Frum

[OSUBlazerfan]

It's yet another way to reward mediocrity, and penalize success.

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

Its not giving "free healthcare" to those that don't have it though does it?

 

[Minstrel]

Megan McArdle, however, says it better than I could: http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2010/03/the-future-after-health-care/37799/

Megan McArdle was apparently sleeping until 2006, considering she writes this:

If the GOP takes the legislative innovations of the Democrats and decides to use them, please don't complain that it's not fair. Someone could get seriously hurt, laughing that hard.

She has gotten it completely reversed. Republicans did this with their majority and now, when Democrats are doing it, conservatives are complaining that it's not fair. I remember these exact issues of whether the Democrats should use the filibuster to obstruct Republican agenda, since Republicans insisted that elections have consequences and it was their agenda to push through, and Republicans threatening to use the "nuclear option"...voting to remove the filibuster.

Tyranny of the majority? Perhaps, and that may or may not be problematic. There's a fine line between an opposition party trying to win a compromise and simply trying to gum up the works. I don't have the answer to how this should be structured, but the idea that Democrats have unveiled a new and horrific method of politics is patently absurd.

This is business as usual...Republicans are just (rightfully) frightened of the fact that this time it was used to put in place something that they probably can never get rid of and may in fact represent merely the beachhead to a much more sweeping system that they don't want. That's fine...they can be as upset as they want about that. But acting like Democrats went out-of-bounds to do it doesn't wash. Republicans have tread the same ground.

(This, incidentally, wasn't necessarily meant to be directed at you, maxiep, as you didn't claim in your post that this was something new and unfair. It was more aimed at McArdle and those who say similar things.)

 

[OSUBlazerfan]

Its not giving "free healthcare" to those that don't have it though does it?

Yes it does, 35 million of them

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

wtf. serious? so people who don't have insurance just get it for free?

i thought it was just a requirement that you had to get healthcare insurance. hmmmm...this is weird.

 

[OSUBlazerfan]

Pre-exsisting condition people, everyone is forced to get it, if not, have to pay some fee so the govt controls that persons healthcare

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

this all sounds rather non-baller to me.

 

[OSUBlazerfan]

Sounds like Socialism to me

 

[EL PRESIDENTE]

meh. i give up.

just focus on myself.

 

[jlprk]

You know what this country needs? More government. Maybe I could pay the government to come wipe my ass after I take a dump. Maybe I could pay them to clip my toenails. How about go grocery shopping for me? Actually I would really like the government to clean my house. I'm lazy.

In one of my many incarnations, I ran the accounting for all the Chore Services in King County (Seattle). When you are dying of cancer, you will be very glad if you can find those services subsidized.

 

[maxiep]

Megan McArdle was apparently sleeping until 2006, considering she writes this:



She has gotten it completely reversed. Republicans did this with their majority and now, when Democrats are doing it, conservatives are complaining that it's not fair. I remember these exact issues of whether the Democrats should use the filibuster to obstruct Republican agenda, since Republicans insisted that elections have consequences and it was their agenda to push through, and Republicans threatening to use the "nuclear option"...voting to remove the filibuster.

Tyranny of the majority? Perhaps, and that may or may not be problematic. There's a fine line between an opposition party trying to win a compromise and simply trying to gum up the works. I don't have the answer to how this should be structured, but the idea that Democrats have unveiled a new and horrific method of politics is patently absurd.

This is business as usual...Republicans are just (rightfully) frightened of the fact that this time it was used to put in place something that they probably can never get rid of and may in fact represent merely the beachhead to a much more sweeping system that they don't want. That's fine...they can be as upset as they want about that. But acting like Democrats went out-of-bounds to do it doesn't wash. Republicans have tread the same ground.

(This, incidentally, wasn't necessarily meant to be directed at you, maxiep, as you didn't claim in your post that this was something new and unfair. It was more aimed at McArdle and those who say similar things.)

To pretend this bill was just like any other is just insulting. There has never been a bill of this social magnatude passed on a purely partisan line. In fact, the only bipartisanship you see in this bill is from those who oppose it.

 

[MrJayremmie]

Wonderful article. I agreed 100%.

He is the type of Republican I was a fan of so long ago. Wow, how they have fallen off.

 

[Denny Crane]

To pretend this bill was just like any other is just insulting. There has never been a bill of this social magnatude passed on a purely partisan line. In fact, the only bipartisanship you see in this bill is from those who oppose it.

True that.

 

[Denny Crane]

I haven't seen anyone who's analyzed the bill point to any cost cutting features of the Bill. There are at least two tax hikes, though.

For certain, people will find that the fines are cheaper than paying for the insurance.

Do the math. $3.6T budget with $1.6T deficits becomes $5.8T (add the $2.2T we spend on health care). Tack on the expenses for an additional 10% of the population who will be forced to buy insurance and it's $2.4T, assuming the rates don't get jacked up.

That's $6T out of a GDP of $14T (currently), the bulk of it spent on programs that both cost more than they take in and have tens of $trillions in liabilities (if not hundreds of $trillions).

To cover those expenses at break even, the feds need to tax 43% of GDP. Not including state income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, etc.

This is what change looks like.

 

[Denny Crane]

Megan McArdle was apparently sleeping until 2006, considering she writes this:



She has gotten it completely reversed. Republicans did this with their majority and now, when Democrats are doing it, conservatives are complaining that it's not fair. I remember these exact issues of whether the Democrats should use the filibuster to obstruct Republican agenda, since Republicans insisted that elections have consequences and it was their agenda to push through, and Republicans threatening to use the "nuclear option"...voting to remove the filibuster.

Tyranny of the majority? Perhaps, and that may or may not be problematic. There's a fine line between an opposition party trying to win a compromise and simply trying to gum up the works. I don't have the answer to how this should be structured, but the idea that Democrats have unveiled a new and horrific method of politics is patently absurd.

This is business as usual...Republicans are just (rightfully) frightened of the fact that this time it was used to put in place something that they probably can never get rid of and may in fact represent merely the beachhead to a much more sweeping system that they don't want. That's fine...they can be as upset as they want about that. But acting like Democrats went out-of-bounds to do it doesn't wash. Republicans have tread the same ground.

(This, incidentally, wasn't necessarily meant to be directed at you, maxiep, as you didn't claim in your post that this was something new and unfair. It was more aimed at McArdle and those who say similar things.)

Unlike tax cuts with sunset provisions republicans used reconciliation for.

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

I see this as nothing monumental or effective in either way.

Certainly not worthy of the term "reform". It pretty much delays reform for another decade.

I agree. This really isn't "reforming" so much as it is designed to eliminate via vilification the insurance companies on the way to a national single payer system. That's the "reform". Along the way, we will all pay substantially more for healthcare and higher taxes. It's going to hurt.

And to think... if the health insurance companies were unionized, none of this would have even started.

 

[Minstrel]

To pretend this bill was just like any other is just insulting.

I didn't say that. In fact, I said the opposite:

"Republicans are just (rightfully) frightened of the fact that this time it was used to put in place something that they probably can never get rid of and may in fact represent merely the beachhead to a much more sweeping system that they don't want."

This bill was bigger than any bill pushed through with Republican majorities under Bush the younger. The hostility to the minority party was nothing new, though. McArdle pretends Democrats just ushered in a new era of "tyranny by the majority" which is nonsense.

 

[barfo]

Do the math. $3.6T budget with $1.6T deficits becomes $5.8T (add the $2.2T we spend on health care).

Sure. Plus Alpha Centuri is 40 trillion kilometers away, so 5.8T + 40T = 45.8 trillion.

Your "math" is nonsense. There is no reason to add the total nationwide spending on healthcare to the federal budget and pretend that the federal government needs to pay the sum.

barfo

 

[Denny Crane]

Sure. Plus Alpha Centuri is 40 trillion kilometers away, so 5.8T + 40T = 45.8 trillion.

Your "math" is nonsense. There is no reason to add the total nationwide spending on healthcare to the federal budget and pretend that the federal government needs to pay the sum.

barfo

It's how much of the economy the government is commanding.

But nice try on your part, anyway.

 

[barfo]

It's how much of the economy the government is commanding.

But nice try on your part, anyway.

Sorry, but no. Here's what your "math" led you to conclude:

To cover those expenses at break even, the feds need to tax 43% of GDP. Not including state income taxes, sales taxes, property taxes, etc.

That's just a false conclusion no matter how you parse the word "commanding".

barfo

 

[Denny Crane]

They're going to tax that much when everyone stops paying for their health care because the fines are cheaper to pay. Or if you don't pay the tax you have to buy the insurance. It's a mandate, and by definition the govt. commanding the spending in the economy.

As Obama said, this bill isn't perfect, but it's the first step towards... what is it a step towards, barfo?

 

[maxiep]

I didn't say that. In fact, I said the opposite:

"Republicans are just (rightfully) frightened of the fact that this time it was used to put in place something that they probably can never get rid of and may in fact represent merely the beachhead to a much more sweeping system that they don't want."

This bill was bigger than any bill pushed through with Republican majorities under Bush the younger. The hostility to the minority party was nothing new, though. McArdle pretends Democrats just ushered in a new era of "tyranny by the majority" which is nonsense.

Saying one side was hostile doesn't make all bills tantamount. From what I read in her article she is claiming that the Democrats will have little room to complain if, when Republicans eventually take power again, they legislate in the same manner with issues of the same import.

 

[barfo]

They're going to tax that much when everyone stops paying for their health care because the fines are cheaper to pay.

Or maybe everyone will just kill themselves because that would be even cheaper.

In the highly unlikely case that "everyone" chose fines over healthcare, one could solve that problem by simply increasing the fines.

Or if you don't pay the tax you have to buy the insurance. It's a mandate, and by definition the govt. commanding the spending in the economy.

If the government passed a law saying everyone has to buy food, would you count all food purchases as government spending? Even if no one spent any more or any less than they did before?

Fact is, that $2.2T per year is already being spent. Many people already buy health insurance.

As Obama said, this bill isn't perfect, but it's the first step towards... what is it a step towards, barfo?

It is a step towards insuring the uninsured.
It is a step towards insuring those with pre-existing conditions.
It is a step towards insuring those who are not eligible for an employer-sponsored plan.
etc.

barfo

 

[Denny Crane]

Or maybe everyone will just kill themselves because that would be even cheaper.

In the highly unlikely case that "everyone" chose fines over healthcare, one could solve that problem by simply increasing the fines.



If the government passed a law saying everyone has to buy food, would you count all food purchases as government spending? Even if no one spent any more or any less than they did before?

Fact is, that $2.2T per year is already being spent. Many people already buy health insurance.



It is a step towards insuring the uninsured.
It is a step towards insuring those with pre-existing conditions.
It is a step towards insuring those who are not eligible for an employer-sponsored plan.
etc.

barfo

Don't need to kill ourselves, the govt. death squads are perfectly good at deciding who lives or not.

It's a step toward funneling $500B from medicare to the insurance companies, and it has nothing to do with actual health care.

You seem to be happy watching the govt. waste amounts in the $trillions, frequently and at every opportunity, while we suffer through days of malaise version 2. Only this time, we're not going to be in any shape to get out of the hole your kind is digging.

At the same time you seem to be happy giving up your freedoms so some politicians might stay in power.

I don't get it.

 

[barfo]

Don't need to kill ourselves, the govt. death squads are perfectly good at deciding who lives or not.

Until the death squads have proven to be effective, I think it is best for people to kill themselves.

It's a step toward funneling $500B from medicare to the insurance companies, and it has nothing to do with actual health care.

You seem to be happy watching the govt. waste amounts in the $trillions, frequently and at every opportunity, while we suffer through days of malaise version 2. Only this time, we're not going to be in any shape to get out of the hole your kind is digging.

At the same time you seem to be happy giving up your freedoms so some politicians might stay in power.

Which freedom am I giving up? My freedom to be uninsured? I don't care anything about that freedom. I will also give up my freedom to have BarM Ranch branded on my ass, in case anyone wants to pass a law against that.

I don't get it.

I don't doubt it.

barfo

 

[Minstrel]

Until the death squads have proven to be effective, I think it is best for people to kill themselves.

There will be long waiting lists for government-run death squads. Look at Canada and England.

 

[maxiep]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...138071192342664.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_opinion

Republicans and ObamaCare
Democrats insisted on the most liberal bill they could pass.

In Washington, political defeats always produce finger-pointing, so the conventional wisdom has suddenly turned on a dime and decided that Republicans were wrong to have opposed ObamaCare. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs was especially taken yesterday with blogger and Bush speechwriter David Frum's argument that if only Republicans had negotiated with Democrats, they could have somehow made the bill less awful than it is.

Mr. Frum now makes his living as the media's go-to basher of fellow Republicans, which is a stock Beltway role. But he's peddling bad revisionist history that would have been even worse politics. The truth is that Democrats never had any intention of working with Republicans, except to pick off two or three Senators and calling it "bipartisanship." This worked for Democrats on the stimulus, and they had hoped to do it again on health care.

In the House, Republicans were frozen out from the start. Three Chairmen—Charlie Rangel, Henry Waxman and George Miller—holed up last spring to write the most liberal bill they could get through the House. Republicans were told that unless they embraced the "public option," there was nothing to discuss.

As for the White House, House GOP leaders John Boehner and Eric Cantor in May sent a letter to President Obama "respectfully" requesting a meeting to discuss ideas. The White House didn't respond. Mr. Obama's first deadline for House passage was July, and only after public opinion turned against the bill did he begin to engage Republican ideas. Yet in his September address to Congress attempting to revive his bill, he made no concession save pilot projects for tort reform.

In the Senate, a group of Republicans did negotiate with Finance Chairman Max Baucus for months, even as Senators Chris Dodd and Ted Kennedy were crafting a bill that mirrored the liberal House product. GOP Senators Chuck Grassley, Olympia Snowe and Orrin Hatch are hardly strangers to working with Democrats. In 2007, they helped Mr. Baucus expand the children's insurance program over President Bush's opposition.

Senate liberals kept tugging Mr. Baucus to the left, however, and eventually the White House ordered him to call off negotiations. Senator Snowe still voted for the Finance Committee bill, though even she fell away on the floor as Majority Leader Harry Reid insisted on pushing the public option and tried, as Ms. Snowe put it, to "ram it" and "jam it" through the Senate.

In the end, Republicans couldn't as a matter of principle support even 50% of a bill that was such a huge and reckless expansion of government. If they had, they would have rightly lost the support of their own most loyal supporters. In the end, too, the bill was so unpopular—59% opposed in a Sunday CNN survey—that 34 House Democrats voted no and Mr. Reid is resorting to reconciliation to get the "fixes" of more taxes and spending through the Senate.

Meanwhile, some conservatives on cable-TV and the Web have taken to complaining that if only Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell had been tougher, he could have killed the bill. Really? Every Republican in Congress voted no. How many more votes is a Minority Leader supposed to get?

The reality is that ObamaCare is the price of two GOP electoral defeats caused by the failure of the DeLay Congress and a dismal Bush second term. The 2003 Medicare prescription drug benefit compromised the GOP on spending and legislative bullying. Republicans had a chance to do better on health care in 2005 but put their chips on Social Security and failed. Mitt Romney also gave Democrats renewed political confidence when he signed a prototype of ObamaCare into law in Massachusetts, though he now claims that these fraternal policy twins aren't related.

Republicans also suffered bad luck that gave Senate Democrats reached their 60 votes only after former Alaska Senator Ted Stevens was unjustly indicted, Minnesota's Al Franken stole a recount from hapless Norm Coleman, and Pennsylvania's Arlen Specter jumped ship.

A new President nearly always gets what he wants on his top legislative priority, especially when he has such big majorities in Congress to work with. Republicans nonetheless managed to keep their Members together, turn public opinion against the bill despite nearly unanimous media support for it, and in the end came a few votes short. They would have won if Mr. Obama and Nancy Pelosi hadn't been so willing to put so many of their Members at risk by pushing a partisan program and flouting normal Congressional rules.

The GOP's goal now should first be to remove some of the uglier parts of the bill in Senate reconciliation. Then they need to focus on taking back as many seats as possible this fall. Rather than publicly crowing that ObamaCare will deliver them the House—a hard task and a risky expectations game—they'd do better to concentrate on continuing to educate the public about what ObamaCare is going to do to insurance premiums, federal deficits, taxes and the quality of medical care.

Many Republicans are already calling for "repeal" of ObamaCare, and that's fine with us, though they should also be honest with voters about the prospects. The GOP can't repeal anything as long as Mr. Obama is President, even if they take back Congress in November. That will take two large electoral victories in a row. What they can do now is take credit for fighting on principle, hold Democrats accountable for their votes and the consequences, and pledge if elected in November to stop cold Mr. Obama's march to ever-larger government.

 

[BLAZER PROPHET]

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100...138071192342664.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_opinion

Well stated. But the right better not repeal this unless they have a better idea they can move forward. Otherwise, we'll see another dose of political suicide.

 

[maxiep]

Another commentator revealing the false premises of David Frum

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-...he-conservative-the-right-loves-to-hate/full/

The Conservative the Right Loves to Hate

by Tunku Varadarajan

Tunku Varadarajan is a national affairs correspondent and writer at large for The Daily Beast. He is also a research fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and a professor at NYU’s Stern Business School. He is a former assistant managing editor at The Wall Street Journal.

David Frum made headlines by branding Obamacare the Republicans’ Waterloo. Tunku Varadarajan on the rise of the ‘polite-company conservative’—and how Frum gets it all wrong.

Yesterday, I got an email from a prominent conservative academic; it was, I think, a touch harsh on the object of its attention. Here’s what it said: “Frum's pathetic, desperate whining reeks of self-loathing. At least that shows good judgment: I loathe him, too.”

The Frum in question is David Frum, former speechwriter for George W. Bush, and the “whining” that so goaded my correspondent was a blog by David, written on the day the House voted on health care, in which he described the bill’s passage as a defeat for the Republicans akin to Waterloo. He called the bill the Republicans’ “most crushing legislative defeat since the 1960s.” The GOP’s tactics—“No negotiations, no compromise, nothing”—led, he wrote, to a “disaster” for conservatives: “We went for all the marbles, we ended with none.”

Passionate "extremism" is part of any political debate, and the more of it the better. I especially don't want lectures about excessive rhetoric from the man who wrote “An End to Evil.”

David is a man I’ve known professionally for almost a decade, and with whom my social interaction has always been very genial. He is a good and energetic man, and has, in the years since he left service at the White House, dedicated himself to being what I call a “polite-company conservative” (or PCC), much like David Brooks and Sam Tanenhaus at the New York Times (where the precocious Ross Douthat is shaping up to be a baby version of the species). A PCC is a conservative who yearns for the goodwill of the liberal elite in the media and in the Beltway—who wishes, always, to have their ear, to be at their dinner parties, to be comforted by a sense that liberal interlocutors believe that they are not like other conservatives, with their intolerance and boorishness, their shrillness and their talk radio. The PCC, in fact, distinguishes himself from other conservatives not so much ideologically—though there is an element of that—as aesthetically.

So, having read David’s “Waterloo”—which might be regarded as a paradigmatic polite-conservative performance—I cannot help but make a few observations.

First: I think the big fallacy in David's piece is his assumption that the GOP could have struck a deal that was remotely compatible with its supposed principles of small government and low taxation. He says Obama was “desperate” for GOP votes, but I’m not so sure that’s true. Obama would take them, naturally, but his course (and its terminus) proves that he was happy enough to go ahead without them, and to vilify his opponents remorselessly in the process.

If the GOP had done what David wishes, what would they have left to play for politically? How could they ever claim to stand for limited government again? They did enough damage to that with Medicare drugs and all the spending in the last decade. If they'd sold out here in the interest of “bipartisanship” or “polite conservatism,” what would be left to distinguish them from the competition? Obama was never going to give them more than token gestures of support in any bill, anyway. He wanted an ideological bill, whose centerpiece is regulation and wealth redistribution, and he got it.

The Republicans, I’d like to think, may well have compromised on anything that remotely shared their world view. That even Olympia Snowe and the gang didn’t compromise shows just how wide the gulf was. So I ask David: Can there be “compromise” between a hyper-paternalist Democratic ideology in which the population is infantilized and a Republican position that regards citizens as adults broadly capable of good—and bad—decisions?

Second: The president’s vote-haggling with liberal Democrats was as serious as his negotiations with centrist Democrats. There is no reason to believe that the Republicans, had they been more conciliatory, would have squeezed out anything more. After all, the liberal Democrats were threatening to jump ship, and—whatever David might think—they are a much more important part of the Obama constituency than are Republicans! Besides, some of the people who cooperated early—Big Pharma, for instance—wound up with a dud deal.

In any case, the GOP didn't come away empty-handed. The “public option” is out, and the subsidies don't kick in until 2014. David’s vision of Waterloo rests on the unlikelihood of repeal, and yes, there won't be repeal: But there could still be genuine reform—reform that addresses the actual cost-drivers, and rolls back some of the new regulation, and most of the subsidies.

Third: David underestimates, or ignores, the political value of taking a stand. Clear opposition is critical to the Republican Party’s future electoral success. Clarity of opposition was a significant part of what got Scott Brown elected—in Massachusetts!—and ended the filibuster-proof Democratic majority in the Senate, so crucial for so many issues.

Fourth: I cannot escape the conclusion that David’s piece was, in broad terms, simplistic. His argument that Republicans and Democrats were not that far apart just goes to show how naïve he is on this question. Health care, for anybody who has been paying attention, is becoming a referendum on bigger issues like the size of government, and personal freedom. The public option, the individual mandate, all the bill’s taxes, the end of Medicare advantage, none of these were “little” questions to negotiate over and move on. (I also marveled at the audacity of the little fillip—“Could a deal have been reached? Who knows?”—with which David tosses off the most pertinent question.)

Fifth: I come to my biggest personal beef with David’s piece, his sermonizing about rhetoric. David acknowledges that he has been on a soapbox for a while, arguing that “hysterical” talk radio, etc., has “overheated” the debate and done harm to the conservative health-care cause. Nonsense, I say. Passionate "extremism" is part of any political debate, and the more of it the better. I especially don't want lectures about excessive rhetoric from the man who wrote “An End to Evil,” and whose post-9/11 cover story in National Review called a whole cluster of tough-minded conservatives “unpatriotic” (mostly, in the end, because they had criticized Israel). Among the vilified group was Robert Novak, who fought in Korea. Unpatriotic!

Finally, may I end with an observation on what makes David so attractive to the bien-pensant crowd? It is the fact that he comes coated with the delicious flavors of apostasy. This has happened a lot with Bush: Scott McClellan, Matt Latimer… David Frum. Anybody who was inside, didn’t like what he saw, and then came out and took a shot at the boss is immediately exalted as a wise man. The press is especially vulnerable to this pattern, seeing the whole thing as a battle for conscience in which truth prevails, while conveniently turning a blind eye to the opportunism that’s usually involved.

Which is why David will continue to write and be published, his conservatism tailored to East Coast tastes—and will continue to be read in polite company, far removed from all that is shrill and from a party he once embraced.

 

[Sug]

I love it, the pubs are dividing faster than the Blazer front office.