Are Obama's spending cut proposals as real as a $3.00 bill?

[Torie]

That is the question of the hour, and the answer unfortunately may well be yes, using a currency that exists only in a board game yet to be created.  If something appears too good to be true, it probably is ersatz.  I guess that is why I'm Godless. Boo!  

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Here's a real $3 bill:

[Lief 🗽]

Let's hope so, if we don't want another recession!

[anvi]

So, basically, the point of Capretta's piece is that it's not how much we cut spending on Medicare and Medicaid that matters, but rather that we make sure the spending cuts effect beneficiaries instead of providers.  Otherwise, as Capretta and Torie infer, the spending cuts to these programs wont be in "real" dollars.

Okay.

[Torie]

So, basically, the point of Capretta's piece is that it's not how much we cut spending on Medicare and Medicaid that matters, but rather that we make sure the spending cuts effect beneficiaries instead of providers.  Otherwise, as Capretta and Torie infer, the spending cuts to these programs wont be in "real" dollars.

Okay.

You assume Anvik that health care providers are making excess profits?  I'm afraid that in large measure the treatments are going to need to be cut back (some of course are unneeded and are just a rape of the medicare system, sometimes legal, and sometimes not, particularly when no procedure was performed but whatever), not what we pay for them.

I guess the search for an easier way out is an irresistible impulse in all of us.

[anvi]

No, I'm not assuming that providers make excess profits.  I'm just saying that I thought the point of the piece you linked was that one kind of Medicare spending cut, namely cutting payments to providers, is fake savings and the other kind of Medicare spending cut, curbing benefits to patients, is genuine savings.  In addition, it seemed that Capretta himself, or at least some of the other short essays he linked to, was arguing against Medicare of Medicaid making any decisions about which treatments should be paid for and which not, which was one of the reasons for his support of Lieberman-Coburn.  In any case, it seems to me that Capretta is not really arguing about budget cuts per se anymore, but about how to reform Medicare and Medicaid, and in so doing, urging GOP lawmakers not to accept any cuts that are in "fake" dollars.

[Torie]

My read of the article  is that it cautions that  the GOP should eschew agreeing to net tax increases (as opposed to tax reform), in exchange for the "fake" cuts in the health care system, a caution with which I agree.

[anvi]

Most of the essay seems devoted to discussing the entitlement stuff, and it all came at the end, which is perhaps why it captured my attention.  

There is a paragraph that makes an insinuation about tax hikes toward the beginning, using the 1990 Bush 41 episode as a reminder, but it doesn't specify which taxes Obama is threatening to raise.  It was my understanding, at least as of this morning, that beyond lowering an itemized deduction cap on the top 2.5% of income earners, the only tax changes Obama might be seeking are on certain corporate deductions, LIFO and some oil and gas subsidies.

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/07/137656487/lets-make-a-debt-ceiling-deal

I know the GOP wants to change the rates instead, and I'm sympathetic to that part of their agenda.  But my bet is that both sides are going to want to leave that on the table for the '12 race.  Holding up a budget-deal/debt ceiling bill for that now might be, I don't disagree, good policy, but, as you noted when we talked a few days ago, it is silly season, and will be for at least another year and a half.  
 

[opebo]

I hope so, Torie.  To have a vibrant economy we need government spending to be around half again as big a percentage of the economy as it is now.  Double would be better.