David Broder’s dour take on the Senate health reform bill has become best known for Harry Reid’s rebuke that “to focus on an editorial written by a man who has been retired for many years and writes a column once in a while is not where we should be.” But Stan Collender offers a more substantive response:
David Broder has a column in today’s The Washington Post that I find close to incomprehensible.
First he says that the Congressional Budget Office’s substantive, detailed analysis shows that the bill proposed by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) will reduce the deficit.
(Note to David: CBO does not give its “blessing” to legislation; all it does is score the bill.)
Second, he says that the CBO scoring that shows the bill reducing the deficit compared to existing law is not as valuable as polls that show that Americans don’t believe it. And he says that the polls are somehow more correct that CBO even though one group actually analyzed the bill while the other got its almost certainly less-than-complete-and accurate information from someone else.
Third, Broder says “every expert I have talked to says that the public has it right. These bills, as they stand, are budget-busters.”
As Collender points out, the CBO director and his staff would seem to count as experts. These economists think the CBO knows what it’s talking about.
If you own any shares in companies that produce reflecting telescopes, use differential and integral calculus, or rely on the laws of motion, I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the calculus myth has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after volumes of Newton’s private correspondence were compiled and published.
When you read some of these letters, you realise just why Newton and his collaborators might have preferred to keep them confidential. This scandal could well be the biggest in Renaissance science. These alleged letters – supposedly exchanged by some of the most prominent scientists behind really hard math lessons – suggest:
Conspiracy, collusion in covering up the truth, manipulation of data, private admissions of flaws in their public claims and much more.
But perhaps the most damaging revelations are those concerning the way these math nerd scientists may variously have manipulated or suppressed evidence to support their cause.
Here are a few tasters. They suggest dubious practices such as:
Conspiring to avoid public scrutiny
Newton to Hooke, 5 February 1676: “There is nothing which I desire to avoid in matters of philosophy more then contentions, nor any kind of contention more then one in print: & therefore I gladly embrace your proposal of a private correspondence. What’s done before many witnesses is seldom without some further concern then that for truth: but what passes between friends in private usually deserve ye name of consultation rather then contest, & so I hope it will prove between you & me.”
Insulting dissenting scientists and equating them with holocaust deniers
A few years back, the NBA cartel established a rule saying that 18 year-olds can’t play in the league. This, combined with the NCAA cartel’s rules, means that in practice if you want to become a professional basketball player you need to spend at least one preparatory year playing professional basketball without being paid for it. And make no mistake—big-time college hoops is a professional endeavor. Everyone except the players gets paid a lot for it. One obvious alternative strategy would be to simply go play professionally in some other league in Europe or China where they don’t have this rule.
Last year, Brandon Jennings became the first guy to blaze that trail, signing with Rome’s team in the Italian league. Now this year he’s in the NBA playing for the Bucks. And playing well! He’s scoring 25.3 points per game on efficient shooting and adding 5.5 assists and 4.3 rebounds.
I’d like to think this shows that not only are their advantages to getting paid to play basketball, but also that playing in Europe against other grown men is probably superior preparation for the NBA than is playing against teenagers in college.
My colleague Igor Volsky points out that not only did Blanche Lincoln used to support a public option, as of last night at least that language was still up on her website:
Her specific belief that a public option, if enacted, would eventually receive public funds even if it’s created by a law that prohibits taxpayer subsidies is a little bit hard to understand. Right now there aren’t sixty votes in the Senate for taxpayer subsidies to a public option. Nor is there a majority in the House for taxpayer subsidies to a public option. Nor does the White House support such subsidies. And we’re at something of a high water mark for Democratic victories—how likely is a simultaneous leftward shift by all three branches?
A bunch of illegally hacked UK e-mails storm the anti-scientific side of the blogosphere at the same time as an uber-extreme weather event hits Britain. I guess when it rains, it pours — literally:
This morning on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace selectively quoted the Congressional Budget Office analysis of the merged Senate legislation to suggest that the Senate health legislation would increase government outlays on health care over 20 years and bend the cost-cure upward:
WALLACE: According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, federal outlays for health care would increase during the 2010-2019 period and the government-run health insurance plan would typically have premiums that were somewhat higher than the average premiums for the private plan. So here’s the question. The Democratic plan by the CBO’s own scoring fails to bend the famous health care cost curve at all over the course of these 10 years, and could you name a single Congress that has ever cut Medicare by half a trillion dollars as this legislation would?
Watch it:
Page 16 of the CBO report does predict that “federal outlays for health care would increase during the 2010-2019 period,” but the last paragraph of that same page adds that “during the decade following the 10-year budget window, the increases and decreases in the federal budgetary commitment to health care stemming for this legislation would roughly balance out, so that there would be no significant change in the commitment.” As Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) pointed out, the $848 billion bill would actually “save $130 billion in the first 10 years” and $650 billion in the next decade. Over on the Wonk Room, Igor Volsky debunks Wallace’s other claims about the bill failing to “bend the famous health care cost curve” and whether previous sessions of Congress ever cut Medicare.
Blanche Lincoln has emerged as one of the pivotal votes in the US Senate debate about health care reform. So an article about her and her role in the debate seems like a smart thing for a newspaper to run. Which makes Spencer Ackerman’s tweet quite apropos: “Hey let’s say that I didn’t pay any attn to HC yesterday. Shouldn’t this piece tell me why Lincoln opposes the bill?”
Exactly. It’s striking to me how little scrutiny the stated views of public option opponents tend to get. Moderates are very rarely asked to explain what it is about an opt-outable level playing field public option that’s so horrible that it becomes suddenly worthwhile to filibuster an otherwise good bill that will put the country on a more sustainable fiscal course will improving millions of Americans’ access to health care.
Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve Board Building (cc photo by Cliff1066)
There is simply no avoiding the conclusion that unemployment is a much, much bigger problem than inflation right now, and yet the Fed is unwilling to do anything more about unemployment, seemingly because it is concerned about inflation. What we want is some inflation! Rising prices would mean that the Fed is doing all it can do, counter-cyclically speaking.
An independent central bank is crucial. Political control of monetary policy must inevitably lead to accelerating inflation and long-run economic instability. But at the moment, the American economy could use an increase in expected inflation. And a real threat to Fed independence would almost certainly deliver it, either because markets would anticipate increased political influence on monetary policy ever after, or because the Fed would seek to fend off pressure from Congress by easing further, which amounts to the same thing. But we don’t actually want there to be a real threat to Fed independence, because that way uncontrolled inflation lies.
I’m not ready to abandon central bank independence, which I think has worked well for the United States, but I don’t think we should be dogmatic about it either. The case for central bank independence is that it’s worked well. But if it turns out that an unanticipated negative consequence of central bank independence is systematic deflationary bias in major economy, unduly slow economic growth, and unduly high unemployment then that means it turns out to not work very well. And certainly if you look at the behavior of the Fed, the European Central Bank, and the Bank of Japan that seems to be the situation we’re in. The best thing would be for existing monetary authorities to start doing more to fight unemployment. Then our institutions work and everything’s good. But if our institutions don’t work, then we can’t just cling to them forever—we’d have to start thinking about whether there isn’t some other kind of arrangement that could improve on the current situation.
After all, as John Quiggin has pointed out a big part of the case for central bank independence was that it was supposed to help us avoid exactly the sort of crisis we’re in. Of course, to be worth sticking with our current institutions don’t need to be perfect, they just need to be better than the available alternatives and I don’t have another alternative in mind at the moment. But still, this seems worth thinking about.
This morning on Fox News Sunday, host Chris Wallace selectively quoted the Congressional Budget Office analysis of the merged Senate legislation to suggest that the Senate health legislation would increase government outlays on health care over 20 years and bend the cost-cure upward:
WALLACE: According to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, federal outlays for health care would increase during the 2010-2019 period and the government run health insurance plan would typically have premiums that were somewhat higher than the average premiums for the private plan. So here’s the question. The Democratic plan by the CBO’s own scoring fails to bend the famous health care cost curve at all over the course of these 10 years, and could you name a single Congress that has ever cut Medicare by half a trillion dollars as this legislation would?
Watch it:
As Sen. Arlen Specter (D-PA) pointed out, the $848 billion bill “would save $130 billion in the first 10 years and projected to have $650 billion saved in the second 10 years.” Page 16 of the CBO report does predict that “federal outlays for health care would increase during the 2010-2019 period,” but the last paragraph of that same page also notes that “during the decade following the 10-year budget window, the increases and decreases in the federal budgetary commitment to health care stemming for this legislation would roughly balance out, so that there would be no significant change in the commitment.”
As a result, the federal government would be spending less on health care in the decades following the initial 10-year window, despite the expansion in coverage:
Wallace’s claim that the bill “fails to bend the famous health care cost curve” is also inaccurate. The legislation establishes an Independent Medicare Advisory Board (IMAB)– which is required to “recommend changes to the Medicare program to limit the rate of growth in that program’s spending” — and places a 40% excise tax on insurers that offer expensive policies. While the budget office did not analyze the effect of the legislation on national health expenditures, the CBO is predicting that spending per Medicare beneficiary would decrease, as compared to the growth rate of the past two decades (from 8% growth rate to 6% growth rate).
As for the public option, the CBO did conclude that the plan could attract sicker enrolles and charge slightly higher premiums, but it would still reduce average premiums “and hence federal subsidies for premiums.” “That’s because average premiums would be even higher if the people enrolled in the public plan enrolled in private plans.” In fact, the CBO has concluded that the Senate’s public option would save the government $3 billion over 10 years.
Yesterday, while promoting his latest book at “a festive campaign-style rally” in The Villages in Florida, Fox News host Glenn Beck announced that he was crafting “a 100 year plan” that will be “radical” and will “restore our nation to the maximum freedoms we were supposed to have been protecting.” In his speech, which Media Matters captured on video, Beck told his followers, “we need to start thinking like the Chinese“:
BECK: I’ve done a lot of reading on history in the last few years and I was amazed to find that what we’re experiencing now is really a ticking time bomb that they designed about 100 years ago, beginning in the progressive movement. And they thought, “you know what, if we just do this and this and this and this, over time if we do it in both the Republican and Democratic parties, we will have our socialist utopia.” Well, I say again, two can play at that game. I am drafting plans now to bring us back to an America that our founders would understand. … We need to start thinking like the Chinese. I’m developing a 100 year plan for America. A 100 year plan. We will plant this idea and it will sprout roots.
Watch it:
At the rally and in a letter on his website, Beck said that he planned to organize a series of conventions in seven regions of the country, where his supporters can go to learn about “self-reliance, community organizing, the economy and how to be a political force in your own neighborhood and country.” The conventions will culminate in a new book by Beck called The Plan and a march on Washington to launch it:
- All of the above will culminate in The Plan, a book that will provide specific policies, principles and, most importantly, action steps that each of us can take to play a role in this Refounding.
- On August 28, 2010, I ask you, your family and neighbors to join me at the feet of Abraham Lincoln on the National Mall for the unveiling of The Plan and the birthday of a new national movement to restore our great country.
Hot Air’s Allahpundit notes that the date of Beck’s DC event “happens to be the anniversary of the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech” by Martin Luther King, Jr. “Eschewing the title of ‘leader’ is thus a curious display of modesty from a guy who thinks his book launch is worthy of a modern-day March on Washington with him in the MLK role,” writes Allahpundit.
But not everyone thinks Beck is just elaborately promoting his next book. “He might just be trying to sell books, but there are much simpler ways to sell books,” Media Matters’ Ari Rabin-Havt told the New York Times, adding that “Beck sounded more like a presidential candidate than a pundit.”
