Watching the health care debate on the Senate floor it is amusing to see the Republicans continue to argue that the Democrats’ bill will slash Medicare funding and see the Democrats respond by hold up letters from every reputable seniors’ lobbying group saying that the bill will strengthen Medicare. It got so bad that John McCain, growing frustrated, called on every member of the AARP to rip up their membership cards because they’ve been betrayed.
The GOP also continues to harp on the fact the the bill will begin raising revenues immediately without paying anything out until 2014. They say this is a gimmick to make the bill budget-neutral in the first 10 years. But the Democrats continue to point out the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) says that the bill will reduce the deficit not only in the first ten-year window but in the second ten-year window as well. When Max Baucus asked Chuck Grassley if this was in fact the case, Grassley was reduced to feigning a lack of certainty about the issue. As if the ranking member of the Finance Committee is unaware of the CBO scores!!!
Now Dick Durbin is laughing at Republicans for pretending to defend Medicare.
Feingold is becoming a fundamentalist on spending. Among Democrats and Independents, only Ben Nelson voted with Russ.
It’s an interesting combo of looking long-range and being short-sighted at the same time. He’s right that the spending needs to be financed, preferably by rolling back the Bush/Reagan tax cuts for the the rich. But he’s myopic in his scattershot approach to what should be cut now. He’s still heroic on civil liberties, but the fiscal pedantry is making me grateful that I didn’t get what I wished for re putting him in the White House.
Yes, it would be funny if this would actually get called out for what it is; complete and utter lies from the Republicans.
But it will portrayed on the nightly news and in most other reporting as simply a “he said-she said” argument, at best. And no one in the vast expanse of America, save for a few DFH’s on those pesky blogs, will ever know that the Republicans are f*&^%ing lying.
And the opportunity for real health care will continue to get whittled away, one silly and unfounded statement at a time.
Amusing, indeed.
I was listening to the debate on the floor for a while and it was as if the Democrats and Republicans were debating two entirely different bills. The Democrats were debating for a Health Care Reform bill and the Republicans were (hypocritically) debating against a Slash and Burn Medicare Funding bill.
The stupid got so strong and so foul that I just had to switch my background noise to even stupider MSNBC chatter about Tiger Woods, That Party Crashing Couple, etc.
Maybe it’s time for some music?