A constant theme throughout last year’s health care debate was Republican objection to any cuts to Medicare. This is the program that President Ronald Reagan believed was part of a socialist plot in 1961 and is primarily responsible for long-term deficits. Obama believed that there was waste that could be cut out of Medicare, such as the inefficient Medicare Advantage program. Advantage is a private program, which costs more per enrollee and delivers worse results than standard Medicare. Republicans didn’t want the program cut. Once again: costs more, worse results, Republicans want to keep it.
Republicans’ favorite gripe on spending is the notorious pork barrel spending. When he was running for president, Sen. John McCain promised to make any legislator who tried to use an earmark infamous. Earlier this month, Sen. Richard Shelby, Republican from Alabama, announced that he would place a blanket hold on all of Obama’s executive branch nominees who were pending in the Senate until Obama gave him what he wanted — a multi-billion dollar FBI crime lab and a contract to build air-to-air refueling tankers — in his state. Shelby ran against irresponsible spending in Washington during his campaigns. However, he wanted to shut down the entire nominations process, which included 70 nominees, to get his share of pork. Shelby backed down after he was made infamous by a Democrat, not a Republican president.
There is one Republican who has generated a plan to end the debt, Paul Ryan from Wisconsin, who is the ranking member on the House Budget Committee. He has put out an audacious plan that would end Medicare as we know it by limiting growth of expenditures to half the rate of inflation and privatizing Medicare beginning in 2021. While this proposal would successfully cut the deficit, it would also eliminate a fundamental piece of the social safety net. Remember that last fall, Republicans were bemoaning any Medicare cuts. Ryan’s plan would be far more painful for seniors than Obama’s proposals.
Obama’s budget is certainly unsustainable, as has been admitted by his chief budget man, Peter Orszag. Climbing out of our current budget hole will be painful, and will likely mean higher taxes and weaker government for our generation. We need to fix health care and figure out how to maintain a cheaper military unless we want to experience what is happening in Greece — go read about it.
Eliminating the deficit will be tough, but it will take a much smarter and more honest party than the Republicans to do so.
Continue Reading: « Previous12
A version of this article appeared in the Feb 25 issue of the Collegiate Times.
Leave a comment 18 Comments Write a letter to the editor
All letters to the editor must include a name, e-mail, daytime phone number and affiliation to Virginia Tech. Affiliation includes: year and major for students; position and department for faculty and staff; current city for alumni and parents.
Hey, genius, President Bush didnt pass Medicare Part D. In our system of government the President doesnt pass laws. Go back to basic government class before you write a column about politics. You know about as much about the subject as the average Obama voter, which is to say not much.
Reply to this Top
True Alum, but Congress was controlled by the Republicans at the time Medicare Part D was passed.
I agree with most of what is being said in this article, but the writing lacks proper analysis and structure. In the future, I hope the CT looks for regular columnists who actually have experience writing opinion articles.
Reply to this Top
As I recall, the Democratic party was somewhat upset about this not because they opposed the expansion of Medicare, but primarily because it was something they had wanted to pass themselves. The fact that it has ballooned into an untenably expensive program (as have medicare and social security in general) has proven to be a boon to the Dems since they can use it as a talking point - but it's not like it wasn't something they didn't want to do.
Top
"figure out how to maintain a cheaper military unless we want to experience what is happening in Greece."
Yes, maintaining a world-class military is exacty why the Greek economy is going down the toilet.
Idiot.
Reply to this Top
You took that completely out of context. Regardless of how the Greek economy got to where it is we're going to be there soon if we don't start paying down our debt.
Idiot.
Reply to this Top
I agree we'll be in trouble if we don't start paying down the debt. The Spender in Chief, however, has no intention of doing any such thing, and this columnist is essentially saying, "So what - the big bad Republicans spent money, too." Bad behavior doesn't justify continued bad behavior.
Idiot.
Top
Why did you feel the need to call someone an idiot? Personal attacks and name calling aren't productive and they are one of the reasons that this message board has come under scrutiny.
Reply to this Top
Why did you feel the need to be a self-righteous prick on the internet? The columnist was clearly hyperbolating about the cause and extent of the US's deficit problem in relation to the Greek problem.
Top
As is evident from a brief glance at our current deficit - approximately 12,500,000,000,000 - the problem does not reside with one party or the other. This is a universal problem. In the early 80's the debt was around 1 trillion dollars and has increased to over 12 trillion in approximately 25 years. There have been Republican and Democratic presidents during that time period, of which only one reduced the budget deficit, and therefore the national debt (Bill Clinton is the only president in the past 35 years to pay down the national debt).
Reply to this Top
Thanks in no small part to the coincidence of being in charge during an 8-year period when the NASDAQ saw a more than 5-fold increase. Not saying Clinton was a bad budgeter, but he got lucky with the amount of tax revenue coming from a booming internet industry. Sort of an uneven playing field. Though maybe I'm being too harsh, since his policies may have directly led to the market run-up; his VP Al Gore invented the internet, after all.
Reply to this Top
Yes, but Republicans sell themselves as the party of fiscal responsibility.
Reply to this Top
I would argue that both parties bill themselves as fiscally responsible. Fiscal responsibility is different than fiscal conservatism. It simply means balancing your expenditures with your revenue. The issue is not with responsibility; it is with what the government should and should not do. Core Republican principles, which, granted, have been thrown to the wind in recent years, are to spend less and thus require less revenue. Democrats tend toward achieving a balanced by including more funding for social programs, which requires spending more and generating more revenue.
Top
"...Cold War relic F-22 Raptors..."
There is nothing 'relic' or Cold War about the F-22.
Reply to this Top
Mike,
The next time you have a thought... just let it go.
Reply to this Top
And the "smarter and more honest" party you look towards is, I presume, the Democratic party? The same Democratic party which has taken, by my recollection, three separate votes raising the debt ceiling for the current year's budget deficit in the last year? The truth of the matter is, the Federal Government actually collects far more money than it actually is entitled to spend Constitutionally. I don't see anywhere in the Constitution which permits, say, foreign aid to be granted from the public treasury. Or "social safety net" programs like medicare and social security to be operated. Or entities like the Department of Education to operate. Quite honestly, it isn't the parties involved so much as it is the irresponsibility of the populace to recognize that their government is operating well outside the boundaries the Founders originally created for it. Politics has become a career rather than an opportunity for public service - and a gullible and ill-informed public has gone right along with it all the way. Changes to the nature of budgeting and governance will only come when the public takes a greater interest in the means by which it is governed.
Reply to this Top
This comment has been buried by moderation (show comment)
Reply to this Top
Photoshop detection site <a href="http://www.pskiller.com/">Photoshopped Image Killer</a> works by analyzing the patterns in photos. Unaltered photos have natural patterns in terms of lighting, contrast and scale. Altered photos will show unnatural patterns. As there's no single technique, pskiller.com has leveraged a suite of tools to do image forensics analysis.
Reply to this Top
As photography has gone digital, it has become easier and easier to manipulate images with Photoshop and other technology. Digital photographs used in the news industry are often adjusted for reasons of aesthetics, but they can also be altered with the aim to deceive editors or readers. Luckily, digital detection technology is quickly advancing as well, like <a href="http://www.pskiller.com/">Photoshopped Image Killer</a>, which can tell you whether an image has been Photoshopped or not.
Reply to this Top