Letter 2 America for February 12, 2013

Dear America,

For all the Republican agonizing over how to reinvigorate their "brand," they have changed very little.  The rhetoric they continue to use to push their philosophy on a people that has rejected it is identical to that which lost them the last election.  And now that it is behind them and The President has been inaugurated, they have reverted even to type by adopting an attitude of righteous indignation and false claims that they have already given at the office and need give no more.  While they yielded on the debt limit this time, they reserve the right not to the next, saying that The President got his tax increases--$80 billion per year for the foreseeable future, at least until the Republicans take control of congress and reduce rich people's taxes again--even though the spending reductions agreed to by our progressive president have amounted to three times that over the next ten years; according to them, that is not enough.  The rough parity between spending cuts and revenue increases, otherwise known as tax increases, that was the starting point of the fiscal debate is never mentioned anymore.  The topic has now been transmogrified into the incessant criticism of the programs that the Republican conservative complex (Rcc) characterizes as "entitlements."  And even though Social Security has financed about $2.5 trillion of the national debt with our money paid into a trust fund by its benefactors...us...from which a guaranteed annuity is to be paid out to the eligible beneficiaries...again, us...the Rcc continues to claim that deficit reduction starts with such programs.  However, in the cases of some of those programs, that claim is contrived.  In fact, last night on the eve of both Lincoln's birthday and the State of the Union address I was on my way to bed when I came across what seemed an impromptu conclave of former Senate budget committee members who agreed that entitlement reform was the next priority in the quest for a balanced budget.  At first, I thought they might be referring only to those programs that are not based on anything but general fund expenditures, but no, that wasn't the case.  There was a graph on which entitlements were lumped together on one colored line and there were two more lines reflecting the course of the deficit and the national debt, both of which were obviously affected by the entitlements line.  And when these former leading lights began to speak about the graph, not only did they suggest that "entitlement reform"--nothing but a euphemism for reduction of benefits whether people need them or not--is the only way to get our national debt and the federal deficit under control and they specifically referenced Social Security.  And in that vein, the phrase "chained CPI" was uttered during the Sunday morning talk shows by a Republican political advisor, and no one seems to be talking about the fact that as far as revenue is concerned, The President, and therefore we, got only slightly more than half a loaf from the recent agreement on tax increases on the top 2% in the form of the same tax increase, but on only the top 1%.  

So it falls to those of us who care to continue to rant about the differences between the entitled and rich people, and to add emphasis to the observation that we are debating taking money from those least able to afford it and we are preserving the surfeits of those who need it least.  But beyond that, the arguments on which the Rcc relies with regard to many of the programs in question are specious...I would argue misleading...to begin with.  Social Security is the best example, but it is far from unique in that regard.  The Republicans rely on the CBO's (Congressional Budget Office's) estimates on this subject with regard to their claim that changing the basis on which cost of living increases are calculated for Social Security recipients will reduce the deficit.  But they have rigged the calculation by imposing accounting rules on the CBO back in the seventies that require them to include Social Security with general fund revenues and expenditures when calculating the deficit even though by law, Social Security is what they call "off budget."  In fact, the period during which it was on budget was an aberration prompted by Lyndon Johnson's desire to balance the budget during his administration, which lasted for a couple of decades, but was then reversed because it was the accounting trick that the Rcc claims the Social Security Trust is.  The Trust was created by statute for the sole purpose of funding Social Security in 1939, and its only source of revenue is "payroll taxes" imposed independent of income tax assessments for the specific and sole purpose of funding Social Security and nothing else along with the requirement that The Trust lend that money to the federal government in lieu of special bonds and notes until the money was needed to pay benefits.  But now that time has come and the Republicans don't want to have to pay the money back right now.  That is why the chained CPI keeps coming up.  If Social Security benefits are cut in that way, they will be reduced over the course of about twenty years by 6% or more, and 6% of not enough, which is what Social Security is for most recipients, is even less.  But the general fund will be spared having to repay a commensurate amount to The Trust, thus reducing federal expenditures for any given year.  What the Republicans leave out is that while it may reduce the deficit in any given year, it just defers the repayment of the portion of the national debt that the general fund owes to The Trust.  Thus, employing the chained CPI to make the Social Security Trust Fund solvent for a few years more just transfers to the next generation the portion of the national debt that would otherwise get paid now.  Now that is an accounting trick, but this one isn't just a numbers game.  This one hurts people who can little afford the cost of eschewing additional taxation of those whose money goes into the stock market because they can't possibly spend it all.  And while the emphasis in entitlement reform conversations led by the Rcc usually falls on Medicare and Medicaid, with regard to the latter there is a trust fund problem but even there, The Medicare Trust still has a credit balance, albeit a small one...perhaps five years worth instead of the nearly thirty years worth in the Social Security Trust.

As to Medicaid, there is no trust fund, so the solution proposed by the Rcc is to flat out reduce benefits for the health care of those eligible for Medicaid benefits, even though that reduction takes the form of what Paul Ryan and his conservative colleagues call "block grants."  That is a euphemism for transferring the burden of Medicaid benefits to the states, which they cannot afford and most of them have already demonstrated that they can't by declining to enhance their current programs under the Affordable Care Act.  But addressing the real problem--the actual cost of medical care and its availability to those without ample resources--is off the table for the Rcc.  We got health insurance reform instead of a single payer system because the Rcc doesn't want those who profit from medical care to the tune of 18% of our gross domestic product to have to pay more taxes or earn less money.  Many of those people who provide health care are in that top 2% of income recipients, and they pay for the campaigns of the Republicans in congress who make these things happen...or not as in the case of the filibuster-impaired Senate.  The Rcc doesn't care that the next most expensive industrialized nation when it comes to health care is Germany, which only pays somewhere around 10% of GDP, nor do they care that most of the rest pay significantly less than even that number.  They don't care that medical care yields longer lives and less infant mortality and disease-based morbidity in those countries either.

In short, the Republican campaign to reduce Social Security and other entitlement program benefits is spurious and outright deceptive, and it continues with unabated intensity even though the Rcc is trying to characterize itself as kinder, gentler and more inclusive.  But immigrants die of disease if they cannot afford medical care too.  An no matter how hard they work producing our food and caring for our children, they need medical care whether they can afford it or not.  And most of all, we Americans need honesty from our politicians, not revised image making.

Your friend,

Mike