Balancing the budget through Medicare cuts

[sandnsea]

Mods: Medicare programs, Medicare cuts, Medicaid, Nursing Homes, CHIP, the Vermont Health Plan and the Dean Health Plan are all SEPARATE issues. Since BOTH threads on the Medicare statements have been locked, I am re-posting my post which explains that I feel Dean's obsession with budget cutting regardless of harm is the real story in regards to the Medicare STATEMENTS only.

From 1995.

"Domenici said the measure, a revised version of a plan proposed by Senate Minority leader Thomas Daschle, R-South Dakota, would spend $300 billion more than Republicans have proposed through 2002. He and Kasich said it did not overhaul Medicare, welfare and other social programs enough....

The Clinton-Daschle plan, the president said, was a "sensible solution" that shows "that you can balance the budget in 7 years, and protect Medicare and Medicaid, education and the environment and provide tax relief to working families."

According to Democrats, the Clinton plan would cut taxes over seven years by $87 billion, much below the GOP's $240 billion proposal. It would cut some $102 billion from Medicare and $52 billion from Medicaid spending -- half the amount Republicans want. It would slash an additional $295 billion from other domestic programs, three-fourths of what the GOP had proposed...."

http://www.cnn.com/US/9601/budget/01-06/pm/

Actually, what it looks like this boils down to is Howard Dean's obsession to balance the budget, even if it harms people in the process. As opposed to Clinton, who refused to do it that way. Clinton did enact more cost saving measures in 1997, when he was sure they could be readily absorbed. In 1995, Dean supported just whacking away at the budget with no regard for consequences, just like he does now. THAT is the story here, IMHO.

[papau]

1. valid - but 8 year ago is forever - and Dean now notes Kerry vote in 97

which all seem to agree was ok for Clinton- and Kerry - to endorse tighter review of Medicare in order to cut growth to 7% from 10%.

Entitlement programs get the money they need - another appropiation would be passed if a shortfall. The changes were estimated to reduce growth to 7% - which in turn meant a $270 B reduction over time. It was not really a turning down off the money flow - although it would push the Medicare Admin folks to push for procedure review and more non-approval - but we were worried about Hospitals as nursing homes at the time.

But your point is valid - Dean would include all programs in any budget cuts - none would be spared. Is this a good is for the voter to decide. It is all in the details of how the Budget slow down in growth is handled - Clinton did it well - and I think Dean will also.

But then Kerry and others would do it well also - and I still favor Kerry based on electibility.

[Nicholas_J]

7. Dean repeated a modified version for Presidential Campaign

Of the same statements about Medicare in June of this Year on Meet the Press:


Russert: When the Republicans tried to limit the growth, the Democrats said that was an actual cut.
Dean: Well, they’re going to say what they’re going to say. All I...
Russert: You would be willing to limit the growth...
Dean: Absolutely.
Russert: ...in Defense, in Medicare and Social Security?
Dean: You have to do that. If you don’t go where the money is—Social Security, we’re going to fix differently. We’re not talking about Social Security. We’re talking about Medicare. We’re talking about Defense and we’re talking about all the other things the federal government does. But I want to put the tax cut back into that budget. They need it to balance the budget.
Russert: That’s raising taxes, though. Let’s be honest.


http://stacks.msnbc.com/news/912159.asp

What Dean is saying is that he considers the Medicaid Fund something that can be raided in order to balance the budget. You must remember, that like Social Security, a portion of the payroll tax goes into a MEDICARE trust fund which is ALSO usually rund a surplus which is continually raided by conservatives in order to pay for things like increases to the military budget in order to aviod raising taxes.

Both Social Security and Medicare are fiscally the most sucessful and solvent of all federal programs. THey are the funds that generally have the most money in them and under Clinton, they became enoromous funds that Bush has used to give his tax cuts.

Dean did similar things in Vermont. He did a great deal of cutting to in Vermonts medical programs, relying on temporary federal waivers in order to fund them (Dean used a one time medicaid waiver to start his programs, and when the waiver ran out in 2000, began scaling back on the programs and then in 2002 when BUsh pulledd the plug, Dean demanded EXTREME cuts in Vermonts health care programs) As a result currently Vermont is in a situation in which it has had to further cut back its medicaid coverage, and is in such bad state that it may soon have to cit its Dr Dynasaur program to people who are making more than 150 percent of FPL.

Dean started something that Vermont could not sustain. It was a political ploy. He knew that federal waiver funding would not be available for longer than a four years, and this was largely responsible for Dean deciding not to run for governor again. He was well aware that the system could not be sustained after the temporary waivers expired, and did not wish to preside over the mess, but leave it to a successor.

[DrFunkenstein]

10. '95 Is Not '97 - Nice Try

In the last few days, sensing the political fallout, Dean has come up with a fresh explanation: He was doing something that Clinton supported and actually signed into law. This is even more misleading, an apples and oranges mixture that makes what happened two years later sound like what happened in 1995-96.

Nothing could be further from the truth. What Clinton signed in 1997 was a law that finally produced a tax cut for ordinary families (introducing the child tax credit, subsequent increases in which Dean now says he wants repealed), and containing spending cuts to pay for it. It is often referred to as the Balanced Budget Act, but in fact it was the booming economy that produced the huge surplus at the end of the '90s. This law, more accurately, produced a tax cut that was responsibly funded.

The spending cuts included a large bite out of Medicare but not the same kind of bite the Republicans fought for with Dean's help in '95. This time around, instead of attacking the beneficiaries (which Clinton opposed), it reduced Medicare payments to providers like hospitals, nursing homes, and physicians. By bipartisan consensus it went too far, especially in its harmful effect on large teaching hospitals, and much of the money has since been restored.

Dean now says his willingness to go after middle-class entitlements reflected the deficit crisis of the mid-'90s, but this is also a misleading position. The fact is that the deficit reduction program enacted in Clinton's first year had already put the country on the right road. What the Republicans were pushing in '95 was revolution.

http://www.boston.com/news/politics/president/dean/articles/
2003/09/30/past_haunts_dean_on_medicare_issue/

[quinnox]

2. Indeed, check out this NY Times article from today

WASHINGTON, Sept. 30 — Back in 1995, when a new Republican-controlled Congress was in a pitched ideological battle with the Democrats over the budget, Howard Dean was an iconoclastic, budget-balancing governor of Vermont and chairman of the National Governors Association, willing — even eager — to challenge party orthodoxy on spending.

Dr. Dean said, according to news reports at the time, that he "fully subscribed" to the idea of substantially reducing the growth rate in Medicare spending and he praised that element of a Senate Republican budget plan that was vehemently opposed by Democrats on Capitol Hill.

He argued that "we ought to put Social Security back on the table " in an effort to balance the federal budget, and he suggested that Congress consider raising the retirement age...


Dr. Dean's opponents, who have researched his past, assert that the record shows Dr. Dean did not stand with his party when it counted on an issue of critical importance to older voters, who loom large in early primary and caucus states like Iowa.

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/01/politics/campaigns/01DEAN.html

Dean is taking some heavy fire over this issue.

[genius]

3. That's Dean

Republican values first. The elderly last.

[genius]

4. Some day those elderly people will be us

So which person here is eager to die for a budget?

[AP]

5. A big difference between Republicans and Democrats during Depression:

Republicans wanted a balanced budget at all costs. The Democrats were willing to invest money in the present for bigger returns in the future.

[Nicholas_J]

8. Thats exactly wht FDR did

He decided to run deficits, which can be inflationary, but decided that the money being spent go to the classes who needed it the most, but even more important, would be spending it immediately in the marketplace, not holding onto it or placing it in long term investments, or banking it offshore. This deficit spending caused a very quick improvement in the economy, and started the end of the depression.

Not one economist agrees with repeal of the entire tax cut, high level officials of the Federal Reserve, who all opposed Bush's long term tax cuts to the rich, stated that short term tax cuts to the middle class and poor are the only way to stimulate the economy, and that repealing all of the cuts is a recipe for disaster.

[indigo32]

6. I think you are completely mischaracterizing his position

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=443445

[sandnsea]

11. Medicaid & Nursing Homes

Notice the first couple of lines of my post. Your link has NOTHING to do with Dean getting behind the Republican plan to balance the budget by slashing Medicare instead of the more gradual approach chosen by Clinton and the rest of the Democrats.

[stickdog]

9. Think of all the Medicare cuts that Kerry meekly letting Bush get his way

on taxes, war, and wasteful cronyism will cost this nation.

Then focus on ancient history some more.

[sandnsea]

12. Be specific

And, explain exactly how ONE vote in the Senate let Bush get his way. We all know John Kerry is a force of nature, but even he isn't powerful enough to change the votes of 50+ U.S. Senators.