I’d be more tolerant of Blue Dogs (especially those in blood red districts) if they didn’t lie in order to justify voting with the Republicans. The health care bills are both scored by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and they both reduce the budget deficit (Senate version: $132 billion, House version: $138 billion over ten years). Not only that, but contrary to the rantings of John McCain, this is no mere accounting trick. CBO estimated that the Senate bill will save $1.3 trillion in its second decade. So, how are these bills meaningfully expensive? If you want to argue that that the bills don’t bend the cost curve sufficiently, that’s fine with me. But don’t call them expensive because that’s counterfactual and annoying and a Republican talking point. If you don’t want to vote for health care reform, come up with a real reason. There are plenty to choose from on both the left and the right.
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BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
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Well, $871 billion is real money. It’s just paid for – unlike Bush’s many messes. There’s also the real problem that with the status quo we have health care obligations into the future that aren’t paid for. Still, the bill raises new money and spends it, so it must be wrong. q.e.d.
I’d be more tolerant of Blue Dogs (especially those in blood red districts) if they didn’t lie in order to justify voting with the Republicans.
Come on!! They’ve always been that way. They always have been frauds. They are supposedly fiscal conservatives, yet uttered nary a peep during W.’s unpaid for wars.
democrats were never exactly spring peepers when Bush had his hand out for funds to carry on his war crimes. Now they’re positively mute.
Given this post, I’m curious what you think of Bob Herbert’s Op-Ed in the Times today?
if they stopped lying, they’d be the perfect rep for their constituents: deaf, dumb and blind.
I told you that’s why I had the problem with them.
they’re all ‘ fiscal responsibility’ blah blah blah
but, when faced with choices that were far more ‘FISCALLY RESPONSIBLE’
Single Payer
Medicare Buy-In
The Public Option
then suddenly ‘ fiscal responsibility’ is forgotten.
they are bought and paid for corporate whores.
they should be honest about it.
I think the reason they lie is that they are in basically republican districts. Republicans just cannot help but, lie all the time and so, it just becomes a habit with the blue dogs because of being around so many republicans all the time
I think we need to keep track of these former democrats and what they say, the lies, the exaggerations and hyperbole and then we need to cleanse the democratic party of these folks. Let them form their own damn party, let them try to get candidates elected by typing on their blogs. I for one, unsubscribed to FDL’s newsletter and don’t bother giving them hits by visiting the site anymore. It’s one thing to disagree on policy differences but it’s quite another to use deceptive techniques to bring down a democratic president, simply over policy differences. And it really isn’t even policy differences, it’s more like implementation issues, or compromising to get something issues. I read both Obama’s books and he is very progressive in his ideology, but he is also pragmatic. There are ways to change the way things work in Washington, present a progressive agenda that appeals to people, educate the electorate about progressive issues, get real progressives elected. It takes time, but look how far we’ve come since the 2006 elections. To just piss that away by attacking your party leader doesn’t make any sense. But I realized a long time ago that not all our fellow progressives really have much common sense.