Trump Isn't The Only One Who Isn't Normal-- Ryan Gets A Much-Needed Bipartisan Slapdown

Nancy Ohanian's Speaker Paul

Thursday, Paul Ryan told reporters that the CBO analysis of Trumpcare is "bogus" and thereby bolstered the Trump Regime's relentless campaign to undermine and destroy American institutional norms.

Congress created the CBO in 1974 in legislation then signed by President Nixon, although the legislation stemmed from a dispute between Congress and Nixon over whether Congress would maintain the power of the purse granted it very specifically in the Constitution and on which Nixon had been encroaching. The purpose was to generate a source of budgetary expertise to aid in writing annual budgets and lessen the legislature’s reliance on the executive branch's completely partisan Office of Management and Budget. And, sure enough, since 1975, the CBO has supplanted the OMB as the authoritative source of information on the economy and the budget in the eyes of Congress, the press, and the public. It's odd to see a Speaker of the House, choosing to fritter away that key power to the executive branch-- especially this particular dysfunctional and horrifyingly anomic regime.

Alice Rivlin served as the first director (1975-1983) and she was followed by Rudolph Penner, Robert Reischauer, June O'Neill, Dan Crippen, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, Peter Orszag, and Douglas Elmendorf, who served until the current director, George W. Bush staffer Keith Hall was appointed by Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan 9th director in 2015. Hall's predecessors all came to his aid last week with a sharp, succinct letter to Paul Ryan and the other congressional leaders.

The undersigned represent every former Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). We write to express our strong objection to recent attacks on the integrity and professionalism of the agency and on the agency’s role in the legislative process.

CBO began serving the Congress in 1975. Over the past 42 years CBO has been firmly committed to providing nonpartisan and high-quality analysis--  and that commitment remains as strong and effective today as it has been in the past. Because CBO works for the Congress, and only the Congress, the agency’s analysis addresses the unique needs of legislators.

To meet the standard of nonpartisan objectivity, CBO makes no recommendations about policy, regularly consults with researchers and practitioners with a wide range of views (as can be seen in the agency’s panels of advisers and reviewers for major studies), and enhances its transparency by releasing extensive descriptions of its analytic techniques and forecast record. To produce estimates of high quality, CBO uses its detailed understanding of federal programs and economic conditions, ongoing interactions with government officials and private-sector experts, the best academic research, and the latest available data consistent with the timing of the Congressional budget process.

CBO’s approach produces consistent comparisons of competing legislative proposals and unbiased projections of the impact of policy changes. Unfortunately, even nonpartisan and high-quality analysis cannot always generate accurate estimates. Policy changes are often complex, the economy is dynamic and defies precise prediction, and many policies are modified over time. However, such analysis does generate estimates that are more accurate, on average, than estimates or guesses by people who are not objective and not as well informed as CBO’s analysts.

In sum, relying on CBO’s estimates in the legislative process has served the Congress-- and the American people-- very well during the past four decades. As the House and Senate consider potential policy changes this year and in the years ahead, we urge you to maintain and respect the Congress’s decades-long reliance on CBO’s estimates in developing and scoring bills.

Ryan was willing-- even eager-- to throw Congress' own budgetary arm under the bus for narrow partisan advantage in his fight to destroy the social safety net and take health care away from millions of Americans in the service of lowering taxes on the very rich. Yesterday we reached out to the two most progressive members of the House Buget Committee, Ro Khanna (D-CA) and the Democrats' Vice Ranking Member of the House Budget Committee, Pramila Jayapal, (D-WA) about Ryan's little stunt. Pramila told me that "For years, the public has relied on CBOs independent analysis of legislation impacting the budget. It's alarming that Speaker Ryan has passed legislation through the House, like Trumpcare, without the full understanding of its consequences. That's why my colleague Congressman Higgins and I have introduced score before the floor bill to make sure members of Congress and the people know the full impact of the bills that pass the House."

Ro Khanna was the first member of Congress to endorse Randy Bryce for Ryan's seat. He told us that "It's sad that Paul Ryan is undermining fact based and independent institutions like the CBO. He is exploding the deficit with tax cuts for the rich and has made up numbers of GDP growth. Democrats need to counter with our vision. If we provided college for all, Medicare for all, and expanded tax relief for the working class, we would really grow our economy and create jobs. Republicans have reckless policies to reward the investor class and help the stock market. Democrats want to invest in the working class to create jobs and higher wages. That's the fundamental difference."

Mark Pocan has been doing multiple healthcare town halls in southern Wisconsin, not just in his own district but in the district next door, Paul Ryan's district, where Ryan is too scared to face his own constituents and explain why he's working so hard to take away healthcare from 22 million Americans. "It is unheard of for the speaker of the house to criticize the House's own non-partisan agency in order to try to align with President Trump's fantasies," Pocan told us. "I miss the Paul Ryan that once stood up to Donald Trump during the campaign. Apparently, that Paul Ryan is gone and has been replaced with a low-level staffer of the Trump administration with a keen resemblance to Paul Ryan. For the sake of the nation, we need the old, backbone-fortified one returned soon." Not that Pocan expects that. Last week, at a "Where's Paul Ryan" townhall in Racine, he introduced an enthusiastic crowd to the progressive Democrat on track to replace Ryan in Congress next year, iron worker and union activist Randy Bryce.

Bryce and Pocan have very similar perspectives on Ryan. "I remember," he told us, "a time when Speaker Ryan was hesitant to give Donald Trump his endorsement. Just over one month ago Paul Ryan thanked everyone who attended the Wisconsin Republican State Convention for electing Trump. Times have changed indeed. Although they are handcuffed together-- luckily they are too inept to figure out how to work together. Refusing to have a public town hall for almost two years while drinking nothing but D.C. swamp water just might do that to a person. He’s now even calling CBO scores 'fake news.' It’s time to let Paul Ryan return to his construction company roots and finally do something to try to contribute to our society, instead of take things away from and ignore the hard working people of Wisconsin’s 1st congressional district."


UPDATE From Alan Grayson

This morning Alan shared a depressing insight into CBO: "What passes for policy analysis in Congress has always been rigged in favor of magnifying costs and ignoring benefits. When the EPA proposes a regulation, it enquires into both what it will costs and how many lives it will save. In Congress, it’s just dollars, dollars and dollars. Now, when the CBO has taken a tiny, baby step toward measuring the real-world consequences of proposed legislation by estimating how many Americans will lose insurance under Trumpcare, it gets threatened with extinction. In a better world, the CBO, like the EPA, would be telling us how many Americans Trumpcare would kill."

CBO-- A Bigger Thumbs Down For Ryan's TrumpCare Bill Than Anyone Thought

Here's the whole CBO report on Ryan's Trumpcare proposal. The way Ryan, Pence and Price wrote the bill, 14 million people would lose their health insurance immediately and then coverage would be reduced by 21 million in 2020 and down by 24 million in 2026. Oddly enough, a White House internal analysis is even worse on Ryan's proposal! Trump's own people predict 26,000,000 people will lose insurance during the next decade, 2 million more than what the more cautious CBO reported! Not even Trump voters, whose fault, after all, this is deserve the horrible fate the Republicans have in mind for them. The Washington Post report emphasized that "14 million fewer people would have health insurance next year alone. Premiums would be 15 percent to 20 percent higher in the first year compared with the Affordable Care Act and 10 percent lower on average after 2026. By and large, older Americans would pay 'substantially' more and younger Americans less, the report said. The report from the Congressional Budget Office fueled concerns that the GOP health-care plan would prompt a dramatic loss in health-insurance coverage, potentially contradicting President Trump’s vow that health-care reform would provide 'insurance for everybody' and threatening support from moderate Republican lawmakers."

Ian Millhiser, was much tougher on the Republican bill, writing for ThinkProgress that "approximately 17,000 people could die in 2018 who otherwise would have lived if a House Republican health proposal endorsed by the Trump administration becomes law. By 2026, the number of people killed by Trumpcare could grow to approximately 29,000 in that year alone."

Even though the new head of the CBO, Keith Hall, was handpicked by Paul Ryan and celebrated by HHS Secretary Price who said he would bring an "impressive level of economic expertise and experience," he was ready to slam their report even before it was given. He told White House reporters that the Regime "disagrees strenuously with the report that was put out" and argued that their report looked "at a portion of our plan, but not the entire plan... We believe that our plan will cover more individuals at a lower cost and give them the choices that they want for the coverage that they want for themselves and their family, not that the government forces them to buy." When a reporter asked him to concede that without that mandate to buy coverage, there will be millions of uninsured, he snarled, "No, I wouldn’t concede that at all. The fact of the matter is they are going to be able to a coverage policy that they want for themselves and for their family. They are going to have the kind of choices that they want… So we think that CBO simply has it wrong."

Progressives generally felt that the CBO's report-- on top of the opposition from the American Medical Association, the American Hospital Association, AARP and from a solid majority of voters-- signals a death knell for Ryan's bill. One congressmember who requested anonymity said that "Price and Ryan are both full of shit. They've been hanging around Trump and Kellyanne too much and forgot about the rigors of reality."

Mark Pocan, who represents the Madison area in Congress said that "The CBO report proves what we already knew-- millions of Americans will lose coverage under Speaker Paul Ryan and President Trump’s plan to repeal the Affordable Care Act. To make matters worse, out of pocket costs will rise especially for older and low-income Americans. At the end of the day, this plan means millions of hard-working Americans will lose coverage while the wealthiest few get a massive tax cut. So much for Trump’s boast to provide 'insurance for everybody,' The CBO report confirms yet another broken promise by President Trump and Republicans in Congress."

Ruben Kihuen, a freshman representing North Las Vegas expressed similar sentiments. "The Republican proposal is just a massive tax cut for the wealthy disguised as healthcare reform. This so-called 'plan' is a direct attack on older Americans, effectively placing a heavy tax on getting older. Republicans should be working to improve on the Affordable Care Act to make health insurance cheaper and more robust for everyone."

Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter talked with her constituents in New Hampshire and found a lot of disagreement with the GOP plan. "Today’s estimate by the independent Congressional Budget Office that 14 million Americans would lose their insurance next year under the Republican health plan should be the nail in the coffin for this draconian proposal, which would not only take away Americans’ insurance but also slash Medicaid, end Medicaid expansion, roll back requirements that insurance cover basic medical services, increase deductibles, and raise premiums for older Americans-- all while slashing taxes for the wealthiest. According to CBO, 24 million people would lose their coverage by 2026, meaning the Republican plan not only erases the gains we’ve made since the Affordable Care Act but would actually leave fewer people with coverage than before the law passed. Now that the Republican health bill’s devastating impact has been laid out in black and white, it’s time for President Trump and Congressional Republicans to join the American people and the health care industry in rejecting this harmful bill, and instead come to the table to find bipartisan solutions that make our health care system work better for everyone."

Pramila Jayapal (Seattle) didn't mince words. "The CBO report," she said, "shows the Republican bill is nothing more than a dangerous ideological wish list that strips 24 million Americans of health care, raises premiums by more than fifteen percent, makes our seniors pay more, and guts Medicaid by almost $1 trillion. All of this in order to give $600 billion in tax cuts to corporations and the wealthiest amongst us. Americans will pay more for health care and get less coverage. This will be life and death-- literally-- for millions of Americans. This plan is simply not a plan. Republicans who truly care about their constituents will vote no to ripping apart our health care system and leaving millions of families without insurance."

Blue America is in the middle of vetting two new congressional candidates now, Houston cancer specialist Dr. Jason Westin and Katie Hill, an executive of a non-profit that helps veterans find affordable housing, who are, respectively, running against Republican anti-health care backbench conservatives John Culberson (TX-07) and Steve Knight (CA-25). I reached out to both of them for a perspective on the meaning of the CBO report yesterday. First Dr. Westin:

The CBO report analyzing TrumpCare is excellent news for two groups: those determined to shrink the federal government at any cost and the ultra-rich. For everyone else, the CBO analysis concludes that TrumpCare will be absolutely devastating.

The good news? The analysis projects a budget deficit reduction of $337 billion over the next decade. The bad news? How long do you have? The bill would reduce Medicaid funding by $880 billion dollars, or 25%. This drastic reduction would force states to cut services, resulting in fewer Americans receiving less effective care, hurting those most in need including kids, pregnant women, those near the poverty line, and seniors in long-term care. The CBO determined that a staggering 24 million Americans, or 1 out 14 of us, would lose insurance under TrumpCare, increasing the uninsured percentage from the current ~8%, the lowest ever recorded, to ~15%, an increase of 88%. Lastly, the CBO finds that Americans aged 50-64 will see premiums jump “substantially” due to the age tax allowing insurance companies to charge five times more than charged to younger enrollees.

If the non-partisan CBO determined TrumpCare is so very bad, why is it even being considered? Simply put: a massive tax cut of $900 billion over 10 years for the wealthiest Americans. Is there a connection between cutting critical services to create a colossal tax cut for the 1 percenters? The CBO analysis offers none. In short, 24 million Americans, our daughters, uncles, friends and neighbors, will lose their health insurance so that the very rich get even richer. TrumpCare is a reverse Robin Hood bill of the worst kind.

Katie Hill isn't a medical doctor but her concerns are very much those felt by people throughout the L.A. area. "In my community, as it is, far too many people still can't afford healthcare because the premiums are too expensive, deductibles too high, they barely make enough to make ends meet, and they don't qualify for Medicaid or a subsidy through the exchange. We are in a place when we need to be expanding coverage-- not cutting it. The Antelope Valley, a large portion of the district I hope to represent, has L.A. County's highest death rates from lung cancer, diabetes and heart disease, and a very high percentage of people who have only gained access to care because of the Medicaid expansion made possible by the ACA. Cutting that will take some of our poorest, most vulnerable neighbors out of preventative primary care and put them back into the emergency room as uninsured patients. More people will die, and ultimately, taxpayers will foot the bill no matter what. We need to continue to build on the progress made by the ACA. We can't afford to go backwards."

There Are A Few Times When Even Blue Dogs Have Some Slight Value-- The GOP Rules Changes That Could Hoist Them On Their Own Petard

The devolution of the Republican Party

I tend to think of the worst of the Blue Dog "Democrats"-- like Kyrsten Sinema (AZ), Dan Lipinski (IL) and Colin Peterson (MN)-- along with shameless careerists like Gwen Graham (FL), Patrick Murphy (FL) and Ann Kuster (NH)-- as less than worthless. They routinely sell out basic core Democratic values and the interests of working families for their own personal ambitions and calculations. In many ways they are worse than Republicans and teabaggers because they operate inside the Democratic conference and perpetually undercut progressive policy goals and pull the conference ever right-ward. But on the first day of Congress this year all 168 Democrats present stuck together, including Sinema, Lipinski, Peterson, Graham, Murphy and Kuster, to vote-- along with 4 Republicans-- against new rules to make it easier for Paul Ryan to lower taxes on the rich and cut Social Security. The rules passed 234-172.

How many voters who stayed home in November knew they were voting to hobble Social Security or give a tax cut to the Koch family? How many working class voters in Iowa who voted in Joni Ernst, Rod Blum and David Young knew what they were voting for. How many working class voters in Arkansas who voted for Tom Cotton, French Hill, Bruce Westerman knew they were voting for tax breaks for the Waltons? How many working class voters in Georgia understood that by voting for David Perdue, Richard Allen, Jody Hice and Barry Loudermilk they weren't just voting against "the blacks and Mexicans" but that they were voting to cut their own Social Security benefits? The Republicans certainly didn't talk about cutting Social Security in their campaigns. All the new House members mentioned above-- in fact all all the new members everywhere elected last month-- voted to do just that on day one of the new Congress.

The incoming GOP majority approved late Tuesday a new rule that experts say could provoke an unprecedented crisis that conservatives could use as leverage in upcoming debates over entitlement reform.

The largely overlooked change puts a new restriction on the routine transfer of tax revenues between the traditional Social Security retirement trust fund and the Social Security disability program. The transfers, known as reallocation, had historically been routine; the liberal Center for Budget and Policy Priorities said Tuesday that they had been made 11 times. The CBPP added that the disability insurance program "isn't broken," but the program has been strained by demographic trends that the reallocations are intended to address.

The House GOP's rule change would still allow for a reallocation from the retirement fund to shore up the disability fund-- but only if an accompanying proposal "improves the overall financial health of the combined Social Security Trust Funds," per the rule, expected to be passed on Tuesday. While that language is vague, experts say it would likely mean any reallocation would have to be balanced by new revenues or benefit cuts.

House Democrats are sounding the alarm. In a memo circulated to their allies Tuesday, Democratic staffers said that that would mean "either new revenues or benefit cuts for current or future beneficiaries." New revenues are highly unlikely to be approved by the deeply tax-averse Republican-led Congress, leaving benefit cuts as the obvious alternative.

The Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees estimated last year that the disability insurance program would run short of money to pay all benefits some time in late 2016. Without a new reallocation, disability insurance beneficiaries could face up to 20 percent cuts in their Social Security payments in late 2016-- a chit that would be of use to Republicans pushing for conservative entitlement reforms.

"The rule change would prohibit a simple reallocation! It will require more significant and complex changes to Social Security," Social Security Works, an advocacy group, said in a statement Tuesday. "In other words, the Republican rule will allow Social Security to be held hostage."

..."By barring the House from approving a 'clean' reallocation in 2016, the rule will strengthen the hand of lawmakers who seek to attach harsh conditions (such as sharp cuts in eligibility or benefit amounts) to such a measure," Ruffing wrote.

The ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee, Chris Van Hollen, spoke on the other aspect of the GOP rules change, Ryan's "dynamic scoring" scheme which forces the CBO to use voodoo economics to analyze budget proposals. "It’s absolutely astounding that within minutes-- minutes-- of us being sworn in, our Republican colleagues want to pass a rule that will stack the deck in favor of trying to give another big tax cut, not to the middle class, but to millionaires." Obama's Budget Director, Shaun Donovan, was just as pointed about what the GOP was up to:

While all budget estimates are uncertain, there is substantially more disagreement among economists and experts about how policy changes affect the macro economy than about most other scoring issues. Congress should not adopt changes in scoring legislation that upend the level playing field that has existed for decades, and could call into question the accuracy, consistency, and fairness of CBO and Joint Committee on Taxation budget estimates.

AP's Stephen Olemacher focused on a trap the Republicans may have set for themselves over Social Security going into the 2016 elections. In fact, one of the sponsors of the rule change, Tom Reed (R-NY) is in a vulnerable swing district that Obama won by 1% in 2008, lost by 2% in 2012 and in which the DCCC screwed up in 2010, 2012 and again this year.

The 36-page set of rules passed by a vote of 234-172, with all Democrats opposed and almost every Republican in favor.

On page 32 [of the36-page set of rigged rules] is a provision that allows any representative to raise a point of order if the House tries to pass a bill redirecting tax revenue from Social Security's retirement fund to the disability fund. The House could vote to overcome the objection, but that could be difficult, with almost every Republican supporting the rule that passed Tuesday.

Social Security's long-term financial problems are well-documented, as millions of baby boomers approach retirement, leaving relatively fewer workers to pay the payroll taxes that support it.

Social Security has more than $2.7 trillion in reserves, but the retirement program has been paying out more in benefits than it collects in payroll taxes since 2010.

The disability program has been paying out more than it collects since 2005.

Social Security is supported by a 12.4 percent tax on wages up to $118,500. Half is paid by workers and half is paid by employers.

Most of the payroll tax-- 10.6 percent of wages-- goes to the retirement fund. The remaining 1.8 percent of wages goes to the disability fund.

Social Security's retirement trust fund is projected to run dry in 2034. At that point, it would only collect enough payroll taxes to pay about 75 percent of benefits.

If the retirement fund and the disability fund were combined, they would have enough money to pay full benefits until 2033, giving lawmakers more time to address their long-term finances.

Stay tuned; this comes up in 2016, just before the elections.

Beware: Republicans Reprise That Old Black Magic To Deal With The Budget

The wealthy have never allowed the idea of democracy-- stuff like majority rule-- stand in the way of their greed and power. There were times when politicians have been brave enough to stand up to them-- but not since FDR, at least not on a presidential level. It's part of what Elizabeth Warren means when she says the system is rigged against us. And it's what Bernie Sanders' campaign for president is all about. And it's what a true true believers in Congress-- like Alan Grayson, Mark Pocan, Donna Edwards, Barabara Lee, Raul Grijalva-- are always talking about. But one of the problems with the wealthy is that their power allows them to change the rules when the rules threaten them, even a tiny bit. Gerrymandering is part of that. Michigan Republicans' plans to count their electoral votes in such a way to help GOP presidential candidates is another. Sunday, Robert Reich wrote about another one, the 1% has their political party doing for them-- firing Doug Elmendorf.

You may not have ever heard of Elmendorf. His the director of the strictly non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the CBO. Elmendorf is an economist who worked closely with Reagan's director of the Council of Economic Advisers, Martin Feldstein, at Harvard. He first went to work at the CBO is 1993 and his economic analysis of Clinton's health reform bill is what killed it. He left soon after that it work for Alan Greenspan at the Fed and then for Larry Summers at Treasury. He became the director of the CBO in 2009 soon after Peter Orszag left. He was appointed by John Boehner and Daniel Inouye, then president pro tempore of the Senate, on the recommendation of the two Budget Committees.

In his column, Reich explains the issue as GOP demands to further rig the system for the 1% by the use of trickle down theory-- "dynamic scoring"-- in economic projections.

It’s based on the belief that cutting taxes unleashes economic growth and thereby produces additional government revenue. Supposedly the added revenue more than makes up for what’s lost when Congress hands out the tax cuts.

Dynamic scoring would make it easier to enact tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, because the tax cuts wouldn’t look as if they increased the budget deficit.

Incoming House Ways and Means Chairman Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) calls it “reality-based scoring,” but it’s actually fantasy-based scoring-- which is why Elmendorf, as well as all previous CBO directors have rejected it.

Few economic theories have been as thoroughly tested in the real world as the asserted revenue effects of supply-side economics, and so notoriously failed.

Ronald Reagan cut the top income tax rate from 70 percent to 28 percent and ended up nearly doubling the national debt. His first budget director, David Stockman, later confessed he dealt with embarrassing questions about future deficits with “magic asterisks” in the budgets submitted to Congress. The Congressional Budget Office didn’t buy them.

George W. Bush inherited a budget surplus from Bill Clinton but then slashed taxes, mostly on the rich. The CBO found that the Bush tax cuts reduced revenues by $3 trillion.

Yet Republicans don’t want to admit supply-side economics is hokum. As a result, they’ve never had much love for the truth-tellers at the Congressional Budget Office.

...The budget plan Paul Ryan came up with in 2012-- likely to be a harbinger of what’s to come from the Republican congress-- slashed Medicaid, cut taxes on the rich and on corporations, and replaced Medicare with a less well-funded voucher plan.

Ryan claimed these measures would reduce the deficit. The Congressional Budget Office disagreed.

Ryan persevered. His 2013 and 2014 budget proposals were similarly filled with magic asterisks. The CBO still wasn’t impressed.

It’s one thing to cling to magical thinking when you have only one house of Congress. It’s another when you’re running the whole shebang.

Now that Elmendorf is on the way out, presumably to be replaced by someone willing to tell Ryan and other Republicans what they’d like to hear, the way has been cleared for all the magic they can muster.

In this as in other domains of public policy, Republicans have not shown a particular affinity for facts.

Climate change? It’s not happening, they say. Even if it’s happening, humans aren’t responsible. Even though almost all scientists studying the issue find that humans are the major cause, such findings are “controversial,” says the GOP, and should be given no greater weight than findings on the other side.

Widening inequality? Not occurring, they say. Even though the data show otherwise, they claim the measurements are wrong.

Voting fraud? Happening all over the country, they say, which is why voter IDs and other checks are necessary. Even though there’s no evidence to back up their claim (the best evidence shows no more than 31 credible incidents of fraud out of a billion ballots cast), they continue to assert it.

Evolution? Just a theory, they say. Even though all reputable scientists support it, many Republicans at the state level say it shouldn’t be taught without also presenting the view found in the Bible.

Weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? America’s use of torture? The George W. Bush administration wasn’t overly interested in the facts.

The pattern seems to be if you don’t like the facts, make them up.

Or have your benefactors finance “think tanks” filled with hired guns who will tell the public what you and your patrons want them to say.

If all else fails, fire your own experts who tell the truth, and replace them with people who will tell falsehoods.

There’s one big problem with this strategy, though. Legislation based on lies often causes the public to be harmed.

Mark Pocan (D-WI) and Barbara Lee (D-CA) are the most progressive members of the House Budget Committee. Neither is happy seeing the Republicans making this move. Yesterday, Pocan told us that "Dr. Elmendorf was a perfect choice for a non-partisan agency; fair, unbiased and trusted by all. As the Republicans realize the facts aren't on their side when it comes to budgeting, their solution seems to be to get rid of the facts and try to replace them with distorted ones from a shill they select to spin their view of the world. That's a completely wrong way to start out the 114th Congress." Congressman Lee had a similar perspective she shared with us: "As a member of the Budget Committee, it is imperative that the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) remains independent and objective. The CBO’s objectivity provides needed assurances to Congress and the American people about the impacts of legislation. Conservative attempts to influence CBO and undermine its independence, especially by forcing the CBO to fudge the numbers by using 'dynamic scoring,' is outrageous."

And because the conservatives now control both houses of Congress, they can do just that.

So Even a Pathetic Pipsqueak Like Dana Rohrbacher Scares Boehner?

Dana!

Rohrbacher used to be... a surfer, a folk singer, a pot head, a homo, Congress' #1 supporter of the Taliban and a terrorist in Afghanistan (or at least someone who dressed up as a terrorist for a photo shoot). Rohrabacher recognized the affinity between the Taliban and the Republican Party, backed them for bringing "stability" to Afghanistan and told his dumb-as-abrick-constituents in Orange County that the Taliban "intend to establish a disciplined, moral society" and, like Republicans, are just misunderstood "devout traditionalists, not terrorists or revolutionaries." And people in Orange County keep voting for him anyway. Or at least the idiots in Orange County do, not normal people there.

And, yes, Dana Rohrbacher is no longer a surfer, a folk singer, a pot head, a homo (he's married with kids now but...) or a Taliban backer, but he's still one of the biggest crackpots in Congress-- and a die-hard racist who's built a career on his hatred of Mexicans and by his unabashed expression of vitriol towards them. He is suspected by many of having fed Mitt Romney that memorable line about self-deportation that sealed the fate of not just Romney, but of so many Republicans in 2012.

And this week he publicly announced that he would try to depose John Boehner if he allows a vote on the Senate's immigration reform bill. He knows it would pass in the House and he's apoplectic that Boehner might even consider allowing a vote. “If Boehner moves forward ... and permits this to come to a vote even though the majority of Republicans in the House-- and that’s if they do-- oppose what’s coming to a vote, he should be removed as Speaker," hissed Rohrabacher menacingly. So Boehner caved-- at least temporarily.

Even though most mainstream conservative Republicans in the House support the bill-- including Boehner lieutenants Eric Cantor, Kevin McCarthy and Paul Ryan-- Boehner, gin to his head, agreed to abide by the so-called Hastert Rule and not allow a vote unless a majority of House Republicans decide its OK.

“I also suggested to our members today that any immigration reform bill that is going to go into law ought to have a majority of both parties’ support if we’re really serious about making that happen, and so I don’t see any way of bringing an immigration bill to the floor that doesn’t have a majority support of Republicans,” Mr. Boehner said at a news conference after meeting with House Republicans.

Mr. Boehner’s comments, both privately in the closed-door meeting at the Capitol Hill Club and publicly, came as some House Republicans have begun to draw a firm and vocal line in the sand, warning Mr. Boehner that his speakership could be at risk if he tries to force through an immigration bill without the support of his conference.

...Though Mr. Boehner has violated the Hastert rule several times this year — to help avert a fiscal showdown, provide relief for victims of Hurricane Sandy and pass the Violence Against Women Act — he explicitly said on Tuesday that he would not take up an immigration bill without the support of a majority of his party.

Mr. Boehner’s comments will make it harder for him to buck conservatives on an immigration overhaul, something that many consider crucial for Republicans hoping to regain their national standing with Hispanic voters. His position will also make it harder to strike a deal between the House and the Senate on a final immigration measure if the legislative process gets that far.

...Mr. Boehner is well aware of the difficult political situation he finds himself in. When asked if he believed he could lose his job if he violated the Hastert rule on immigration, he said, to laugher, “Maybe.”

In the meeting before his news conference, Mr. Boehner offered further reassurances to his members.

“This town thrives on non-stories, and the biggest non-story of the week is this speculation that I’m somehow planning secretly to pass an immigration bill without a majority of Republicans,” Mr. Boehner said, according to a source who was present at the meeting. “I have no intention of putting a bill on the floor that will violate the principles of our majority and divide our conference.”

Still, Mr. Boehner’s comments come as conservative Republicans are increasingly worried about how the immigration bill will be handled in the House. Representative Steve King, an Iowa Republican and leading opponent of the immigration overhaul making its way through the Senate, plans to hold a six-hour news conference outside the Capitol on Wednesday to voice his concerns about the current bill.

GOP reactionaries and bigots fear that what Boehner will do is allow a vote on the bill the emerges eventually from the Senate-House reconciliation. There may not be many Republican congressmen as racist as Rohrabacher, but Texas lunatic Louie Gohmert certainly is one. And he's ready to rumble. He's running around telling fellow extremists that Boehner "has been consistent on that as far as a bill coming to the floor of the House that the House generates. That is not the concern that Steve King, Michele Bachmann and others and I have had. Our concern has been that even if we pass a very good bill, like Trey Gowdy’s bill, if the Speaker sends that to a conference committee and the report comes back and that’s the one we’re concerned may not have a majority of Republicans... If we get a bill back that has amnesty and 99 percent of the Democrats vote for it and the Speaker can put the pressure on 30, 40, 50 of our guys, people that are committee chairs or in leadership positions, then they can still pass it even without a majority." No one pulls the wool over Louie Gohmert's eyes! NO ONE. (Boehner now appears to have been beaten into submission on the conference report as well.)

Compounding the problems of the radical right and Know Nothing xenophobes, Alabama wingnut Jeff Sessions (KKK) demanded the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to estimate how much money immigration reform would cost the taxpayers. Sessions was unprepared for the answer. Not only does the deficit shrink in the first 10 years by $197 billion if the Senate bill goes into law, the second tens years will see an astronomical $700 billion windfall for American taxpayers. I imagine Sessions, Rohrabacher, Bachmann, King, Gohmert and the other freaks were ready to jump into the DC sinkhole that's swallowing up calls this week.

The CBO score could give the bill a significant boost as the Senate tries to clear it before the July 4 recess. Supporters are hoping for a strong vote in order to put pressure on House Republicans to pass a bill this year.

The bill requires increased spending on border security and ultimately would provide a path to legal residency and possible citizenship for the nation’s estimated 11 million illegal immigrants. That status would allow immigrant to tap into federal entitlement benefits but they would start paying taxes for the first time as well.

The CBO normally uses a conventional 10-year budget window and this has been a sore point for opponents of the Gang of Eight bill, who had called for a longer-range estimate.

The chief Senate critic of the immigration reform bill, Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) last month said the bill will be costly once illegal immigrations qualify for entitlements.

Dean Baker asks, "Does Paul Ryan Know What's in His Budget?"

The folks at Center for American Progress Action Fund have produced a report that includes this infographic (click to enlarge it) showing, as The Progress Report put it today, "how much Romney and Ryan will rob your retirement to pay for new tax breaks for themselves."

"Does Representative Ryan really think it is a good idea to end the federal government's role in building and maintaining infrastructure, in financing education, in funding basic research in health care and other areas, in maintaining our national parks, federal courts, the FBI? His budget says that this is what he thinks . . . .

"If reporters do their job, they have a simple question to put to Mr. Ryan. 'Your budget would put an end to everything the government does, except for Social Security, health care and defense. Is this really what you want to do?' "

-- Dean Baker, in a recent post,
"Does Paul Ryan Know What's in His Budget?"

by Ken

I've been meaning all week to write about the post of economist Dean Baker's about Paul Ryan's so-called budget from which I've extracted the above quote, and I guess each time I tried to do it, I finally threw up my hands and figured what's the point? By now anyone who doesn't know that every word that comes out of Ryan's [thanks, John!] mouth is either a flat-out lie (either for his convenience, as when he's flip-flopping on matters like his worship of Ayn Rand, or in service to the 1%-ers who find him such a useful tool, as with his yeoman's service toward the dismantling of Social Security and Medicare) or an expression of ideological psychosis as extreme as anything that has ever been uttered in the American political circus either isn't paying attention or just doesn't want to know.

The famous Ryan budget, Dean writes,

implies that after three decades the federal government will have no money to spend on health research, education, highways, airports, and other infrastructure, the Food and Drug Administration and most other activities that we associate with the federal government. His budget has money for Social Security, Medicare and other health programs and the Defense Department. That's it. This is not a vicious anti-Ryan attack coming from hyper-partisan Democrats. This is what the analysis of his budget by the non-partisan CBO shows. It's right there in the fifth row of Table 2.The table shows that in 2040, Representative Ryan would allot an amount equal to 4.75 percent of GDP to all these other areas of government including defense spending. By 2050, Ryan's allocation for these areas, including defense, falls to 3.75 percent of GDP.

And as Dean goes to great lengths to demonstrate, walking us through the process that CBO goes through when asked for analysis by its employers, Congress, "CBO did not blindside Representative Ryan with a half-baked analysis they did in the middle of the night."

It is important to understand that CBO tried to accurately present the implications of the budget that Representative Ryan gave them. CBO works for Congress. These are career civil servants. They cannot be easily fired, but if CBO's staff deliberately misrepresented a budget proposal from a powerful member of Congress like Paul Ryan, that is the sort of thing that could get them put out on the street.

BUT WHAT ARE WE TO THINK WHEN A GUY WHO'S
BEEN WRITING A NYT COLUMN FOR UMPTEEN YEARS . . .

. . . says, in all apparent seriousness, "I don’t see how anybody can say that Ryan is unserious when, unlike most national pols, he actually has a budget detailed enough for C.B.O. to score."? Okay, the guy is David Brooks, who we know isn't bright, or well plugged into reality, but still, you figure that somewhere, somehow he's held to a certain minimum standard of factuality, but no, as Dean Baker had to explain in a Wednesday night post, that no, this isn't at all what PRyan did.

The CBO report explains at the top, Dean tells us, that the calculations prepared at the request of Representative Ryan --

do not represent a cost estimate for legislation or an analysis of the effects of any given policies. In particular, CBO has not considered whether the specified paths are consistent with the policy proposals or budget figures released today by Chairman Ryan as part of his proposed budget resolution.

The amounts of revenues and spending to be used in these calculations for 2012 through 2022 were provided by Chairman Ryan and his staff.

"In other words," Dean tells us, "Representative Ryan did not give CBO a set of tax and spending proposals to be scored. He told them to write down a spending and revenue path."

The difference is that the former would require that Ryan indicate specific spending cuts and tax increases that he was proposing.

For example, if Mr. Ryan was actually writing a budget for CBO to score, he would tell them that he wants to cut spending on Head Start by 50 percent over the next decade, spending on medical research by 30 percent, and spending on education by 40 percent. On the tax side, he would tell CBO that he wants to eliminate the mortgage interest tax deduction over the next decade, phase out the deduction for employer provided health insurance over the next two decades, and immediately eliminate the charitable interest tax deduction.

The point is that he would hand CBO specific policy proposals like these and then have CBO show what the budget looks like. This is absolutely not what Ryan did, as CBO tried to say as clearly as it possible could.

Instead, Ryan told CBO to write down specific numbers for broad categories of spending. This means he told them to write down that spending on non-health care, non-Social Security spending will be 4.5 percent of GDP in 2040. He told them to write down specific numbers for tax revenue.

Since CBO works for Congress, it does what powerful members of Congress want it to do. Thus it wrote down the numbers that Mr. Ryan instructed them to write down. However CBO was honest and clearly stated that it had just written down numbers given to it by Mr. Ryan and his staff. Unfortunately David Brooks is either too confused to understand what CBO wrote, or alternatively is deliberately trying to mislead NYT readers into believing that CBO scored a Ryan budget when it did not.

IT'S NO SECRET TO DWT READERS THAT THE
MYTH OF PRYAN'S SERIOUSNESS IS JUST THAT

It's a myth. He's a liar, a crackpot, and at his most fragrant a crook. As Howie has pointed out here, he has no shame in distancing himself from his ideological twin Todd Akin, even though his position on rape and abortion isn't virtually the same, it's identical, and is based on the right-wing article of faith that with the exception of that tiny category of "forcible rapes" -- which poor Todd referred to so infelicitously as "legitimate" rapes -- there are no rapes. It's all just those damn slutty wimmins who wuz probly askin' fer it and jes' got what they all deserved.

Which still leaves the question of how someone who intellectually is, from any standpoint, the flightiest of flyweights, maintains a reputation for "seriousness." One answer is suggested in Dean Baker's Wednesday piece on DBrooks's love affair with PRyan --

PER DBROOKS, YOU CAN ONLY COMMENT
ON CANDIDATES YOU'VE INTERVIEWED

After picking apart the DBrooks's nonsensical notion that PRyan is so serious that he was able to submit an actual budget to the CBO for scoring, Dean writes, "There is one other issue worth beating up on Brooks for in this piece."

At one point he says: "I have enormous respect for Ryan and I regard most of the commentary I've read about him by people who've never even interviewed him to be ludicrous."

Huh? What planet is this guy on? It's wonderful that Brooks has had the opportunity to interview Paul Ryan. Most of us will not have that opportunity.

In David Brooks Land that apparently means that we don't have the right to comment on Ryan's positions on issues. That might be true in David Brooks eliteland, but we still have pretensions of having a democracy in this country. That means that we all get to say whatever we damn well please about Representative Ryan, even if we never interviewed him. If that troubles Brooks, then perhaps he can find some dictatorship where speech is regulated more to his liking.

Let me come out and say what Dean has tactfully merely indicated: that media whores like DBrooks were born to be coopted. It's the insidious Curse of Insiderness. DBrooks has come away from his Encounter(s) with PRyan blanketed by the same snowjob as The New Yorker's Ryan Lizza in his repellent puff piece on PRyan: Ooh, ooh, he talked to me! I must be somebody really important!

Au contraire, DBrooks. If you had the tiniest grain of either intelligence or integrity (and one or the other would probably do it), you would announce, "I have belatedly realized that I am too stupid and dishonest to live, let alone pass myself off as a commentator, and I realize how simply I can solve both problems. Th-th-that's all, folks!"

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A "single payer" advocate insists the "public option" proponents have baited-and-switched us into plans that can't and won't work

"Somewhere along the line it became obvious that the Hacker model was too difficult to enact and had to be stripped down to something more mouse-like in order to pass."

-- Kip Sullivan, in "Bait and switch: How the 'public option' was sold," on the PNHP (Physicians for a National Health Program) blog

by Ken

As I keep saying, in different ways, one of the crucial problems with enacting meaningful health care reform is that the subject is by definition so vast and complex. Only liars and sociopaths can reduce it to the size of a sound bit. And so it's with deep regret that I warn you I'm about to dip into a crucial piece on the subject which I'm afraid you have to read in its entirety. I'm really sorry about that, but this is one of those cases where the length of the piece comes not from its author's inability to focus or organize his thoughts but from the complexity of the subject matter addressed.

The piece, as noted above, is called "Bait and switch: How the 'public option' was sold." According to the biographical note, the author, Kip Sullivan, "belongs to the steering committee of the Minnesota chapter of Physicians for a National Health Program." As you'll see in the piece, he makes no bones about or apology for being an unequivocal supporter of a single-payer health insurance system for the U.S. In this piece he attempts to make clear, not just why the plans being talked about now in Washington won't accomplish what single-payer would, but why those plans won't accomplish much of anything useful:

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the “public options” described in the Democrats’ legislation might enroll 10 million people and will have virtually no effect on health care costs, which means the “public options” cannot, by themselves, have any effect on the number of uninsured. But the leaders of the “public option” movement haven’t told the public they have abandoned their original vision. It’s high time they did.

To appreciate what he calls the public-option "bait and switch," Sullivan thinks for starter we ought to know what the hell the public option is. This he describes as "the bait":

“Public option” refers to a proposal, as Timothy Noah put it, “dreamed up” by Jacob Hacker when Hacker was still a graduate student working on a degree in political science. In two papers, one published in 2001 and the second in 2007, Hacker, now a professor of political science at Berkeley, proposed that Congress create an enormous “Medicare-like” program that would sell health insurance to the non-elderly in competition with the 1,000 to 1,500 health insurance companies that sell insurance today.

Hacker claimed the program, which he called “Medicare Plus” in 2001 and “Health Care for America Plan” in 2007, would enjoy the advantages that make Medicare so efficient – large size, low provider payment rates and low overhead. (Medicare is the nation’s largest health insurance program, public or private. It pays doctors and hospitals about 20 percent less than the insurance industry does, and its administrative costs account for only 2 percent of its expenditures compared with 20 percent for the insurance industry.)

Hacker predicted that his proposed public program would so closely resemble Medicare that it would be able to set its premiums far below those of other insurance companies and enroll at least half the non-elderly population. These predictions were confirmed by the Lewin Group, a very mainstream consulting firm. In its report on Hacker’s 2001 paper, Lewin concluded Hacker’s “Medicare Plus” program would enroll 113 million people (46 percent of the non-elderly) and cut the number of uninsured to 5 million. In its report on Hacker’s 2007 paper, Lewin concluded Hacker’s “Health Care for America Plan” would enroll 129 million people (50 percent of the nonelderly population) and cut the uninsured to 2 million.

Sullivan points out, "Until last year, Hacker and his allies were not the least bit shy about highlighting the enormous size of Hacker’s proposed public program," and notes that the Lewin Group's favorable 2008 analysis prompted the Campaign for America's Future's Roger HIckey to celebrate on Huffington Post that Hacker's Health Care for America (HCFA) plan --

would cover everyone in America, while saving the US economy over a trillion dollars over the next decade. And the efficiencies achievable primarily through Hacker's public health insurance plan would save enough money that, after modest premiums from employers and individuals, the new system would cost the US government only $50 billion more than what we are paying now for a system that leaves millions uninsured or badly insured.

But none of that, Sullivan explains, figures in the draft proposals released last month by the Senate HELP Committee and, acting jointly, the three relevant House committee chairmen. "Obviously," he writes, "the 'public option' in the Senate HELP committee bill (zero enrollees; 34 million people left uninsured) and the 'public option' in the House bill (10 million enrollees (maybe!); 17 million people left uninsured) are a far cry from the 'public option' originally proposed by Professor Hacker (129 million enrollees; 2 million people left uninsured)."

What particularly upsets Sullivan, and prompts his charge of "bait and switch," is that he doesn't hear any of the "public option" proponents making any mention of the gap between the promise of Hacker's HCFA and what's on the table now. Hacker himself --

testified before the House Education and Labor Committee that “the draft legislation prepared by [the] special tri-committee promises enormous progress.” He went on to enumerate all the benefits of a “public option.” Yet the House tri-committee proposal bore no resemblance to the public plan he described in his papers and that the Lewin Group analyzed.

Now comes a big but crucial chunk. Instead of whomping on the discouraging forecasts of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), as most "health care reform" proponents have been doing, Sullivan finds them quite believable. And now he sets out the heart of the differences betwen the "bait" and the "switch" proposals:

Hacker’s papers laid out these five criteria that he and the Lewin Group said were critical to the success of the “public option”:

• The PO had to be pre-populated with tens of millions of people, that is, it had to begin like Medicare did representing a large pool of people the day it commenced operations (Hacker proposed shifting all or most uninsured people as well as Medicaid and SCHIP enrollees into his public program);
• Subsidies to individuals to buy insurance would be substantial, and only PO enrollees could get subsidies (people who chose to buy insurance from insurance companies could not get subsidies);
• The PO and its subsidies had to be available to all nonelderly Americans (not just the uninsured and employees of small employers);
• The PO had to be given authority to use Medicare’s provider reimbursement rates; and
• The insurance industry had to be required to offer the same minimum level of benefits the PO had to offer.

Hacker predicted, and both of the Lewin Group reports concluded, that if these specifications were met Hacker’s plan would enjoy all three of Medicare’s advantages – it would be huge, it would have low overhead costs, and it would pay providers less than the insurance industry did. As a result, the “public option” would be able to set its premiums below those of the insurance industry and seize nearly half the non-elderly market from the insurance industry. According to the Lewin Group’s 2008 report, Hacker’s version of the “public option” would, as of 2007:

• Enroll 129 million enrollees (or 50 percent of the non-elderly);
• Have overhead costs equal to 3 percent of expenditures;
• Pay hospitals 26 percent less and doctors 17 percent less than the insurance industry (but these discounts would be offset to some degree by increases in payments to providers treating former Medicaid enrollees); and,
• Set its premiums 23 below those of the average insurance company. . . .

Now let us compare Hacker’s original model with the mousey “public options” proposed by the Senate HELP Committee and the House. Of Hacker’s five criteria, only one is met by these bills! Both proposals require the insurance industry to cover the same benefits the “public option” must cover. None of the other four criteria are met.

Sullivan then takes a close look at what would confront the executive director of the "public option" (as envisaged by the "not quite as weak" House version) on "your first day on the job." Unlike Medicare, which started with "a ready-made pool of seniors," you start with zero enrollees. After looking at the problem from all angles, he concludes, "You find that the 'public option' is at the mercy of the private insurance market, not the other way around."

Sullivan discusses, and has sympathy for, the various paths by which the original HCFA supporters (including its inventor) scaled their vision down to this "mouse" of a program they're now defending so vehemently. The result, though, is a mess for advocates of meaningful health care reform, who, he says--

must continue to educate Congress and the public on the need for a single-payer system. We must also convince advocates of the “public option” that they have made two serious mistakes and, if they learn quickly from these mistakes, that real reform is still possible.

The first mistake, he says, was believing that any meaningful economies could be achieved by a system "that merely took over a large chunk of the non-elderly market," because the very competition so beloved of all our "free market" apostles "imposes[s] unnecessarily large overhead costs on providers." He notes, "It is precisely because Medicare is a single-payer program that its overhead costs are low."

The second mistake -- and here he squarely addresses the practical politics of the subject -- "was to think the insurance industry and the right wing would treat a 'public option' more gently than a single-payer."

Conservatives have a long history of treating small incremental proposals such as “comparative effectiveness research” as the equivalent of “a government takeover of the health care system.” It should have been no surprise to anyone that conservatives would shriek “socialism!” at the sight of the “public option,” even the mouse model proposed by the Democrats.

So is there any hope?

It is conceivable the “public option” movement could decide the bait-and-switch strategy was wrong and that their only error was not to stick with Hacker’s original model. It should be obvious now that that would also be a tactical blunder. We have plenty of evidence now that conservatives will react to the mousey version of the “public option” as if it were “a stalking horse for single-payer.” We can predict with complete certainty they will treat Hacker’s original version as something even closer to single-payer. If a proposal is going to be abused as if it were single-payer, why not actually propose a single-payer? At least then, when a particular session of Congress comes and goes and we haven’t enacted a single-payer system, we will have educated the public about the benefits of a single-payer and have further strengthened the single-payer movement.

Sullivan finally suggests that we don't have to accept the conventional wisdom that if no bill is passed by December, there will be no opportunity for health care reform until 2013: "If the 'public option' wing and the single-payer wing join together to demand that Congress enact a single-payer system, December 2009 need not constitute a deadline."

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