All That Debt

Um, as long as you’re talking about ringing up national debt, don’t you have to mention those little war thingies, too?

Ye’re fergettin’ th’ war in Iraq, Joe, me lad – in addition t’ th’ tens o’ thousands o’ lives it cost (inclucin’ unfortunate Iraqis in th’ figure), it be addin’ trillions o’ dollars t’ th’ debt. An’ we decided t’ be passin’ th’ war “entitlement” without payin’ fer IT, either!
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10 days an’ countin’ t’ ITLAPD – YARR!

“George W. Bush wiped out all that. His tax cuts, overwhelmingly for wealthy Americans were bad enough. Then he passed a major entitlement–prescription drugs for the elderly–without paying for it. That’s what created the hole we were in”
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I realize as a early supporter of the war in Iraq you would prefer it go into the memory hole, and while much of the dollars were not included in the budgets, it really should be included.

Ye beat me by two bloody minutes, Bftsplk, blase ye !
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10 days an’ countin…YARR!

b-l-a-s-T!

It’s an honor to agree with you, pirate.
Even if I can’t be nearly as articulate.
You too, PNNTO.

Be this goin’ in th’ dead tree issue, by any chance? Considerin’ all th’ rot bein’ spread ’bout health insurance reform needin’ t’ be budget neurtal, an’ bein’ tha’ it be Republicans who be shoutin’ th’ loudest ’bout th’ deficit, why ‘r why not point out t’ a wider audience tha’ it be th’ very same who got us into this mess?
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Yarr!

Blimey! neutral!
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Wha’ ‘appened t’ me preview?!
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Yarr.

Perhaps multiple voices will have an impact?

We spent the last decade paying for costly occupations in two foreign countries and the stingy prescription drug benefit given only to the country’s seniors is the cause of our deficits? Sheesh!

To quote Basil Fawlty (“Germans” episode):

“Don’t mention the war!”

For what it’s worth, Mr. Klein, we do appreciate you pointing out where the true blame lies. We just think you neglected to mention the elephant in the room.

[...] Joe Klein adds: …there are only two presidents in the past 50 years who took the national debt seriously after it exploded when Lyndon Johnson refused to fund the Vietnam war–George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton. The Clinton experience is particularly important: he raised taxes to address the deficit. The Republicans said it would throw the economy into recession. It didn’t.  Clinton’s 1993 economic plan threw the economy into…a massive expansion and budget surpluses that reduced the national debt significantly.  (I remember reading pieces at the turn of the 21st century about the consequences of eliminating the national debt.) [...]

Just saw Max Baucus on TV, man what a beaten and pathetic individual. His press conference had the air of a perp-walk.
You can just tell that he knows Enzi and Grassley have been sitting on his face tea-bagging him since June, and he can’t do anything about it because his true constituents–the insurance companies that bought his black little soul a long time ago — have ordered he present his chin for the continued tea bagging.
That’s gotta hurt, knowing the Baucus legacy is to be a bought and paid for landing pad for tea baggers like Enzi and Grassley.

The Republicans lack a moral core, which is yet another reason why objectivity rather than balance should animate all serious news coverage.

Let’s face it. The only time Republicans start screaming about the debt and fiscal restraint is when they aren’t in the White House. They sell it and sell it and sell it till they get re-elected and then immediately get a case of amnesia.

You know I have always thought, and was taught in my Political Science classes, (I do have a BS in PolySci), that it is the Congress who is responsible for passing budgets, directing spending, and in control of policy for the IRS regarding the collection of taxes.
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This I think explains it quite well. Budget Control and Spending
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“Since 1980, the national debt has for the most part risen under a Democrat controlled Congress and fallen under a Republican controlled Congress. I have heard the argument from the libs about Reagan and Bush hiking the national debt and Clinton reducing the debt, but who is in control over making the budgets: Answer Congress

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A clear conclusion can be said Republican Congress reduces the national debt and the Democrats spend, spend spend.
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Does it not? Please show me Joe Klein where it is otherwise, other than “Andrew Sullivan”, and I might become a believer in your total bull crap.
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“But make no mistake: If you believe the national debt is a big problem, don’t blame the Democrats. Without question, they have been far more responsible–and, dare I say, conservative–party when it comes to balanced budgets for the past 30 years.

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Could you cite your sources for your claim on this Joe? I for one would be really interested to see the graphs that clearly show it as truth, and not simply pandering on your part to the Democrats. Maybe you could even pull the Constitution in on this to demonstrate exactly who does have control of the National purse strings. That should really define it clearly. Don’t you think Joe?
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Unless you are saying that Andrew Sullivan is the expert on these facts, and was around in the early days with Jefferson, Franklin et al.
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Please anyone correct me, the President is charged with carrying out the wishes of the Congress so far as spending is concerned through the OMB. Right? But that office is aptly named Office of MANAGEMENT and BUDGET. Meaning, they manager how the money is spent, but do not control the amounts authorized by Congress to spend.
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Now I suppose the President can veto budgets, unfortunately not line items, but the entire budget as passed by the legislature. Perhaps guilt can be shared in that respect.
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But again Joe, I am curious as to your thoughts on what I have said. Your reply?

“Without question, they have been far more responsible–and, dare I say, conservative–party when it comes to balanced budgets for the past 30 years.”
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Oh, do dare. Democrats have been, without any question, the conservative party – as opposed to the lunatic movement “conservative” party – for the past 30 years. Eisenhower would practically be a liberal in today’s political landscape.

This would be a great answer for a 10th grade social studies exam. Unfortunately, for the adult population it falls a little short.

Who exactly is this written for? Anyone who gives a crap about politics and economics noticed this phenomenon long ago. Or believes that Obama is a Marxist.

But the debt really took off under Bush Jr., Rusty, aided and abetted by the GOP-controlled Congress. See what Reagan aide Bruce Bartlett has to say about the GOP forfeiting the mantle of fiscal responsibility.

Reagan would practically be considered a liberal in today’s political landscape for that matter. Or at least he would be considered one of those pesky moderate coastal Republicans.

When Reagan took office, the national debt was under $1 trillion. Reagan never accounted for his tax cuts in the budgets that he presented to Congress (he relied on the false notion that tax cuts pay for themselves). Were the Democrats complicit to a degree? Yes, but the POTUS controls the agenda. At least, unlike the case with Bush II, Reagan did raise taxes when it became clear that tax cuts do not pay for themselves and didn’t fight an unnecessary and unfunded war.

When the Republicans controlled both the White House and Congress, they took a balanced budget and a projected surplus and turned it into to a massive debt, in part because they didn’t learn the lesson that tax cuts don’t pay for themselves.

Sorry to burst your undergraduate degree enclosed bubble, but those are the facts.

See what Reagan aide Bruce Bartlett has to say about the GOP forfeiting the mantle of fiscal responsibility.
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Why not quote Dick Cheney?
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‘You know, Paul, Reagan proved that deficits don’t matter. We won the mid-term elections, this is our due.’
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I would agree Republicans when they were placed in power after the 1993 elections acted like well Democrats. If Republicans “lack a moral core” (an interesting accusation from liberals who believe right and wrong is a gray area) then Democrats lack logic. If you look at tax receipts as a percent of GDP over history they have been stable, at approximately 8%, regardless of tax rate. In 1960 with the highest marginal rate at 91%, tax receipts were 7.9% of GDP. In 1980, tax rate of 70% it was 9.4% and in 1982 when tax rates fell to 50% it was 9.2%. And in 2001 after the “big giveaway to the rich, tax receipts as a percent of GDP hit a record high of 9.6%.

For the number impaired “it’s the spending stupid”. And despite the cries here over the war costs, the silence is deafening over what is the exit strategy and how many have died since Jan 2009. These cries were front page daily occurrences when Bush was in office. Now after campaigning to end the wars (and spending) we are met with the same strategy and yet no whining from the left.

And I am sure everyone is comforted by Obama’s promise to have a deficit neutral bill. I could list the other campaign promises that have been broken in less than 8 full months on the job but this site’s server would meltdown from the volume.

The public is already having voter regret as noted by Obama’s polls. But maybe he can blame that on Bush saying he inherited his low poll numbers!

Something about the largest tax increase in American history, if I recall correctly…

freeper ya bloody twit –
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Obama’s numbers be declinin’ b’cause ‘e be tryin’ t’ be too accommodatin’ t’ th’ Republicans – NO’ ’cause ‘e be no “conservative” ‘nough. Th’ majority o’ those who be losin’ conficence in ‘im be doin’ so ’cause we were wantin’ change, an’ so far, ‘e be too blasted timid in deliverin’.
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Yer flagrant dishonesty be disgustin, ye slimy urchin, bu’ no’ unexpected, considerin’ ye be a member o’ a morally, ethically, spiritually, fiscally, intellectually bankrupt fringe party tha’ be total’ disconnected fr’m reality!
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Ye know wha ye can be doin’…it be beginnin’ wi’ F, an’ endin’ wi f, too, fer tha’ matter!
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yarr!

Joe Klein what happened? Did you hear the President’s remarks at the Cronkite memorial? Is that what prompted this somewhat unprecedented acknowledgement of reality.

Democrats have been cleaning up the GOP’s economic disasters since Roosevelt cleaned up Hoover’s big one In 1933. It is the media that allows the GOP to continue this myth of being good on the economy. why no one has ever drawn a distinction between only caring about money and be good with it, is beyond me. But what are you going to do as far as the media is concerned “tax and spend liberals” just rolls off the tongue and the truth never fit into your prescribed media narrative.
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Right now the media has collectively tried help the GOP to derail health care reform, not because its unneeded, or because the Democratic plan will be a bad one — no you’ve helped them by focusing on the fringe critics, changed poll question wording and failed to cover anything about the other side except the intra party battle over the public option, because that foments the kind of unrest that drives ratings and if you didn’t step on the scale the GOP would be toast as they darn well deserve to be after their abysmal stewardship of the nation.
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But now the GOP crazies have done what all extremists do — and that is to go one step too far and everyone that participated in the creation of this farce sense the backlash coming are desperately scampering for the safe haven of a public denouncement. — Of course I say denouncement on day 8 is way too little and way too late.
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I give Mark Mckinnon a pass because he’s the only Republican consultant who risked his business to denounce this crap as it happened, but Gingrich doesn’t get credit for switching streams when he started the month with “Sotomayor is a racist!”
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Joe, you could have wrote about this long ago. why did you need to wait for Andrew Sullivan to focus on reality. Kathleen Parker gets a pass because she’s taken on her own party consistently since Palin reared her head into our airspace. If you want to redeem yourself Joe, you are going to have to do better than just pointing out a Sullivan post. Where’s your story, it’s not like you don’t have a medium.

Oh, C’mon Pirate Wench. Freeperinpa simply knows that President McCain’s poll numbers, after his government spending freeze and Iran bombing campaign, would be in the stratosphere. If only we’d made the right choice.

Shorter freeinpa: It’s Obama’s fault we went into Iraq and our economy had a meltdown while Bush was in office.

liberals who believe right and wrong is a gray area
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That’s not true.
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Where’d you get that idea?

“Sorry to burst your undergraduate degree enclosed bubble, but those are the facts.”
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Oh I am not defending the Republican spending sprees since 1993, both the Congressional Conrolled House/Senate while Clinton was President, and during the Bush years.
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BUT, Joe seems to imply that for the past “50 years” or more, that it has been Republican fully in charge of everything. When in fact the exact opposite has been true.
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With all but about what, 4 years of Republican controlled Congress, the Democrats have been in control of budgets and spending. As a matter of fact we can take it back more like the past 70+ years Democrats have spent like a drunken sailor.
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How else do you get the moniker over the years as the “Tax and Spend” party?
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Bush for his faults did have the first attack on American soil by a “enemy” in 60 years, Peral Harbor. Take that away and you have to go all the way back to the War of 1812 I do believe.
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9/11 and Katrina I do believe were two MAJOR National disasters if I am remembering recent history. What did Clinton have to face? Oh yes, sex in the Oval Office, and the potential impeachment for “conduct un-becoming a President”.
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And you mention the Wars. 2 Wars. Did Congress not vote to go to war with Iraq? Did they not approve the funding for the Wars? Wasn’t Congress controlled by Congress at the time of “approval” by Congress for these wars?
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So, all in all I will make the 8 years for Clinton a draw, Democrat and Republican share in the blame game for spending.
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Now today. 8 years of Bush II. 4, or is it 6 years of a Democrat controlled Congress which continues as we speak. What do we see? Spending completely out of control.
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I have been holding my Republican candidates accountable as spenders for the past few years, are you doing the same now that it is both a Democrat controlled Government for both Congress and the President?
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I think you just want to make excuses. But, what else is new? It simply LIES by Joe Klein and his band of merry liberals, trying desperately re-writing history.

Joe Klein:

Several commenters have noted that the war in Iraq–a total waste of more than $1 Trillion and, even worse, tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of lives–had something to do with the Bush deficits. Quite true. My mistake of omission.

Thanks so very much for the correction; it’s important to be clear about everything that contributes to the national debt, if we’re to have an honest debate about what to do going forward.

Joe, seriously, why even start this post by linking to Andrew Sullivan? Why not look at what some economists say.
Hell, how about start looking at what your colleague down the hall has written:

http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2009/01/19/bushs-biggest-economic-errors/

Seriously Joe, why don’t you team up with Justin and look at this issue together. Looking at this in terms of Andrew Sullivan only lets the crazies (looking at you Rusty, Spob) respond. Economics is still about numbers and as great as Repugs are at twisting those numbers, the reality is still there. We’ve been screwed by Repugs govt spending then by any Dem spending I’ve ever seen.

“And I am sure everyone is comforted by Obama’s promise to have a deficit neutral bill.”
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When does this take place exactly?
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Liberals are so great at pointing fingers, but when the finger is given to them, they simply “re-write history”.
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Isn’t that right Joe Klein?

Jeez, how did I not even notice this post by Justin

http://curiouscapitalist.blogs.time.com/2009/09/08/new-column-are-we-broke-yet/

which ties in nicely with yours Joe. Especially when it includes this lovely piece of Cheney hyperbole: “It was one of Dick Cheney’s more memorable lines. “Deficits don’t matter,” he told Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill in 2002.” which was mentioned in the comments string earlier.

stuartzechman

I believe the official term is moral relativism and its rampant in liberal thought.

Simple examples: Will fight to have murderers not executed but staunchly support the killing of the unborn.

Argue the first amendment when protesting a conservative but happily enforce “hate speech” bans.

As for Shep and the wench I suggest you lay off the Captain Jack or maybe you should start either way you can’t make any less sense

Bless yer heart, Pirate Wench!
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Freetopeeonhimself is free to teabag Rush any time he wants.
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I guess you got the barnacles outta the scuppers, matey!
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Welcome back!
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Of course, with people Rusty the Neo Nazi, Freetopissinhisowndrink, and spob, the wonder slut, just who else is there to supply such reasoned faux outrage.
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Joe has it right!

Joe Klein:

If you believe the national debt is a big problem, don’t blame the Democrats.

So how much are the Democrats’ proposals going to reduce the cost of health care in the US down from its exorbitant and unsustainable $7290 per person per year (and climbing)
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http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2009/09/08/healthcare_data/
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National per capita spending on healthcare, 2007

* United States: $7,290
* Norway: $4,763
* Switzerland: $4,417
* Luxembourg: $4,162
* Canada: $3,895
* Austria: $3,761
* France: $3,601
* Germany: $3,588
* Netherlands: $3,527
* Belgium: $3,462
* OECD average: $2,964

, toward the price tag paid by, say Germany?
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And if the Democrats don’t act to reduce the cost of health care to normal, reasonable developed-world levels, then why shouldn’t rational people blame the Democrats when Medicare goes broke paying out that $7,290/head?
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It’s not enough to just talk about whose fault it is, right, Joe Klein? Isn’t it time to act so that the American people aren’t fleeced by health care inflation run wild?
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When you say

The Clinton experience is particularly important: he raised taxes to address the deficit.

after Obama and Congress just passed a middle-class tax cut for %95 of American families, isn’t there any cognitive dissonance for you?
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Why should we be talking about the government raising taxes instead of setting the prices of drugs, hospital stays, medical procedures and laboratory tests at sustainable levels, just like the German government does?

Historically, the level of provider reimbursement for specific services is determined through negotiations between regional physician’s associations and sickness funds. Since 1976 the government has convened an annual commission, comprised of representatives of business, labor, physicians, hospitals, and insurance and pharmaceutical industries.[78] The commission takes into account government policies and makes recommendations to regional associations with respect to overall expenditure targets.

Get it, Joe Klein?
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The German government more or less sets health care prices, which is why they spend half of what we do, and get the same or better care than we do –even though they face some of the same inflationary pressures.
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Why is it that you have such a hard time talking about what we really need to do, if we’re serious about the national debt? Is it because national Democrats won’t talk about it, because they’re all afraid of something?
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When are you going to get serious about the national debt, Joe Klein?

Joe Klein:
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When you have a moment, read your friend Ezra Klein’s piece:

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/ezra-klein/
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Medicare keeps costs down somewhat better than private insurers, though not as well as private insurers did in the ’90s, and they do it by paying providers less money.
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Providers hate them for it, and that’s why doctors and hospitals and drug companies and device manufacturers have been so aggressive in opposing a public plan able to use Medicare rates.
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It’s also why Medicare’s growth rate is totally unsustainable — Congress keeps delaying the cuts in doctor’s payments that the Medicare law requires.
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If you want cost control, though, you’re going to have to follow through on one of these strategies, and that’s going to mean making providers and patients really angry.
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Both like the health system better when it’s got unlimited amounts of money flowing through it. It’s actually easier for me to imagine a system with private insurers that holds costs down than a system with the current provider reimbursement rates and relatively passive insurers (be they private or public) that holds costs down.
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Something’s gotta give.

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It’s slightly odd that Ezra focuses on “doctors’ payments” instead of the real cost inflation driver, which is drug prices, but at least he lists them all (“doctors and hospitals and drug companies and device manufacturers“).
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Is that emphasis on “doctors’ payments” instead of “rug companies” clever shorthand for the political-speak that makes setting health care prices anathema to national Democrats, I wonder?
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As Ezra says, “Something’s gotta give.” Are you prepared to have a serious discussion about federal price controls, Joe Klein?
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…Or are you too afraid of “death panels” talk?

LOL.
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Sorry, Joe Klein, that should read “drug companies”
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I’m relatively certain that the German government isn’t terribly concerned about setting sustainable prices for “rug companies” (although nice Iranian rugs are darn expensive these days).

“Are you prepared to have a serious discussion about federal price controls, Joe Klein?”
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GASP! Joe actually do a REAL peice on a topic?
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Come on stuart. For the most part, when Joe deviates from bashing Republicans, he is mired in Afghanistan. Please do not push the envelope! The cosmos might just blow up, and the Mayan prophecy for the end of the world will come true in 2012.
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I agree with stuart, Joe. When shall you ask the hard tough questions of your Democrat centrist in Congress. When are you going to ask them to initiate a bill to control the costs of Healthcare?

IQ 53

I see you are contributing to global waste again.

When they start setting prices health care professional will seek other professions. Every time time Congress has “bent the cost curve” which is French for cutting to providers, they change their practice. The number of doctors that refuse patients on Medicare grows. So you will have a mandate that they must service Medicare patients which will trigger the decrease in HC professionals.

Perhaps I’m no one to say but I think Ezra and the “cost-containers” have it wrong. Not that government doesn’t need to regulate the health care market, like all markets it’s the only thing that can keep it from being destroyed by unbridled profit-seeking. It’s that, as long as we’re treating millions of obese diabetics for those and co-morbid disease, there will never be enough “cost-containment” to make the system affordable.
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It’s those lifestyle disease epidemics that are driving our unsustainable spending and we’ll need other policies to seriously reduce future health care cost increases to manageable levels. And that’s why additional taxes on non-foodstuffs like corn syrup ought to be treated as just as sensible and necessary as taxes on tobacco or alcohol. Their all making us sick, killing and bankrupting us in massive numbers

18.3When they start setting prices health care professional will seek other professions.
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Right, junior. I’ve been in the biz 26 years, and if this happens I’m going to do what, become a golf pro? A porn star? Retire and go greeting at W’mart? If your primary motivation for getting into medicine is for the bucks (conservatives think that’s the only thing that really gets anybody to do anything, ’cause it’s the only thing that gets THEM to do anything) you will get burned out and disillusioned…just like anything else in life….

Rusty, if you really are a polysci major, then you should know that the President is the one who drafts the budget proposal, not Congress. Yes, the budget will go through the Congressional meat-grinder. But as you mentioned, the President may veto any or all of the appropriations bills if Congress makes too many changes from his original proposal.

Bottom line, it’s a real stretch to give Congress more blame/credit for budget deficits and the resulting debt than the President. The President clearly has more influence on the matter simply by the veto power, which you seem to dismiss as not a big deal. As Truman said, the buck stops with the President, so there’s no excuses.

But even if we did want to blame Congress, your point about how a “Republican Congress reduces the national debt and the Democrats spend, spend spend” is wrong, plain and simple. Look at the numbers. From 2001-2006 Republicans had the White House and both chambers of Congress. During that span we turned a surplus in the public debt into an annual deficit of nearly $600 billion. From 1981-1987, Reagan had at least 53 Republican Senators and the debt ballooned by 134% (even 75% when you account for inflation). The House was controlled by Democrats during that time though, so I guess under your logic it was their fault, not the combined efforts of the other chamber AND the President.

And let’s look at the democrats. From 1993-1995 when the Democrats controlled the both chambers, the deficit decreased from over $400B to well under $300B. Jimmy Carter had an overwhelmingly Democratic congress in both chambers, and during his term the national debt decreased when you account for inflation.

You ask Joe to cite his sources? I’ll cite one.

http://www.treasurydirect.gov/NP/BPDLogin?application=np

Seriously, I’m asking you, take the time to look at the numbers. It really is obvious.

And regarding on your second post, we’ve only had 3 years of Democratic controlled Congress, not 4 or 6. So let’s double check who is desperately trying to re-write history.

18.3When they start setting prices health care professional will seek other professions.
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Right, junior. I’ve been in the biz 26 years, and if this happens I’m going to do what, become a golf pro? A porn star? Retire and go greeting at W’mart? If your primary motivation for getting into medicine is for the bucks (conservatives think that’s the only thing that really gets anybody to do anything, ’cause it’s the only thing that gets THEM to do anything) you will get burned out and disillusioned…just like anything else in life….

I don’t know if anyone has mentioned this, but Citizens for Tax Justice has an interesting article posted – somewhat related…

“The Bush Tax Cuts Cost Two and a Half Times as Much as the House Democrats’ Health Care Proposal”

http://www.ctj.org/pdf/bushtaxcutsvshealthcare.pdf

Very well done, gloriousglo2. Though, I warn you, disproving their crazy ideas and discredited dogma will get you nowhere. That, and their hatred of liberals, is all they’ve got.

freeinpa:

I believe the official term is moral relativism and its rampant in liberal thought.

You can believe that the sun sets in the East, but it doesn’t make it so. Whose “official term” are you talking about? How exactly do you know that moral relativism, i.e. that the Nazis were perfectly fine and good within their own value system –and therefore we’re to remain objective anthropologists on all questions of good and evil– is “rampant in liberal thought”?
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I can tell you quite clearly that this is not the case, although liberals are Enlightenment Era enough in our views to be aware that different value systems exist, and to be able to objectively compare our values with with others’.
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We also know that progress can be made on great moral questions and answers. We are intellectually honest enough to doubt orthodoxy and continuously justify even our most deeply held moral premises.
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We can do these things because we can admit that change happens to human beings, and that we can get better, as in become more moral, more right, more deeply connected to our values over time when we try harder to know who we are.

Simple examples: Will fight to have murderers not executed but staunchly support the killing of the unborn.

No, that’s “It is bad to invest the state with absolute trust in matters of life and death over its citizens“. It’s a consistent principle, a perfectly sound, non-relative value.
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In both cases liberals are standing up for the value of limiting the power of state bureaucracies. In one it’s the power to kill actual human beings (depriving them of the chance to ever again prove their innocence as new evidence emerges). In the other it’s the power to criminalize the decision to destroy a fetus at an early stage of growth in somebody’s body, no matter the conscience of that individual.
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In both cases the values of good and evil are clear: it is good to keep the state at arms length from the power to kill its citizens, it is evil to for the state to have the power to invade the privacy of an individual’s body. These are our values, and we hold them dearly. We know what’s right and what’s wrong –and we think that you are wrong, and what you advocate for –state power, basically– is bad.
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There’s nothing morally relative about it.

gloriousglo2

I know 4 here in PA that have done it> One started an organic farm, another a landscaping company, one became a teacher and the last one joined an evil hedge fund. And it wasn’t burn out. They were tired of working longer, seeing more patients and charging less while one a heart surgeon quit after having to mortgage his house for malpractice premiums.

Sheperd…
“It’s those lifestyle disease epidemics that are driving our unsustainable spending and we’ll need other policies to seriously reduce future health care cost increases to manageable levels.”

I did notice you failed to mention AIDS in your “lifestyle” diseases. I can’t wait to hear liberals flounder around that one.

Hey Knucklehead:

IT IS THE TAXPAYERS MONEY. It did not cost the government a single dime!!!!

When they start setting prices health care professional will seek other professions
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….and I’ll tell you another thing, junior. Those insurance companies, which are far and away the biggest pains in my peri-anal region as a practicing physician, already tell me what they’ll pay me. So, your argument is, ya know, about a 10 outta 10 on the bogus meter…..

while one a heart surgeon quit after having to mortgage his house for malpractice premiums.
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Guess what junior? I practice in PA. I think your story about the CT surgeon is crap, because most of those guys are hospital employees now, and they don’t see a malpractice bill and rates have significantly stabilized in tis state in the last 4 years. And did you ask your friends who was cutting their reimbursement? Wouldn’t have been a private insurer, would it?

gloriousglo2

Another liberal who knows everything without knowing anything. No surprise there. And I just bet your bedside is as pleasant as your posts.

Stabilized at exorbitant rates maybe and thanks to that in PA hospitals we have doctors who do not see patients there because of insurance. The doctors in the hospitals are now an added cost to the system. Damn those insurance companies oh no that was the lawyers

Yes, Republicans are to blame for defecits/ national debt.
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Does that then give the Democrats carte blanche to continue ratcheting up debt? You can’t criticize your predecessor for something and then DO THE EXACT SAME THING. God, it’s like we’re living in the twilight zone.

I guess we should ask for ACORN and the other Democratic beneficiaries to return the money since they have no responsibility in the matter.

“Another liberal who knows everything without knowing anything.”
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Project much?

Oooh brave truths from Joe Klein. Let’s not get too impressed. How come these truths from Joe and the other posters here about republicans never seem to make it to stories in the print addition of Time or into his frequent appearances as commentor on broadcast or cable news shows? It’s pretty easy to post these things to a little read blog like this. How about Joe showing some real courage and speaking out where more people will actually see the story. Bet he doesn’t.

We’re criticizing Bush for destroying the surplus and running up the debt on frivolous things.
We’re not criticizing the Dems on running up the debt because they’re trying to stave off the fallout of Bush’s incompetence.

Rusty, still waiting for your reply to my comment at #10.5…

[...] aren’t uniformly good economic stewards; Republicans aren’t uniformly bad. (As Joe Klein points out, George H.W. Bush was a deficit hawk; LBJ wasn’t.) Still, as football coaches are [...]

[...] aren’t uniformly good economic stewards; Republicans aren’t uniformly bad. (As Joe Klein points out, George H.W. Bush was a deficit hawk; LBJ certainly wasn’t.) Still, as football [...]