Does Senator Conrad really think this pronouncement will help Democrats win elections, much less help the country?
Speaking on ABC’s “Good Morning America,” Conrad said Americans and politicians have to realize that Medicare and Social Security can’t remain the same.
Social Security and Medicare aren’t the problem. The problem is tax cuts for the rich, the greatest inequality between those at the top and everyone else in income and net worth ever, and the stranglehold large corporations have on our government.
Some commentators blame recent legislation — the stimulus bill and the financial rescues — for today’s record deficits. Yet those costs pale next to other policies enacted since 2001 that have swollen the deficit. Those other policies may be less conspicuous now, because many were enacted years ago and they have long since been absorbed into CBO’s and other organizations’ budget projections.
Just two policies dating from the Bush Administration — tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — accounted for over $500 billion of the deficit in 2009 and will account for almost $7 trillion in deficits in 2009 through 2019, including the associated debt-service costs. [6] (The prescription drug benefit enacted in 2003 accounts for further substantial increases in deficits and debt, which we are unable to quantify due to data limitations.) These impacts easily dwarf the stimulus and financial rescues. Furthermore, unlike those temporary costs, these inherited policies (especially the tax cuts and the drug benefit) do not fade away as the economy recovers (see Figure 1).
America’s wealth and power arose because we had a strong vibrant large middle class and a safety net in place in the form of social security and medicare and other government programs that helped people buy homes, pay for college tuition for their children, clean up our air and water (reducing public health costs), keep our food safe, financial regulation that made our markets the most stable and trusted in the world, Labor laws that protected the rights of unions and individual workers, etc.
Those used to be Democratic Party accomplishment of which Democrats were proud and that they defended. Not anymore, apparently.
Destroying that safety net and making the middle class small enough to drown in a bathtub is a recipe for disaster, both in the short and long terms. You want a libertarian paradise? Go to Somalia. You want lack of regulation of major corporations? See what that has done to the environment and health of the people of China, India and Russia.
In relative terms the deficit is significantly lower than it was after WWII, the period that jump started America’s rise as the most dominant economic force on the planet. Yet after WWII, instead of demanding reparations and other financially punitive measures, we used our economic strength and targeted foreign aid to build up the economies of our former enemies and a devastated Europe. That spending created the global economy that we have today which reduced much suffering, even if it did not eliminate all global inequities.
So what should we be doing instead of trying to fight off the dangerous proposals of politicians like Senator Conrad? We should be investing in our future through targeted spending on education, infrastructure and new technologies. We should have a single payer health care plan for all Americans to save money and increase the competitiveness of our businesses vis-a-vis the rest of the developed world. We should be doing what we can to bring high paying jobs back to America. We should be strengthening our unions to the same level as in Germany (whose economy is doing better than ours at the moment), and making our corporations (especially polluters and Wall Street) more accountable for the damage they have done, not less.
That is what other nations are doing or have done. This is what we successfully did to save our automotive industry when Wall Street and the GOP wanted to let it die. This is what we should be doing more of rather than considering “austerity measures” that have never proven to be successful when applied, except to bail out the debt investments of the upper classes.
US economic growth is slowing faster than expected with confidence waning in the face of austerity measures. Spending cuts in Europe are also hitting investment confidence, according to Neil Dwane, chief investment officer Europe at RCM, a company of Allianz Global Investors.
‘We can still see a two tier global economy in place, with the over banked, overstressed developed world continuing to struggle to make headway, whilst the emerging markets likely to continue to deliver reasonably robust economic growth,’ he said.
‘It is quite clear inside the US that, apart from the activity being undertaken by President Obama and Ben Bernanke, the US states themselves have already entered quite a serious degree of austerity. We are reading about policemen losing their jobs, schools and hospitals being closed and in California they are now paying you with IOUs that are only worth 88% of the dollar bill written on the cheque when you take them to the bank,’ he pointed out. […]
‘Countries like Ireland are beginning to show how hard it is, even if you are putting the most effective economic policy in place, to help the economy to recover. They are truly in a paradox of thrift at the moment where the more they save and implement sound economic policy, the more their economy continues to shrink. This may be a foretaste of what the future holds for Spain, Italy and for Greece,’ he added.
Our federal deficit isn’t the issue, though I agree that the amount of wasteful government spending increased thanks to the increased privatization of government functions by Republican administrations which led to massive fraud by government contractors, most recently during the reign of George W. Bush. The issue, as Paul Krugman constantly reminds us is lack of demand for goods and services, a demand that only Government can create at this point in time. Because anyone who thinks the Federal Reserve’s plan to keep giving Big Banks essentially free money is going to stimulate demand is smoking some Grade A ganga.
So how did Democrats fail to understand that policies of which Herbert Hoover would have approved are the worst thing for helping both their party and our country? Specifically, when did Kent Conrad turn into Ron Paul?
Inquiring minds want to know. Because if this is the Democrats idea of winning back the House and retaining the Presidency, trust me, it won’t work.
He stabbed the health care reform bill in the back, and now he is pushing cuts in Social Security and Medicare.
Did not the Affordable Care Act deal with Medicare with its cost-cutting proposal of an average of $50 billion a year for 10 years? And is not the condition of Social Security dependent on the demographics of a cohort that is just now being born or are not yet born?
God, I hate these grandstanders.
If Democrats won’t defend social security for the under-40 crowd, then why the fuck should I keep paying in ~14% of my income into the system?
This is exactly what the Republicans want … to turn Social Security into a ponzi scheme.
How exactly are you paying in 14% into the system? The payroll tax on employees is 6.2% of gross wages.
Oh, you are self employed or an independent contractor. 15.3% times 92.35% of gross wages.
Yes, turning Social Security into a Ponzi scheme is exactly what the Republicans intend. Haven’t you been listening to your 401(k) salespeople for the past 20 years. “Social Security won’t be there for you.” Now they are trying to make the vultures prophetic.
Sorry for saying around 14%, if that number is inaccurate. It’s pretty close though.
Yes, I’m self-employed.
Which comes to 13.9% for the self employed.
The GOP goal has always been to privatize SS in order that the oligarchs reap the lion’s share of the money flow, just as they do now that creation of currency has been partially privatized, as has Medicare and Medicaid. SS is an example of government doing what government does best — distribute support far more efficiently than “free enterprise” can hope to match.
The obvious answer is to expand and strengthen SS, not weaken and privatize it, but we are now essentially a banana republic with a large remaining bankroll, so there’s no reason that rationality will have any influence on policy.
With all due respect, Medicare is the problem. Well, not Medicare itself, but the payment system.
Solution: Medicare for all; the Commission included this in the report, I think…or a an all-payer system or something.
Kent Conrad wants to hear the liberal solution? Fine:
Cut defense in half
Raise the tax threshold on SS to like $150,000
Medicare for all, although my ideal solution is VA-care for all
Remove the capital gains tax, and treat capital gains as income
Now, that more or less solves the long-term problem. My bargaining chips:
Cut high income tax bracket to 25-30%, and cut other brackets down
Remove mortgage deduction
Get rid of a shit ton of other deductions
Agreed so long as the deductions being eliminated are the ones that allow corporations to avoid paying taxes, rather than deductions that help individuals and families.
And I think in the short term we need to raise taxes on the top 1% of income.
Getting rid of deductions and treating capital gains as income is far better than just raising the highest income threshold, and will generate far more revenue.
The EITC cannot be gotten rid of, not right now. I will be honest, though, and maybe many conservatives will get on-board: I want every deduction gone, including ones that help working-class families. I’m tired of our complex tax code and the rich abusing it.
The problem with the Commission draft is that only eliminates the middle class deductions and flattens the rate brackets. Yet another case in the 50+ trend of taxes being transferred from the wealthy and corporations to ordinary citizens. (The state and local version of this is “economic development packages”)
Doesn’t it treat capital gains as income? I mean, this report is a non-starter for me, but I am not ideologically inclined to raise tax rates on the wealthy so long as the burden is fair (relatively speaking) and so long as the income is flowing in.
I would also support getting rid of a huge number of wealthy tax deductions in exchange for a VAT.
Or, even better, a carbon tax.
The problem isn’t Medicare, it is health care provider prices. Medicare does control for that. And would control for it more if Congress ever forgot about the “Doc-Fix”. But if that happened, providers would drop Medicare patients like they do Medicaid patients.
There is a second problem with Medicare fraud by folks who pretend to be providers. It can be handled fairly easily by qualifying providers carefully. And auditing fees. Hint to programmers of Medicare billing programs: the fact that there were two X-rays ordered the same day does not necessarily indicate fraud and should not automatically kick out the cost as ineligible. Which the Medicare billing programs did in 2001 and probably still do.
Round two:
Your alternative plan looks good. But instead of setting thresholds to absolute figures, they should be indexed.
The tax threshold on the Social Security payroll tax should be eliminated altogether. Why shouldn’t CEOs kick in for their poor relatives and subsidized income for the disabled, some of whom might be from industrial accidents in one of their facilities?
But for income taxes, the exemption threshold should be set to the second quintile income for the previous year. That would mean that the 20% of families with the lowest incomes would be excluded from income tax liability. And the EITC should kick in on the lowest quintile as well and support that income. In addition, the alternative minimum tax threshold should be set to the boundary value of the top 1 percentile of family incomes. So instead of setting it to, say $250K, it would float from year to year. The tax liability for the alternative minimum tax should be a flat tax on income (without deductions) at the rate for that boundary value. And overall tax brackets should be indexed to percentile boundaries as well, the lowest twenty being 0%. Once the brackets are set, they float with the incomes of the previous year.
And the rates should be progressive, the rates determined by 50% of the amount required for balancing the previous year’s federal budget including debt service (corporate taxes calculated to provide the other 50%).
The technical details are not difficult. What is difficult is to tax the people who actually can afford to pay it. And who generally have their income either from inheritance, from inventions plus patent lawyers, or from squeezing employees, suppliers, and customers.
wise up steven. the democrats are not the party of working people. they are the party of banks and insurance companies. they are the GOP’s enablers, and that’s about it.
i have literally no use for the party. none.
Yes, I am thick sometimes.
“The Democrats” is a pretty broad brush. It runs from Heath Shuler to Raul Grijalva in the House and from Ben Nelson to Tom Harkin, Sheldon Whitehouse and Sherrod Brown in the Senate.
And if you looked at the composition of the Democratic Party in the 1930s when it was the “party of the farmer and the workingman” you could make the same accusation. And it would be wrong for the same reason. The names of those conservative Democrats include Senators Harry Byrd, Rush Holt, Sr., Josiah Bailey, and Samuel Pattengill. Southern Democrats tended to be economically liberal, like Olin Johnston (SC) supporting labor and Lyndon Johnson, but socially (i.e. with regard to desegregation) conservative.
Come on folks, give Conrad a break. After all he is doing his best to energize the rank and file of the Democratic party. How else to get the base fired up for the election of 2012 than by attacking two of the most successful programs in the history of the Republic! You want to get someone’s attention? Hit them in the pocketbook. Of course, this strategy would would work much better if Conrad were a Republican, I mean in name as well as in spirit.
But if he ran against himself, he couldn’t lose.
Pomeroy was in a pretty safe seat, although ND is reliably Repukeliscum. He lost big this time.
Conrad is running scared.
Conrad is toast. They’ll want a real Republican, and one will appear very shortly.
Because we’ve neglected the Midwest(SD, ND, Kansas Nebraska). Is there anyone that can primary Conrad(after all .. I find it hard to believe that SS cuts would be popular there .. and it has to be a very cheap media market)? Or is the DSCC gonna blow shitloads of money trying to bail Conrad and Nelson out?
It all depends on who runs the DSCC in the next cycle, doesn’t it. The structural problem with the DSCC (and the DCCC) is that a huge part of its funding comes from incumbents, which automatically biases it toward protecting incumbents and then at the last minute funding promising challengers.
This is not unusual rhetoric from Conrad.
I live in SD. I visit ND all the time.
The area is very difficult for current Dems which are city-suburb based. There are no cities in SD or ND, just larger villages. SD – Sioux Falls 160K, Rapid City 75K, everything else smaller. ND – Fargo 140K, Grand Forks 90K, most smaller.
As long as the Dems are going to stay as Repuke-lite and kiss the skanky diseased dicks of the banks, we are toast in this area. There are plenty of farmers who remember the evil banks and large corporations, and plenty who are squeezed by the economy. But we will get nothing from this area in our current policy orientation. This part of the midwest is going red for the forseeable future.
Conrad is toast, Nelson is toast, even Klobashar is going to have a hell of a fight in 4 years.
he’s a fucking idiot who should just become a Republican.