Obama's Money Party Debt Commission Validates Push for Public Health Insurance Option

by: David Sirota

Thu Nov 11, 2010 at 18:00


The Obama administration's debt commission was bound to propose a mostly awful, regressive plan. We knew this the moment the president decided to have an investment banker (Erskine Bowles), a former Wyoming Republican senator (Alan Simpson) and the former head of a pro-Social-Security-privatization think tank (Bruce Reed) run the commission. If you can admit the two real parties in Washington are not the Republicans and Democrats but the Money Party and the People Party, then you can admit that this commission is not a bipartisan commission - it's purely partisan for the Money Party.

Not surprisingly, this Money Party commission's major tax proposal for dealing with the national debt is pure Arthur Laffer: specifically, a proposal to lower the top-bracket tax rate and lower the corporate tax rate. Equally unsurprising is the commission's demand for massive Social Security and Medicare cuts. None of this makes sense if you are a Regular Person - but if you are a constituent of the Money Party, it makes perfect sense.

And so that's why the real shocker in the commission's announcement is its support of one of the most important progressive health care priorities: That's right, a public health-insurance option to compete with private insurers.

When a Money Party commission is forced to admit that the nation needs a public health insurance option, it's a good sign that such an option should be considered a pragmatic "moderate" idea - not an ultra-liberal/quasi-socialist boondoggle, as the political media regularly called it.

David Sirota :: Obama's Money Party Debt Commission Validates Push for Public Health Insurance Option

Tags: (All Tags)
Print Friendly View Send As Email

Obama's Money Party Debt Commission Validates Push for Public Health Insurance Option | 20 comments
but apparently it wasn't worth fighting for (4.00 / 6)
hey, remember everyone screaming at me that the bill would "get fixed later"?

surely Speak Boehner will assist in that altruistic quest

It is going to be fixed. (0.00 / 0)
It will be expanded to a public option, and I hope the first step is to allow Americans to buy into Meidcare at any age, and most importantly, allow the federal government to spend their health insurance subsidy, the one promised to anyone who could not afford to pay for the legally required purchase of health insurance, to buy all such people health insurance from Medicare.

It funds Medicare, with money required to be paid out by law, it provides access to already functioning system, it expands rights to Americans, it paves the road toward single payer care, and it reduces the deficit.

It will now take longer, with Gnomes children in office in the house, but it will be done.

Someone putting the boots to RepubliCorp mercs with a vote it down if you dare bill would be nice. I am sure that there are enough people to make the case, and it requires only the opportunity. Opportunity smiles on the prepared of course.

--

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky

[ Parent ]
"Gnomes children" (4.00 / 4)
I see this election has taught you literally nothing
[ Parent ]
reid is going to hold a vote on the public option (4.00 / 3)
any day now...
[ Parent ]
Thanks (4.00 / 2)
I needed a good laugh today.
[ Parent ]
"It is going to be fixed"... because you say so? (4.00 / 1)
It will be expanded to a public option, and I hope the first step is to allow Americans to buy into Meidcare at any age, and most importantly, allow the federal government to spend their health insurance subsidy, the one promised to anyone who could not afford to pay for the legally required purchase of health insurance, to buy all such people health insurance from Medicare.

Right, and the next time I fart I'll do it hard enough to send me flying to the moon.  What other dreamy fantasies do you have in store for us?

It funds Medicare, with money required to be paid out by law, it provides access to already functioning system, it expands rights to Americans, it paves the road toward single payer care, and it reduces the deficit. [emphasis added]

Wow, and then you complain about "Gnomes children" in the next paragraph.  Hey here's a nice and actual Underpants bullshit riddle:

1. Give insurance companies that already have more than enough money to own Congress a mandate into every American's checking account.
2. ?????
3. Single-payer!

[ Parent ]
This congress isn't going to fix it, obviously. (0.00 / 0)
So there we go, your prediction is guaranteed to be right, and all one has to do to make sure you are always right is make sure no one who agrees with your oft stated programs ever votes effectively.

Then, you are always correct. Just as a broken watch is correct, though only twice a day.

I opn the other hand, will only be rarely correct, as my "predictions will require literally millions of people to actually spend the time, not merely talking online, and finding who could have helped, but didn't, but finding memebers of our community and organizing them into not just voters, but activists, creating a voting block.

--

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky

[ Parent ]
Congrats on finding this David, seeing its importance, and making the conections. (0.00 / 0)
Great post!

--

The government has a defect: it's potentially democratic. Corporations have no defect: they're pure tyrannies. -Chomsky
What the country needs is good (4.00 / 2)
public insurance not an option.  Does it occur to you this may have been included to sweeten the pot for liberals in Congress?
Hmm (0.00 / 0)
An apparently attractive child with unacceptable parentage, huh?

In the long run the bad blood will win out.  

[ Parent ]
re: commission (4.00 / 2)
an investment banker (Erskine Bowles), a former Wyoming Republican senator (Alan Simpson) and the former head of a pro-Social-Security-privatization think tank (Bruce Reed) run the commission.

don't forget the hacks that serve as staffers:

But the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform has also come under attack for its unusual approach to staffing: Many of its employees aren't employed by the panel at all.

Instead, about one in four commission staffers is paid by outside entities, many of which have strong ideological points of view about how to tackle the deficit.

For example, the salaries of two senior staffers, Marc Goldwein and Ed Lorenzen, are paid by private groups that have previously advocated cuts to entitlement programs. Lorenzen is paid by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation, while Goldwein is paid by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which is also partly funded by the Peterson group.

The outsourcing has come under sharp criticism from seniors' organizations and liberal activists, who say the strategy is part of a broader conservative bias favoring painful entitlement cuts over other solutions. The fears of some liberal groups appeared to come true on Wednesday, when the commission's two leaders recommended significant reductions for Social Security and other social-welfare programs.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/...
Wow, that's interesting (0.00 / 0)

Who says the mainstream media are no good....once in a while they break a good story, ie, find the truth about something.
[ Parent ]
More than that, David... (4.00 / 2)
The report actually recommended a public option OR SINGLE PAYER(!!!) as a preferred solution to the exchanges.

So, not just a public option, but actual "socialized medicine"

That's kindof a big deal, but I bet it's a bone to the left that would never actually get implemented to try and nudge the more liberal commission members along.

REID: Voting against us was never part of our arrangement!
SPECTER: I am altering the deal! Pray I don't alter it any further!
REID: This deal keeps getting worse all the time!

Good insight: single payer's a bone, nothing more. (4.00 / 2)
But can one imagine Bush getting his way, social security privitization, from a Democratic administration?
[ Parent ]
Exactly right. (4.00 / 2)
It's another trick.  By the way, Kent Conrad played a big part in blocking the public option now he wants to pursue this plan? Now it's OK--if it helps kill Social Security.  

I'm not buying anything form these people.  You can't trust them at all.

[ Parent ]
Could it be a bait & switch to convert some squishy liberals? Especially since they (0.00 / 0)
propose cuts to Medicare?
Snowballs chance (0.00 / 0)
who do you think is going to vote for this? will never see the light of day, don't you remember who is running this place? Geez, no one is going to be putting boots to anyone that the average 5th grader can be convinced is socialism or worse. Have you forgotten the president is not white?
The Money Party vs the People Party (4.00 / 5)
David, this is a brilliant rhetorical meme. It's a very clever way to get beyond Republican and Democrat now that monied interests have bought much of the Democratic leadership (see, Obama, Barack and Reid, Harry). It's also a useful way to get beyond the pervasive right wing views on policy.

We should talk more about who is in the Money Party and who is in the People Party and push the meme even more widely.

PO is nice plum (4.00 / 1)
to dangle and then snatch away as part of a "compromise"  
people party? (0.00 / 0)
where do you come up with this crap?  Bank bailout?  Democrats.  awful healthcare bill without public option that gives billions in new business to insurance companies?  Democrats
Obama's Money Party Debt Commission Validates Push for Public Health Insurance Option | 20 comments
USER MENU

Open Left Campaigns

SEARCH

   

Advanced Search

QUICK HITS
STATE BLOGS

Home | RSS/XML Feed | Register | Contact

  © OpenLeft 2007-2010, Powered by SoapBlox

Powered by: SoapBlox