GRAY MATTERS: Republican Agenda

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Saul Friedman (bio) writes the weekly Gray Matters column which appears here each Saturday. Links to past Gray Matters columns can be found here. Saul's Reflections column, in which he comments on news, politics and social issues from his perspective as one of the younger members of the greatest generation, also appears at Time Goes By twice each month.

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Thanks to the Republicans’ lurch to the far-out right, they can at last be honest in their intentions if they get another chance at governing in 2010 or 2012. They no longer need hide in sheep’s clothing; they can now be more comfortable as what they are: wolves in wolves’ clothing. And that means they will do what they say if they get the chance.

That is to say, the present Republican leadership and its young new ideologues, have put pretense aside and now openly intend to destroy, during their next watch, the twin pillars of the nation’s public social insurance system – 75-year-old Social Security and 50-year-old Medicare.

If you think I exaggerate, check out their legislation, for H.R. 4529, introduced by the top Republican on the Budget Committee, Representative Paul Ryan of Wisconsin and S. 1240, introduced by the most right wing member of the Senate, Jim DeMint of South Carolina.

Some excerpts in a moment, but underlying the proposals, “Roadmap for America’s Future,” is the belief of the now-dominant right-wing of the Republican Party that Americans should be weaned from Medicare and Social Security to reduce the national debt, permit deep reductions in taxes for the wealthy, encourage self-reliance, personal responsibility and less dependence on government and while putting the billions in Social Security taxes to work in American enterprises, the stock markets, to build individual investment accounts instead of a pension.

Republicans, of course, have long advocated self-reliance and individual responsibility - when they opposed child labor laws and opposed Social Security during the Great Depression and Medicare and Medicaid in 1965. But they’ve been disguising their opposition partly because these programs have been so successful and popular with the hundreds of millions of Americans who have been made whole with medical care and pensions. And the Republican Party was closer to the main stream.

Thus, when Ronald Reagan won the presidency in 1980, he calmed the fears of older Americans when he promised to cut only “waste, fraud and abuse” in government. As a commentator, he had spoken in vigorous, ideological opposition to Social Security and Medicare – as the harbingers of socialism. But as president, Reagan left Medicare alone and in 1983, he appointed a commission that strengthened Social Security to build today’s $3 trillion trust fund for the boomers’ retirement. The Trustees say the trust fund will last until 2037, unless the recession drains it more rapidly.

More background: In 1994-5, when Southern Republicans under House Speaker Newt Gingrich of Georgia, his sidekicks Richard Armey and Tom Delay of Texas took over the Congress, their “Contract with America” noted that Reagan had been unable to end many federal programs and the contract proposed a “Personal Responsibility Act,” to end welfare for poor women. But the Contract refrained from frightening the nation for it mentioned not a word about Social Security - which Gingrich called “the third rail” in American politics - nor Medicare.

But Armey let it be known at a press breakfast that the Republicans intended “wean our old people away from dependence on Medicare.” An aide quickly denied Armey meant to kill Medicare. Gingrich told health insurers that the Medicare agency would “wither on the vine.” Eventually it became clear what they meant.

Under the Republican threats to slash Medicare, Bill Clinton agreed to allow private companies to sell Medicare policies, now called Medicare Advantage, which are heavily subsidized and serve a fifth of Medicare beneficiaries.

In 2003, George Bush took Medicare privatization further with the Medicare Part D drug benefit which is wholly private. That bill also put limits on Medicare’s budget growth and instituted a means test for the first time.

Some of that has been reversed in the Democratic Congress, but Medicare is more private than it has ever been, although the proposed health reforms would end most of the $250 billion subsidy for Medicare Advantage.

In 2005, Bush sought to build on his Medicare privatization with an attempt to turn Social Security and its trillions into millions of individual investment accounts. While no one, except Bush, was burned by the third rail, his effort failed partly because even Republicans were afraid of ending Social Security’s $650 billion a year in insurance and pension benefits.

But the opposition, which continues to denigrate and undermine Social Security, has grown bolder and more radical and has not given up.

Sensing new opportunities because of the deficits they helped create and the strain the recession has put on Social Security and Medicare, the Republicans and Democratic deficit hawks have set their sights on both programs as if all “entitlements” contribute to the deficit. Social Security, for example, is self-sustaining and only its administrative costs (one percent) contributes to the deficit.

Nevertheless, the “Roadmap for America’s Future” (a more appealing name than the legalistic “Contract With America,“) would end future Social Security protection for all persons under 55 and substitute a “Personal Social Security Savings Program” - that is, investment accounts like that provided by the government (federal employees now also get Social Security).

Incidentally, the trust fund would no longer be available to loan money to the treasury and thus earn money. Instead the trillions in the trust fund, which belong to you and me, would be “liquidated” and available for Wall Street.

Instead of the guarantees of Medicare, persons who will become eligible in, say ten years, would get an average of $11,000, in vouchers to purchase health insurance on the open market. That would be available through a newly merged Federal Hospital Insurance Trust fund and Federal Supplementary Medical Insurance Fund. You tell me if that would be enough insurance to last the rest of your life even if, G-D forbid you have a catastrophic illness. Funds would be slashed for the Part D drug program, which would be means tested and voluntary.

There is no mention of restraining the costs of premiums or regulating insurance companies’ practices; that would be a restraint on free enterprise. The clever part of the proposal would pit the old against the young who will be on their own and would no longer have to pay for their elders.

But imagine grandma or grandpa, when Medicare is no longer available, having to shop for coverage if they are already ill or disabled or suffering from dementia. Ask your parents what it was like before Medicare. Consider what would be lost if there was no longer any intergenerational responsibility.

But the juiciest part of the Roadmap, the one that will bring joy to the rich and appeal to fiscally conscious Republicans are the numerous tax breaks it proposes. It would end taxes on capital gains, dividends and interest, estate and gift taxes and the corporate income tax. (Unfortunately, President Obama has caved in to the deficit fears with his creation of a deficit commission and he even praised Ryan as a person with “ideas.”)

Finally, a page from Dickens and the 19th century workhouses: The bill would end, next January 1, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), which the Congress passed over George Bush’s veto. You don’t believe Americans would do this to children? Look for the bills at GovTrack or OpenCongress.

Write to saulfriedman@comcast.net

Comments

[Gabby Geezer]

Excellent column. I once was a "moderate Republican," but no longer is there a place for me in the party. Letting the village idiots continue to take over the party is likely to kill it. We do need to work on deficit reduction, however, and Obama's commission is a positive approach, although it probably won't turn out to be very effective.

[Darlene]

I posted a notice of this unconscionable sneak ploy on my blog last week. I titled it "Elders Beware" and included part of Paul Krugman's column on this subject in the op-ed section of the New York Times .

It is frightening that an entire political party can be so greedy and self serving. Talk about death panels.

I would be forced to live with my children or go to a poor farm (as my grandparents generation had to) without Social Security and Medicare.

We must constantly be vigilant. Thank you for bringing this important piece of legislation to the attention of others. How can we inform our children's generation of this threat? They need to rise up en mass and expose and protest this dastardly deed.

[Nan]

So we're to repeat history...there was a reason Medicare was started in the first place and has been so popular (until the Medicare Modernization and Improvement Act, anyway.)

[janinsanfran]

Absurdly, policy wonks are arguing whether having health insurance makes people more healthy. I think they need to get out a little more and look around. But what is interesting is that the primary evidence they recognize for the health utility of having insurance seems to be that once folks get on Medicare, they get and take the medicines they need to preserve health. Well, duh ...

[Nance]

I tried entrusting my retirement savings to Wall Street (as conservatively as possible) and I'm still reeling in disbelief over the outcome. I continue to hear that the President is deaf to the real anguish in our country, but I submit that it is the Reactionary Right that is deaf to the anguish of a generation that DID save and lost, DID try to work with private insurers and found themselves uncovered or outmaneuvered by their insurance company when real illness struck. No sane senior voter would now embrace the free enterprise cure-all proposals of Jim DeMint.

[donna]

I hear you, Nance. What people fail to get is that there are TWO Republican agendas -- one for corporations and the wealthy who benefit from them, and one for the serfs who work for them. That they can fool so many of the serfs into believing this somehow benefits them in any way whatsoever continually amazes me. It's a fabulous scam.

[Kay Dennison]

What the Republicans want is for all of us elders to do is die. Their policies are such that our children will be unable to care for us. What's next? Death camps for anyone with a chronic disease?

[Citizen K.]

11K might purchase a single year of catastrophic coverage for a typical elder. And of course millions will go without any coverage at all because their medical histories -- a naturally occurring thing as one ages -- will preclude health insurance companies from selling to them at all.

[Elizabeth Rogers]

This is a terrific web site! I discovered it quite by accident while pursuing a link in WOW (Women on the Web.

I couldn't agree more with Mr. Friedman's article and readers' comments. The Republicans accuse President Obama of advocating "death panels" for older Americans because his health plan would compensate our doctors for discussing end-of-life issues with us. What hypocrisy! As they race to the right, they have abandoned all pretense of moderation. Their goals are to dismantle government (including Social Security and Medicare), allow the "unfettered free market" to operate with no regulation, and cut taxes for the wealthiest corporations and individuals. In short, make those already rich a lot richer. As for the rest of us? Well, there's always charity, to paraphrase a young "Tea Party" member on TV this morning.

I'm 73 and our generation has never wanted to be dependent on anyone. We've worked hard our entire adult lives and some of us are still working (I consider myself lucky to be one of them). We're "net contributors" to the U.S. economy and society. Economic conditions have changed since I was a young worker and are currently very difficult. I won't be here to see it happen, but the now-young far-right wingers will grow older just as we have. Hmmm--wonder if they'll feel the same way about small government at age 70+ when their uninsured privatized savings accounts collapse during a bear market and that's all they have to fund their retirement--including purchasing their own health insurance.

Talk about a "death panel"!

[Pauline Nager]

Thak you again for a timely and always valuable reminder of what the Republican philosophy is all about. At this time in the progress of the health care reform issue, I hope you keep up the information on this issue, because it is literally, a matter of life and death.
On the word "entitlement" - I cringe when I hear this word. It suggests an image of a house breaker carting off the jewelry because he is "entitled" to have some goodies,too. How about a better way to describe government programs that benefit people of all descriptions? We are entitled to good government that protects the poor, the hungry, the sick, aren't we? I think this word "entitlement" has become a buzz word for a rip-off in the eyes of those who want to return to the Gilded Age of robber barons.

[Chas]

The greed and lack of conscience of the Republicans has no bounds. In effect they are a bunch of sociopaths. The entitlements they want to destroy consist of treasury bonds. If they can selectively renege on these, so much for full faith of the US government. Holders of savings bonds and other government obligations including foreign countries should be afraid, very afraid.

[Elizabeth Rogers]

I so agree with the writers who have somehow lost faith in Wall Street to manage their retirement funds. Imagine that! We have yet to see Social Security "lose" 30-40% of our monthly benefits. I recognize that there will be a funding shortfall in the future due to demographic changes and because SS funds have been raided repeatedly, most recently to pay for George W. Bush's undeclared wars. Even so, my confidence in the private financial services sector is nil.

Gordon Gekko was right: Wall Street is basically powered by greed, so how can ordinary people depend on the stock market--or superrich Republicans--to do what's right for the rest of us? With rare exception, the ultra-wealthy aren't big on sharing. That's how they accumulated all that wealth in the first place.

It may come as a shock to Republicans, but many Democrats believe in self-sufficiency and personal responsibility, too. I worked full time for almost 50 years and at 73 am still working part time (I know I'm lucky to still have a job). However, I was never a hotshot stock trader. I was employed by a nonprofit agency most of those years, so I need Social Security and Medicare, especially when I finally stop working.

I get pretty disgusted when Republicans characterize me as being "dependent" on the government because I'm old enough to receive Social Security. Most of them will become "dependent", too, if they live long enough and don't happen to be among the superrich.