing possible? They are going to use a process called "deem and pass."

As soon as those rules are adopted on Wednesday, Ryan's spending levels will be considered--or "deemed"--adopted by the full House as if they'd passed a budget with a floor vote. The legislative language in the rules package holds that Ryan's spending limits, "shall be considered as contained in a concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2011 and the submission thereof into the Congressional Record shall be considered as the completion of congressional action on a concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2011."

If this sounds familiar, it's because "deem and pass" is a technique long in use in the House*. Used to happen all the time--well, a lot, anyway. Until 2010, when House Democrats attempted to "deem and pass" the Senate version of the Affordable Care Act, the health care bill, and revisions to that bill in a single vote. This is something that should not have been a controversy, but House Republicans jumped all over it. They and the punditerati whose job it is to parrot GOP talking points called this act every possible evil name in the book. (I refuse to link or read the local righty bloggers anymore, but this Wisopinion blogsearch result will let you see what Wisconsin's geniuses were saying about the idea then. As I said, I don't read them anymore, but I am guessing they're pretty quiet about it today.)

Of particular interest, FOX News interviewed, surprise, Rep. Paul Ryan about deem and pass at the time: "Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., called the procedure 'unprecedented' and 'breathtaking.' "

Now, of course, he is willingly going along with the GOP leadership, because this "unprecedented" and "breathtaking" action will "deem and pass" a huge chunk of power directly into his little hands. Classy!

* To be clear: I personally have no issue with deem and pass as a process--it is traditional and right up until last spring, non-controversial. It's a time-saver, basically. However, I do have a problem with two things: One, the massive power-grab itself, concentrating authority without debate or transparency into the hands of a single representative, and Two, the hypocrisy of the GOP in general, and Paul Ryan in particular.

Related, 1: When Ryan sets his budget number, he's planning to just pretend that a repeal of the Affordable Care Act won't increase the deficit. No sense living in reality when you have your hand on the biggest lever of power, eh?

Related, 2: Remember in 2007, when incoming Democratic House Oversight Committee Chair Henry Waxman wrote a letter to all of the labor unions and environmental groups in the country to ask them what investigations of the White House he should be pursuing? I don't either.

Dear Politi"fact" Wisconsin

by folkbum

Sirs,

It has come to my attention that you have recently deemed two Democrats worthy of "pants on fire" status. This is amusing, no doubt, to those who find immolation to be a hoot-n-a-half. But beyond the offense that may be taken among the pre-immolated and the professional firefighting community, the awards--to Julie Lassa (via the DCCC) and Rep. Steve Kagen--betray a frightening amount of willful ignorance on the part of the, I think you call them, "fact checkers" at your employ when it comes to Social Security.

To wit, a small but not insignificant portion of this morning's laugh riot:

Here is what [Up Nort' candidate Reid] Ribble actually said, based on a longer video of the same statement posted on YouTube. We’ll highlight where the new words pick up.

"Somehow we have to establish a phase-out of the current Social Security system to a new system. And that will have to happen over time. It could happen in a single generation."

Ribble goes on to discuss how the life expectancy of Americans has grown since Social Security was established in the 1930s, and its effect on the system.

"It has to change," Ribble said of Social Security. "It will bankrupt this country if it doesn’t change."

It is remarkable to consider that your application of the "pants on fire" label was not awarded to this very statement itself. For you see, Mr. Ribble--are you sure he's not a Muppet?--is spinning quite the tale about bankruptcy.

The numbers, unlike Mr. Ribble, do not lie. If you believe, as the right-wing hand-wringers do, that the moment Social Security starts dipping into its trust fund, the sky will shatter and fall impaling us all with sharp daggers of fiscal doom, then 2015 is the big date. 2037 is the other big date. Over the course of those 22 years, the Social Security Trust Fund will pay out about $4.2 trillion in interest and principal on the treasury bonds it holds. Or an average of $191 billion a year.

This is a lot of money. It is more money than you or I put together can ever hope to make in a lifetime. It is, however, small potatoes comparatively. The Pentagon's annual budget is nearly four times that, for example. And the total federal budget today is 18 times that. To suggest that such a small number is enough to "bankrupt" us, particularly when no such claim is made about hugeanticon defense budgets or the ginormous hole favored tax cuts would leave in the budget, is a bald lie. Indeed, expiration of all the Bush tax cuts, on schedule for the end of the year (but possibly to be stopped in a lame duck session that may or may not still let them expire for the very wealthy dear jebus just shoot me in the head now the Democrats are blowing this one too) would cover the Social Security Trust Fund and then some.

After 2037, when the fund would be exhausted, there would still be a shortfall of about 22% of promised benefits between income (in the payroll tax) and outflow. This would amount to $5.4 trillion through 2084. Over those 47 years the annual cost to cover that shortfall is a mere $115 billon, even less than the non-bankrupting amount already discussed.

In short, sirs, the technicality by which you ascribe liarliar status to anyone who accuses Republicans of wanting to dismantle Social Security ("they'll replace it with something!" you cheerily wave into the ether), is a mere whiff of smoke compared to heaping mounds of burning Dockers Republicans have been shoving at Americans for decades. Social Security is not going broke. It is not going to bankrupt the country. It is not going to disappear before you or I or your grandkids retire unless Republicans destroy it.

Which they will. Mr. Ribble says he wants to replace Social Security with "something"--perhaps pixie dust and bottled genii. Rep. Paul Ryan wants to give people "guaranteed personal accounts," whatever that means, which is "a good starting point," according to Reality TV wunderkind Sean Duffy. Now, you want to talk about bankruptcy, Ryan's plan will do it. In spades.

Howso? Because Ryan is promising the same dollar to two people. You and I are paying into Social Security right now, and that money is going out to grammy in her monthly check. Ryan wants the money you and I pay to go into a "guaranteed personal account" and in grammy's monthly check, since he promises currently and nearly retired folk won't see their benefits change. Suddenly, the shortfall goes from almost nothing in 2011 to hundreds of billions, years earlier than expected. By the time currently and nearly retired folk finally keel over and stop soaking up the gummint largesse--say, 25 years from now, maybe--the cumulative new debt from the transition would be somewhere on the order of an additional $4 or $5 trillion!

And remember, Paul Ryan is the serious numbers guy!

So, sirs, in the future, please be certain that you aim your pantsafire judgments squarely at those telling the greater falsehoods. Mr. Ribble, Sean Duffy, Paul Ryan, and Republican Senate candidate Ron Johnson have all been spreading lies about Social Security and need to be called to account. And, as you have appointed yourselves arbiters of all that is true or false in the world, get to work on that, please.

Keep Debt Alive!

by folkbum

Re: Paul Ryan's Roadmap:

The CBO says your road map would put spending at 22.2 percent of GDP in 2020 and 23.5 percent in 2040. With revenue capped at 19 percent, that means Paul Ryan stands for deficits that would be 3 percent to 4 percent of GDP for at least the next 30 years, which would balloon the debt by trillions, to 100 percent of GDP from 53 percent in 2009. If you're supposedly willing to make "the hard choices," why wouldn't you balance the budget as soon as the economy is back on track? What kind of "fiscal conservative" has a half-century plan to balance the budget?

Indeed, CBO projects the deficit in 2020 to be about the same under current continued policies and under Ryan's policies. Roll back the Bush tax cuts for the top 5%, and Obama's policies lower the deficit faster than Ryan's.

Fisking Paul Ryan

by folkbum

I'm glad somebody else did it; I'm on vacation. Read it, it's pretty devastating.

Quote of the Day, Paul Ryan edition

by folkbum

He’s saying: ‘Eat your broccoli. And then maybe you don’t get to eat at all for a few days. You don’t get steak--ever.’ ” - Jeb Bush

They always did say Jeb was the smart one.

Also, a chart:


Click it for an explanation.

Ryan's "YouCut" pretty "YouseLess"

by folkbum

Another big, wet kiss to Paul Ryan (R-Galt's Gulch) from the daily paper this morning:

Instead of voting for your favorite "American Idol" or "Dancing with the Stars" contestants, you can now vote on your favorite federal spending cut - courtesy of the GOP.

House Republicans say their new "YouCut" program will give voters the chance to suggest budget-slashing proposals directly to members of Congress and see lawmakers act on their ideas. Republicans say they will try to force colleagues to vote on the cuts every week on the House floor.

"The majority of Americans would like to see less spending," said Rep. Paul Ryan, a Janesville Republican. "We want to give them the opportunity to convey that sense."

That's the same Paul Ryan, remember, who happily voted for the war in Iraq, every Iraq-funding supplemental (i.e., off-budget) spending bill, and Medicare Part D, which contained trillions in spending with no funding mechanism whatsoever.

But what's remarkable is not the naked hypocrisy--we are used to that by now from Ryan--it's that the options to vote for at this ridiculous "YouCut" site amount to, essentially, a sliver:

For example, participants in this little exercise can eliminate the Presidential Election Fund, saving $260 million over five years--but in the process making national candidates more dependent on outside fundraising. Folks can also vote to eliminate $200,000 a year in HUD grants for doctoral research on housing policy.

What's especially interesting, though, is that all of the proposals don't amount to much given the larger budget picture. Merit aside, if officials were to scrap every penny of the spending on [the] list, it would save taxpayers about $1.1 billion a year.

Remember, that's out of a budget of $4 trillion. $1.1 billion is less than the budget of the Milwaukee Public Schools alone. And at the link, Steve Benen goes on to remind us that last year, after President Obama offered a package of spending cuts that Republicans called laughable, Obama called their bluff and asked for their proposal. It came in at less than 10% of the cuts per year than the laughable Obama proposal.

It's clear that Republicans like Ryan are not actually serious about trying to govern responsibly. Stunts like "YouCut" are so dumb that even the rubes at RedState have caught on: "How stupid do they think we are?" that diarist wonders. Very, apparently.

More Paul Ryan deception on health care

Or, it's a day that ends in -y and Paul Ryan opened his mouth

by folkbum

About the only thing nice I can say about Paul Ryan's repeated insistence on writing about the health care bill just passed is that, bless him, he is one of the last of us who insist on spelling health care as two words, the way FSM intended it to be.

Aside from that, there is basically nothing to recommend in his latest op-ed fantasy. His starting point is the recently released Health and Human Services/ Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services report. Thankfully, Ryan does not repeat the fiction--one that ricocheted around the righty blogs last week--that the Obama administration buried the report. Such a claim is embarrassing to contemplate spreading, seeing as how there is nothing in the report that wasn't already widely known. The Congressional Budget Office told us all in its scoring of the bill back in March that total health care spending with the bill passed would be greater than total health care spending without the bill being passed. The CMS report says the same thing, and Ryan is hyperventilating like it's something new to panic about. Here's Ryan:

The health care law will increase national health expenditures by an additional $311 billion above current projections. This estimate refutes the Majority’s promise that the legislation would bend the cost curve down, not up.

Ryan is being misleadingly cynical in the most charitable interpretation--outright lying if I'm being less kind. For starters, this is pretty simple math: The Affordable Care Act adds about 34 million more people to the ranks of the insured, and according to both the CBO and CMS, total health care spending will increase about 1%. Got that? We're adding 12% of the population to the rolls at a cost of not 12% more, or even 8% more, but just 1% more. And that is total spending including the private sector, not merely government spending. Ezra Klein, please:

And that 1 percent is actually 1 percent and falling: When the legislation is fully implemented in 2016, the spending increase will be 2 percent. But cost controls kick in over those years and bring it down to 1 percent. Assuming the trend holds, the second decade will see national health expenditures fall below what spending would've been if the bill hadn't passed. So that's the bottom line of the report: We're covering 34 million people and come 2019, spending is expected to be one percentage point--and falling--above what it would've been if we'd done nothing.

Or, as actual actuary Jim Lynch (via) noted the other day: "I really don’t see where anyone can claim the actuaries’ report sheds new light on the health care legislation passed this year. And what is new is slightly favorable to Obamacare, not the other way around." In other words, the CMS report that Paul Ryan is whining about, no matter how you slice it, is good news for reform advocates, and bad news for naysayers like Ryan.

(The graph comes from a different Ezra Klein post, but I hope you can see how ridiculous Ryan's whining about increased costs actually is. Click for a bigger version, or follow that link.)

Here's lyin' Paul Ryan a couple paragraphs later:

Approximately 14 million people will be dropped from employer coverage as “…the per-worker penalties assessed on nonparticipating employers are relative low compared to prevailing health insurance costs. As a result, the penalties would not be a substantial deterrent to dropping or forgoing coverage.”

Now, if you're an average Racine Journal Times reader who comes across this line, what do you think it means? Do you think it means that the ranks of the uninsured will swell by 14 million people? Or at least that 14 million fewer people will be getting health insurance through their jobs than without the bill having been passed? That's a reasonable answer, based on what Paul Ryan gave you here. But remember, this is Paul Ryan we're talking about, so he's lying to you again. Let me quote some more from the CMS study, the same paragraph even, that Ryan quotes from (page 7 for those of you following along at home--my emphasis):

By 2019, an estimated 13 million workers and family members would become newly covered as a result of additional employers offering health coverage, a greater proportion of workers enrolling in employer plans, and an extension of dependent coverage up to age 26. However, a number of workers who currently have employer coverage would likely become enrolled in the expanded Medicaid program or receive subsidized coverage through the Exchanges. For example, some smaller employers would be inclined to terminate their existing coverage, and companies with low average salaries might find it to their—and their employees’—advantage to end their plans, thereby allowing their workers to qualify for heavily subsidized coverage through the Exchanges. Somewhat similarly, many part-time workers could obtain coverage more inexpensively through the Exchanges or by enrolling in the expanded Medicaid program. Finally, as noted previously, the per-worker penalties assessed on nonparticipating employers are very low compared to prevailing health insurance costs. As a result, the penalties would not be a significant deterrent to dropping or forgoing coverage. We estimate that such actions would collectively reduce the number of people with employer-sponsored health coverage by about 17 million, or somewhat more than the number newly covered through existing and new employer plans under the PPACA. As indicated in table 2, the total number of persons with employer coverage in 2019 is estimated to be 4 million lower under the reform package than under current law.

So when Ryan wants you to think the ACA means 14 million fewer people with employer-paid insurance, he's actually off by a full ten million people.

(And I am not even going to bother going into how wrong Ryan is on Medicare Advantage--if he wants to use the CBO to bash the ACA he should be using the CBO to bash Medicare Advantage, too. That's only fair, right?)

I have said it before and I will say it again now: I do not understand how someone who is so brazen, so brash, so sloppy in his representation of the facts continues to be lauded and taken seriously by people, particularly the media. How is it that the Journal Times can let all of this go without a fact check or a rebuttal by someone more firmly rooted in reality. Paul Ryan is unashamedly lying to his constituents, over and over and over again.

Frum gives Ryan too much credit, ignores hypocrisy

by folkbum

A lot of liberals these days like David Frum, former loyal Bushie who has made a good living lately being dismayed at how the party that elected George W. Bush, squandered a surplus, tripled the debt, bungled two wars, violated civil liberties, tortured and killed enemies real and suspected, gutted environmental protections, let BP get away with choosing not to install backup shut-off valves on its Gulf oil rigs though they're commonly required elsewhere around the world, and so on, has "suddenly" gone around the bend.

And no doubt Frum lives on this side of the border between reality and the fantasyland of the Tea Partiers and the Palnistas and the other residents of GlennBeckistan. But that doesn't make him any more correct when, as he did yesterday, he lauds a fraud like Wisconsin's Paul Ryan:

The only politician in Washington honest enough to bring forth an honest budget is Rep. Paul Ryan, his alternative budget would balance the budget without any taxes but it requires the privatization of Social Security, eliminating the tax deduction companies get for providing health insurance (which would mean employees health benefits would be treated as income) and it basically turns Medicare into a voucher system for those over 65 to go purchase health insurance in the marketplace. Perhaps when Rep. Paul Ryan supplants Sarah Palin as the star and face of the Tea Party movement, old fashion fiscal conservatives will take them more seriously.

Frum's first error is to call Ryan's roadmap honest. It isn't; independent analyses note that Ryan's prediction of a balanced budget--a prediction he places so far into the future both he and I and probably you, unless you're reading this sometime in the 2060s, will be long dead--is not actually even accurate!

Frum further claims the Roadmap is "without any taxes," which given the larger context I think actually means "without any new taxes." This, too, is false, as Ryan's Roadmap pretty clearly calls for a consumption tax and for taxing health care benefits provided by employers. When you run the numbers, as I have noted previously, that means that all of us but the top 10% (who benefit from cuts under Ryan's plan) will see their tax bills go up.

The privatization of Social Security is also a budget buster (the cost to privatize it is greater than the cost to just make it fully solvent), and the medicare vouchers are set so low your grandmother will have to choose between medical care and food.

But that's not all. Immediately following the paragraph above, Frum goes off on Medicare Part D:

Where were the mass protests in 2004 when a Republican Congress passed Medicare Part D? This bill will cost all taxpayers over the next ten years over $1.2 trillion dollars and was paid for by debt; neither tax increases nor spending cuts were issued to offset the new Medicare program. Former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker has called it “the most fiscally irresponsible piece of legislation since the 1960s.”

Yes. Where were the protests? In fact, where was Frum-anointed fiscal "star" Paul "Roadmap" Ryan? Why, Ryan was right there on the floor of the US House of Representatives voting for Medicare Part D!

So Frum fails this basic test. Yes, Frum may recognize the economic and historical illiteracy of a lot of the Tea Party, and he has a legitimate gripe that a movement whose spokespeople include Victoria Jackson has taken over from the movement whose spokespeople used to include, say, Tom DeLay. But if Frum is going to lionize an opportunistic, lying Randroid hypocrite like Paul Ryan, he's no better than the rest of them.

Shorter Ezra Klein

by folkbum

Paul Ryan is lying to you. Again.

One Paul Ryan lie to start your week

by folkbum

Undoubtedly, there will be others, but here's a good one to chew on as Monday rolls in:

Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc. (floor speech, March 21): There is an individual mandate. It mandates individuals purchase government-approved health insurance or face a fine to be collected by the IRS which will need $10 billion additional and 16,500 new IRS agents to police and enforce this mandate.

This "16,000 IRS agents" lie is absurd on its face, worse once you get into the details, and yet it is pretty much accepted as gospel now among the ignorati on the right because it keeps getting repeated by the likes of Ryan and Newt Gingrich (who claimed the call for new agents was actually in the bill, which is patently false), not to mention the vast right-wing echo chamber of FOX, talk radio, and badly formatted email forwards from your aunt in Palm Beach. Ezra Klein helps explain why it's bogus:

[L]et's track how an estimate becomes spin becomes a lie becomes a sound bite. First, the estimate: The CBO predicted that costs related to the Affordable Care Act would "probably include an estimated $5 billion to $10 billion over 10 years for administrative costs of the Internal Revenue Service." This money, incidentally, isn't to audit people or go door-to-door enforcing the individual mandate. It's primarily to give subsidies to qualifying small businesses and individuals.

But that didn't stop Republicans; no, their Ways and Means members--Ways and Means is Ryan's big committee assignment, you know, as the Republicans' chief budget writer--simply divided the larger number from the CBO--$10 billion--by the average salary of an IRS agaent, and came up with the 16,500 estimate, and put out a statement that said the IRS "may" hire that many new agents. The money is not even primarily for IRS employees, let alone the "agents" who do the auditing and the catching of Al Capone and whatnot.

And here's Ryan, the golden boy, the future of the GOP, deliberately lying about the Affordable Care Act, a lie that he is quite likely responsible for originating from his own committee through shoddy math and unashamed twisting of the language of the bill.

It is unconscionable that Ryan should be allowed to get away with this; he is purposefully turning needed small-business subsidies into menacing G-Men in the imaginations of people already too disconnected from reality to recognize the absurdity of it. Of course, since Ryan seems more and more to be living in said fantasy world, we perhaps shouldn't be surprised.

And yet I'm the one they won't take seriously

by folkbum

Several things conspired to make last week's April Fools possible: One, I have student teachers this semester, and supervising their grading of papers takes significantly less time than actually grading the papers myself. Two, I still have very little voice, and thus my creative juices went into the typing, not the singing or whatnot. I had fun, and all of these fake blogs are available if you've ever wanted to start one of of your own.

And it's not like I expected anyone to take it for real (though this may have been in earnest); even the straight-up announcement was not that straight-up. But I was in fact trying to make some serious points, in particular about Paul Ryan his platform, such as it is. Yet the April-Foolsy nature of the project means I am not too bothered that those few conservatives who noted the campaign didn't actually address the substance that was there.

(Though I would like to know what of my writing Kevin Binversie thinks would make good ammo for the RNC.)

As Paul Ryan comes into his own in the GOP and declares his intentions to retire to a different state, it's getting clearer and clearer that he has no interest in serving the needs of his constituents, and instead is just saying whatever he needs to in order to get elected and pursue a path of deregulatory Randianism that enriches his wealthy friends at the expense of those who actually work for a living.

Don't believe me? Take a look at this paragraph from a recent speech of his that is getting a lot of attention (e.g.) from the right:

The drama that brought this creature [he means the Affordable Care Act] to life was unedifying ... part tragedy and part farce. Ethical categories went out the window. Never in history have the deliberations of Congress been subverted on this scale. The secrecy, the lack of transparency, the half-truths were stunning. The votes called at midnight ... the 2 and 3 thousand page bills members of Congress had no time to read before the votes ... the sordid backroom deals, the Cornhusker Kickback that shamed Nebraska, the Louisiana Purchase, the "Gator Aid" Medicare privilege for Florida, the additional Medicare dollars for states whose wavering representatives only yesterday were ferociously denouncing earmarks ... the federal judgeship dangled for one lawmaker's brother ... the raid on the Medicare piggy bank ... the lie that $250 billion for "doc fix" shouldn't count as a Health Care cost ... the double-counted deficit estimate scam that would land any accountant in jail ... the proposed Slaughter rule that Congressmen not record a vote on a bill their constituents hate, just "deem" it passed and vote on the amendments...and to complete the farce, the phony Executive Order pretending not to fund abortions when the Health Care bill, as "the supreme law of the land," does fund abortions. The level of political corruption to buy the votes for this debacle makes all past examples look penny ante by comparison.

There is not one sentence in this paragraph that isn't either a blatant falsehood or deeply hypocritical. To suggest that the "deliberations" on the health care bill that is now law were not transparent is absurd. This was the most debated, most over-hashed, most talk-about bill in recent memory. CSPAN ratings were through the roof. There was no line of the bill that was not public and posted and puzzled over long before any votes. Not like, say, the U.S.A.P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, which of course Paul Ryan voted for without having read it. The health care bill? Come on. The Senate passed the bill three months before it was taken up in the house. If Paul Ryan didn't have time to read it, it's his own damn fault.

It's also remarkable that Ryan would lambast, for example, the "Cornhusker Kickback." Because when Ryan had the chance to vote to remove that provision, he voted no--just like the rest of his caucus. The "judgeship dangled" is of course a complete lie, according to the WND-approved judge who previously held the position.

I've written before about Ryan's hypocritical complaints about Medicare; the "doc fix" has been a separate bill for, literally, years; and Ryan is the only one who knows what he's talking about with that "scam" talk, as the non-partisan analysts all found nothing like it. And the "Slaughter Rule"? When Paul Ryan was voting on rules just like it, it was known as "deem and pass"--a decades-old procedure.

[Updated to add, because I can't believe I forgot it, that Paul Ryan voted for Medicare Part D, which, if there was ever a Congressional vote that was truly corrupt--I mean, read the story!--this was it. Ryan's got a lot of nerve to talk about bribery and corruption of process after he participated in that mess.]

And for abortion? Ryan seems to have bought into that lie, too. Here's the text of the bill:

(A) IN GENERAL- If a qualified health plan provides coverage of services described in paragraph (1)(B)(i) [i.e., ABORTIONS FOR WHICH PUBLIC FUNDING IS PROHIBITED], the issuer of the plan shall not use any amount attributable to any of the following for purposes of paying for such services.

You can believe Paul Ryan, or you can believe the text of the bill. Your call.

So here's the situation: Paul Ryan gives a lauded speech peppered with his own dishonesty and hypocrisy, and yet we are supposed to take him and his support seriously. Why? What possible value is there is puffing up a fabulist with a schoolboy crush on Ayn Rand? What makes him a more serious candidate that I would have been?

Yes! I'm running for Congress!

by folkbum

See the post below or go here for up-to-the minute updates about my campaign against Paul Ryan!

Special Announcement: I'm running for Congress!

by folkbum

To visit my campaign website, to sign up, contribute, and see campaign updates, click here.

As most of you know, the few readers I have left anyway, I have spent much of the last year attacking Wisconsin 1st CD Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Ayn Rand). The fact is that Ryan is an incredibly poor representative for his district, and the fact that he has risen to a position of leadership in his party points is a significant danger not just to the good folks of Wisconsin but the nation as a whole.

All along, people have been telling me, "Quit your whining and do something about it."

I haven't always known exactly what they had in mind when they said that--raise money to defeat him? throw a bucket of paint on him while shouting "Meat is murder"?--but their words have been weighing heavily on my mind for some time.

That is why, beginning today, I am doing "something."

Beginning today, I am running for Congress against Paul Ryan, seeking the 1st CD nomination for the Democratic Party of Wisconsin.

Now, some of you are probably already starting to catalogue the reasons why this is a bad idea, perhaps starting with the fact that I insist on spelling catalogue with the -ue at the end. And it's true that there are a number of seemingly insurmountable barriers to my entry into this race. But let's take a closer look at them, shall we?

For one, I do not presently live in Wisconsin's 1st district. I am only a few miles away, though, and if the Doug Hoffman (I-Teabagger) campaign in upstate New York taught us anything in the past year, it's that out-of-district insurgents can still legitimately run for a seat in Congress. In addition, I spent my college years in Rock County, where Ryan was born and raised, when it was a part of the 1st CD (Beloit has since been re-districted to the 2nd CD). This is only fair, since Ryan spent his college years at Miami of Ohio, which is one county up from where I was born and raised and, ironically, the only other college I applied to besides Beloit College.

For another, I have no elected experience. Oh, come on. You know this one: If every job requires you to have experience, how can you get a job to gain that experience? Consider that Paul Ryan had not been elected to any office before he ran for Congress in 1998. Sure, he slummed around Washington, DC, working for some of the archest of arch-conservative elected officials. How is that different from me, slumming around Milwaukee, working for the Milwaukee Public Schools?

For a third, I have no money. Paul Ryan, as even a cursory glance at his financials will tell you, has more money than any likely opponent. That I have been living on a public servant's salary while Ryan's sugar-daddies in the insurance and pharmaceutical industries fed Ryan's campaign coffers should not disqualify me from running. I am also not intimidated by the fact that Ryan is willing to spend millions--he spent $2.25 million in 2008, outspending his opponent 17-1, because nothing kills like overkill!--in this election. In fact, the more money he spends now, the less he has to run for Senate in 2012.

In all, the reasons for my not running are hardly enough to stop me. That is why, beginning today, I am asking for your support. This goal--sending the GOP's golden boy packing--will not be easy, and it will not be something I can do without you. Here is my simple, five-point platform, and I hope these are all things you can believe in, too:

• No more economic policies based on the fiction of Ayn Rand
  
• No more social policies based on the hypocrisy of Catholic bishops
  
• No more international relations policies based on the movie Red Dawn
  
• No more education policies based on phony "miracles," be they in Houston or in Chicago
  
• No more environmental policies based on the philosophy of C. Montgomery Burns

If these are reforms that you can get behind, sign up today to support me in my quest to take Wisconsin back from the forces of political terpitude and the party of "no."

Paul Ryan's Cajones II

by folkbum

Ryan, today: "By inviting market forces into health care, we can encourage a system where doctors, insurers and hospitals compete against one another for the business of informed consumers" (my emphasis).

Ryan, one month ago: One of only 19 House members (all Republicans) to vote against removing the anti-trust exemption enjoyed by insurance companies.

Paul Ryan's Cajones

by folkbum

I've not been glued to CSPAN today (spending time recovering--still--from being sick and cleaning house), but Ezra Klein notes today that Paul Ryan took to the floor of the House to rail "against Democrats who would dare propose 'across-the-board cuts to Medicare.' "

This is the same Paul Ryan, mind you, whose golden-boy "Roadmap to middle-class poverty America's Future" absolutely guts Medicare.

Chart of the Day, GOP Golden Boy Edition

by folkbum

Via K-Drum, Citizens for Tax Justice have run the tax numbers (.pdf) in Paul Ryan's "Roadmap to Screw You, America Prosperity":

(click for larger image)
So not only does Ryan's "Roadmap" eliminate Medicare, not only does Ryan's "Roadmap" turn Social Security into a game of roulette, not only does Ryan's "Roadmap" not eliminate the deficit (until maybe 50 years out but only if you pretend that the plan doesn't cut revenue), Ryan's "Roadmap" jacks up your taxes. Unless you happen to earn more than 90% of the rest of America, and seeing as how you're sitting around somewhere reading this meagre blog instead of, I don't know, yachting, you are probably not a winner under Ryan's plan.

And Ryan is apparently a Very Serious Person!

Paul Ryan thinks of the children--tied up in closets

by folkbum

If ever there was a gimme bill to vote for, it's the "Preventing Harmful Restraint and Seclusion in Schools Act." I mean, seriously. Who doesn't want to be on record as opposed to duct-taping kids and locking them in empty rooms.

Apparently, Paul Ryan. (Not to mention Tom Petri and F. Jim Sensenbrenner.)

First, he wants to kill John Galt. Now he wants to lock ... well, Ayn Rand never really wrote children, so let's say, widdle Howie Roark in a box. Lovely!

Paul Ryan votes to kill John Galt

by folkbum

Yesterday, a bill passed the US House of Representatives passed a bill by a remarkable margin of 406 to 19. This is not because Democrats have suddenly taken over an extra 150 House seats without your noticing; it is, in fact, because the bill is one following an ages-old American value: Corporate monopolies are bad for business, for consumers, and for workers.

The bill removed an exemption to anti-trust laws that was specially crafted for insurance companies. While states currently have theoretical authority to investigate and block insurance company monopolies, many simply don't: A study by the AMA (pdf) finds that the vast majority of markets are dominated by a single insurer, crossing the usual Department of Justice threshold for market concentration. In some states, a single insurance company writes upwards of 2/3 of the policies.

Here in Wisconsin, 52% of us are insured by WellPoint; in neighboring Iowa, 71% are insured by Wellmark. Across the lake, 65% of Michiganders are insured by Blue Cross. And so on.

One of the 19--all Republicans, by the way--who voted against removing the special protections insurance companies receive was Wisconsin's Paul Ryan. This may have something to do with where his campaign contributions come from, I can't say for sure. But in another way, it kind of surprises me. Ryan professes to be a fan of juvenile philosopher Ayn Rand, whose two-dimensional heroes (and, yes, I've read some of the books) tend to be self-made entrepreneurs who have to struggle for acceptance and success against the reigning corporate or political hegemony. By voting to allow insurance companies to maintain monopoly or monopsony power, Ryan is voting to keep the John Galts of the world shut out of a major sector of the US economy.

All of which just reenforces the pretty clear narrative about Republicans like Paul Ryan: While claiming to be pro-business, they ae actually just pro-existing business. Other health insurance reform measures, like those making it easier for small businesses to offer health insurance to their employees, have been shut down or shouted down by Ryan and his ilk. In return, they offer race-to-the-bottom proposals designed to enrich their corporate sponsors at the expense of working Americans--not something even Ayn Rand would approve of.