GOP budget plan is ‘Ludicrous and Cruel’ and ‘radical, almost otherworldly’

The proposed budget by the U.S. House Republicans really illustrates what the Grand Oil Party really stands for: throwing money at the super rich while shredding the social safety net and attacking the poor and the middle class.

Nobel Prize Economist Paul Krugman calls the budget floated by Paul Ryan “Ludicrous and Cruel” saying it is “voodoo economics …with an extra dose of fantasy, and a large helping of mean-spiritedness.”

The budget assumptions are based on an unemployment rate of 2.8 percent — “a number we haven’t achieved since the Korean War,” and according to the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) the large part of the supposed savings from spending cuts cutting programs that mainly serve low-income Americans will go to pay for more tax cuts for the rich. “In fact, the budget office finds that over the next decade the plan would lead to bigger deficits and more debt than current law. “

LA Times columnist Tim Rutten says Ryan’s fantasy plan “would push the aged into poverty,” calling it an “attempt to abolish Medicare and gut Medicaid, while further lowering the taxes paid by corporations and wealthy individuals.”

It just goes to reason that they want to kill Medicare because it's the most efficient and popular health insurance program in the country with more of each dollar going into actual health care instead of overhead and profits and salary for the CEO. In fact, the prigram operates with 3 percent overhead compared to 15-30 percent by for profit providers.

The CBO has outlined what adoption of this proposal to supplant Medicare with vouchers and private insurance exchanges would mean, and it means “the overall cost of healthcare would go up, and retirees' out-of-pocket medical expenses would double — an increase that would push tens of millions of people living on fixed incomes over the financial brink.”

Henry J. Aaron, a Senior Fellow of Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, confirms that Ryan’s will not reduce the deficit, calling the plan “radical, almost otherworldly.”

In addition to killing Medicare and cutting Medicaid by 75 percent, it cuts spending on just about everything the government does. “By 2050, government spending would be a smaller share of the economy than in any year since the presidency of Herbert Hoover,” and we know how well that turned out. “Among the programs that would suffer drastic reductions would be national defense, housing, education, agriculture, the environment and veterans affairs.”

It’s funny that Republicans like Ronald Reagan and more recently Dick Cheney said deficits don't matter, but now at a critical time when we are coming out of the longest and deepest recession since the Great Depression deficits now matter. It’s like they want the economy to tank.

Now is the time to improve health care insurance reform

Now that the U.S. House Republicans have placated their extreme base with a purely symbolic repeal of health care insurance reform, they are being urged to stop wasting time and really try to improve health care insurance.

Former Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, who is also a medical doctor, said it was important to consider the bill the "law of the land" and move on from there. Now, I don’t agree with Frist on much, especially after the Terry Schiavo fiasco in 2005, but this is a great opportunity to improve the law.

Getting this historic, ground-breaking legislation through was a major and difficult task, but now that President Obama has accomplished something that U.S. Presidents since TR Roosevelt have tried to accomplish, now is the time to make a compromise bill even better. The Social Security Act was improved over the years to make it as popular and useful as it is now, and this should be no different.

One way would to make it better would be with a public option or better yet, a universal single-payer system like Medicare for all. Medicare is the most popular health insurance program in the U.S., based on patient surveys, and the program operates with less than 3 percent overhead compared to 15-30 percent by for profit providers, meaning that more money goes to actual patient care.

It would allow small business, which is the backbone of the U.S. economy, to compete with huge corporations, and it would allow U.S. corporations to compete with foreign corporations. Health care costs adds hundreds of dollars to the price of a U.S. auto, compared to Japanese, Korean or German made cars that do not have to factor that in because they have universal health care.

The good news is we are not going backward, and the U.S. Senate is not going to waste time and energy to take up something that does not have enough votes to pass and the President has made clear he will veto. However, that has not stopped Republicans from playing politics with it, which is what they do instead of actually governing.

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-VA., has been taunting Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to waste more time and bring up the bill for a vote.

Even more ridiculous were the comments of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who pledged the Senate would vote on a repeal health care insurance reform. Good luck.

McConnell said “he's "perplexed" Democrats wouldn't want to hold a vote on one of their signature legislative agenda items.” Is he that stupid? I can answer that one, as can anyone with a brain: because they already held a vote and won after enduring threats, violence and lots of hard work. Why would they vote on something they have already won, unless Senate Republicans offer something better, like a public option or Medicare for all?

To quote an alleged Republican leader, health care insurance reform is the "law of the land" and we need to move on from there