digby: Glitch

[babylonsister]

http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/glitch-by-digby-with-all-bellowing-on.html


Glitch

by digby


With all the bellowing on the right about the costs of health care reform, I was surprised to read this over at Krugman's blog about Bush's medicare drug deal:

According to the Medicare trustees, Part D created a $9.4 trillion unfunded liability over the next 75 years. That’s a big number, even for an economy as big as ours.

Good God. And they're bitching about the measly 900 billion in the health care bill that's paid for?

Krugman answers my next question:

What were they thinking? Mostly, they probably weren’t thinking at all. To the extent that there was a theory of the case, however, it went something like this: pass whatever legislation was needed to win the next election, then, once total conservative political dominance has been achieved, dismantle the whole welfare state.

The best laid plans …

That's right. In those days they thought they had reinvented politics and begun a thousand year reign. Seems they ran into a glitch. It happens.

[Ozymanithrax]

1. Or pass a bill that was guaranteed to bankrupt and destory Medicare...

That way, they didn't have to dismantle it. It would collapse.

[babylonsister]

2. I think they were stoopid enough to not even consider the consequences. nt

[Ozymanithrax]

3. I think they did consider the consequences.

I think what we got was what they wanted. They couldn't abolish medicare, so they bankrupted it.

[babylonsister]

4. You're probably right. They had no qualms about cranking up the

deficit, or not reporting what should have been in there, during the * years.

[Vidar]

5. K&R.

[glitch]

6. There are no glitches. nt

[POAS]

7. Orrin Hatch may have said it best:

Six years ago, "it was standard practice not to pay for things," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "We were concerned about it, because it certainly added to the deficit, no question." His 2003 vote has been vindicated, Hatch said, because the prescription drug benefit "has done a lot of good."

rawstory