JONATHAN CHAIT NOVEMBER 8, 2010
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It's pretty remarkable when even Jim DeMint, the patron saint of the conservative purists, insists that Social Security and Medicare are sacrosanct:
GREGORY: All right-- let me ask you about another hot button issue. And that is the debt ceiling. Come spring, Congress is gonna have to vote to raise the debt ceiling, because our debt is increasing. And it’s reaching the $4.3 trillion limit that Congress has already set. $14-- .3 trillion limit-- that Congress set in February. Will you vote to increase the debt ceiling?
DEMINT: No, I won’t. Not-- not unless this debt ceiling is combined with some pa-- path to balancing our budget. Returning to 2008 spending levels. Repealing Obamacare. We have got to demonstrate that we have the resolve to cut spending. Now, we’ve already spent the money and raising the debt ceiling is just like paying off your credit card bill. But we cannot allow that to go through the Congress without-- showing the American People that we are gonna balance the budget. And we’re not gonna continue to raise the debt in America.
GREGORY: All right, well, let me ask you specifically about that. Where would-- do you think the American People have to be prepared for sacrifice? Which part of the budget, knowing that there’s only 15 percent that’s non-- discretionary-- or that’s real-- that’s real-- non-defense discretionary-- part of the budget. What are you gonna target-- for cuts?
DEMINT: Well, I don’t think the American People are gonna have to sacrifice as much as the government bureaucrats who get paid about twice what the American worker does. First of all, we just need to return to pre-Obama levels of spending in 2008. We need to cut earmarks so people will quit focusing on taking home the bacon. We need to defund Obamacare. And then we need to look at the entitlement programs, such as-- the way Paul Ryan has done in the House with his road map to America’s future. To fix our tax code, to fix Social Security and Medicare, and to cut the cost over time. We’ve got the plans, David, to do this. We just-- we need to talk about ‘em. We need to help the American people see where we’re going.
(CROSSTALK)
DAVID GREGORY: I want to be very-- very-- very specific, because going back to 2008-- spending levels will not get anywhere close to balancing the budget. So, you’re saying that everything has to be on the table. Cuts in defense. Cuts in Medicare. Cuts in Social Security. Is that right?
DEMINT: Well, no, we’re not talking about cuts in Social Security. If we can just cut the administrative waste, we can cut hundreds of billions of dollars a year at the federal level. So-- before we start cutting-- I mean, we need to keep our promises to seniors, David. And cutting benefits to seniors is not on the table.
Excuse me –let me grab a sip of water.GREGORY: But then-- but where do you make the cuts? I mean, if you’re protecting everything for the-- the most potent political groups, like seniors, who go out and vote, where are you really gonna balance the budget?
DEMINT: Well, look at-- Paul Ryan’s roadmap to the future. We see a clear path to moving back to a balanced budget over time. Again, the plans are on the table. We don’t have to cut benefits for seniors. And we don’t need to cut Medicare. Like-- like the Democrats did in this big Obamacare bill. We can restore sanity in Washington without cutting any benefits to seniors or veterans.
Aside from "cutting waste," DeMint's one big idea for saving money is to repeal the Affordable Care Act. And what does he attack the Affordable Care act for? Cutting Medicare! So he's essentially conceding that his "deficit-reducing" plan involves increasing the deficit.
14 comments
Of course they are frauds. Chait you have called this on them for the past few years. Wait for the return to "Deficits don't matter" mentality as long as tax cuts for the rich are on. However, there is another part of what he is saying in the interview which I watched. Seniors and older baby boomers are calling for a generational war against the young. The benefits they get that they never paid enough into the system are sacred. The under 55 crowd will have to keep paying but get much less. Look at who voted in this election. Generation I got mine was out in full force!
- MikeB.
November 8, 2010 at 4:24pm
DeMint doesn't seem to understand that Paul Ryan's plan is to cut Medicare too. What happens next in the transcript? Does Gregory point out that Ryan's plan also requires "cuts in benefits" to seniors? (I'm putting quotations because Obamacare is mostly cutting benefits to private insurance companies that sell Medicare Advantage policies)
- tysonsahib
November 8, 2010 at 4:33pm
DeMint doesn't seem to understand that Paul Ryan's plan is to cut Medicare too. What happens next in the transcript? Does Gregory point out that Ryan's plan also requires "cuts in benefits" to seniors? (I'm putting quotations because Obamacare is mostly cutting benefits to private insurance companies that sell Medicare Advantage policies)
- tysonsahib
November 8, 2010 at 4:33pm
DeMint simply isn't going to concede that, insofar as the Affordable Care Act cuts Medicare spending, it cuts spending that don't amount to real benefits. He's not going to acknowledge that Medicare Advantage was involving free enterprise in benefit provision only so they can inflate the margins without actually adding value from a patient perspective. And he's not going to allow that repealing ACA actually increases the deficit. Asking Jim DeMint to provide policy guidance and then bothering him to address counter-arguments is like asking your marketing department to take sole responsibility for strategic planning. This is exactly why a guy like DeMint, who's been working so very hard to straddle the divide between the institutional activists and office holders, the better to maximise his influence, should be brought in for interviews and drilled with these kinds of questions at least once a week, the better to remind people that the ideas people on the right fail basic math if it's anything other than sizing up their own vote. I live abroad, so I'm curious to know just how much coverage was dedicated to analysis of Ryan's proposal grab-bag in the run-up to the election, given that the GOP congressional leadership seem to position him as their most serious policy guy. Has political coverage since the healthcare debate been serving junk diagnosis of inside baseball, or has there been real treatment of what's behind door number two, either as criticism or elaboration of alternative legislative proposals?
- bayardgb
November 8, 2010 at 5:28pm
You have to remember tysonsahib, Paul Ryan's fraud (I refuse to call it a plan because the numbers don't add up.) doesn't start cutting for anyone over 55. Hence Generation I got mine is all too willing to gut OTHERS'S Medicare (especially people that happen to be more likely to be browner than them). Why anyone under 55 would vote for these charlatans is beyond me. It truly is fiscal child abuse...
- MikeB.
November 8, 2010 at 5:29pm
Bayardrgb, As Paul Krugman and others have pointed out, Paul Ryan's "Roadmap" doesn't actually add up in basic math either. My guess is that Ryan has baiscally served as a walking talking point. When the GOP got called on having no actual plans with real numbers, Paul Ryan was trotted out as if his plan answered that. Never mind that the GOP never actually ran on it. Too much scrutiny would have shown it was a fraud of monumental size.
- MikeB.
November 8, 2010 at 5:33pm
I can hardly blame DeMint for being a dishonest sociopath - that's who he is. If the press and the American people buy his endless lines of malevolent, shallow hooey, then they get what they deserve. Bitter old boomer white people demolishing what little is left for young people? Well, that's what they do. If young people don't pay attention and bother to vote, then - well, you know the rest.
- WandreyCer
November 8, 2010 at 6:05pm
I have seen this conversation with other politicians. The anchors ask the same question and they don't get answers. 2008 spending levels, adult conversations, its all in some roadmap somewhere, but they can't describe what it is they are going to do. I am predicting them to say: cut taxes and the economy will be so big it will carry us away to a land of fairies and elves and we can eat candy and anything you want all day long!
- Nusholtz
November 8, 2010 at 6:07pm
In answer to bayardgb's last question: Mostly junk diagnosis. The media does love a horse race. There was plenty coverage of Christine O'Donnell though. There was good coverage on Ezra Klein's blog and that kind of thing but I don't think anyone whose mind needed changing read that kind of thing. I am very curious to see what the Republicans will do. I think they will focus all their efforts on extending the Bush tax cuts, that's their main political winner. I think other than that they will try to do absolutely nothing but tell Obama it's his job to make the proposals and their job to shoot them down.
- tysonsahib
November 8, 2010 at 6:59pm
What Chait and everyone else on these boards should be hollering about isn't De Mint's and those of his ilk's mendaciousness; he should be hollering about Obama's and every other leading Democrat's abject failure to speak clearly and simply about the economic truths. All of us know that the Republican economic "plan" is pure fantasy. All of us know that tax cuts for the wealthy are a crock (though realistically speaking they're a small part of the problem.) Why will Barrack Obama not just simply SAY what we all know to be true? He was was interviewed on 60 Minutes last night, and it was a total blurr. HE was a total blurr. Why can't he stand up and give a speech like this? "The economy is a shambles to a significant degree because the fiscal stimulus package we passed in 2009 was too small. It was the size that it was because Senate Republicans threatened to block passage of anything larger and at that time getting something rather than nothing passed was our priority. But the fact that I accepted this compromise doesn't mean that I liked it then or that the program that resulted was adequate to the task. The Republicans have been telling you, are telling you even today, that what this country needs more than anything else right now is cuts in government spending. And you know what? That sounds pretty good. It sounds like common sense. We all recognize the wisdom of thrift, of hunkering down in hard times and holding on tight to what we've already got. But what the Republicans will never explain to you is that what is common sense for individuals is the exact opposite when it comes to governments. What this country needs right now more than anything is jobs. And you know what else? Jobs cost money. For a job to be worth anything, somebody has to be willing to pay somebody else to do it. The Republicans say that private business will fill this gap, that if we just let businesses and rich people pay a smaller share of their incomes in taxes that out of the goodness of their hearts, they'll plow all that tax money they save into hiring people to work for them. But I'll tell you something about that little theory of theirs, something that's called "trickle-down economics", it doesn't work. It hasn't ever worked. Businesses create new jobs when they see an increase in demand for their products, not when suddenly the government makes them a present of a big stack of money. "Say I'm in the business of making rubber balls. Because of the recession, nobody wants to spend money on rubber balls right now. Rubber balls just aren't a priority for people. Over the past two years I've had to lay off half the workers at my rubber ball factory. I've cut my rubber ball production to about a third of what it was before the recession hit, and I've still got excess inventory sitting around, but through my cost-cutting measures I've still managed to keep the business profitable. Now suppose the government cuts the tax I have to pay on those profits by, say, 90%, putting several million dollars back in my business's coffers. Am I going to use that extra money to go out and hire back the workers I laid off? To do what, make a bunch of rubber balls that nobody wants to buy? That would be ridiculous. After all, I'm not running a charity. No sir, all I'm going to do with that extra money is put it in the bank and sit on it. "So if what we want to do is create jobs in order to provide some relief for the millions of Americans who are suffering in this economic crisis--and if that isn't what the Republicans want to do, then they need to tell us so--then what we need to do is increase, not decrease government spending. You can throw all the money you want at private businesses and it won't create a single job until general economic conditions improve. What we need right now is for the government to pay for schools to hire teachers, for towns and cities to hire police officers and firefighters, for contractors to hire construction workers to build and repair our nation's highways, railways and bridges. All of those are jobs that we can create right now, and for every one of those there are five other jobs in the private sector supported with all those teachers, firefighters and contruction workers go out to buy their cars and their groceries. I won't kid you, all those jobs cost money. They cost the government money, and they will result in a higher deficit in the short term. But you know what? We can afford it. What we can't afford is to listen to men like Jim De Mint who argue that we can create jobs by firing workers--remember that every one of Mr. De Mint's hated 'government bureaucrats' is a person with a family and a job to do."
- AaronW
November 8, 2010 at 8:13pm
Ah, excuse me, w, but young workers will be paying for the Boomers' retirement benefits. Social Security is a pay-as-you-go program. Therefore, poor young workers will be contributing to the sedentary, comfortable lifestyles of the Joe Boomers. It is really pathetic when someone who detests a person resorts to invoking the term "sociopath." I mean, I really don't like Jim DeMint and he is a fiscal fraud but the excerpt of this very transcript shows that he isn't serious about deficit reduction, so how can he be draconian and a sociopath?
- liberal reformer
November 8, 2010 at 9:44pm
lib ref, call me silly, but I think you and Wandrey are in agreement about the grabby Boomer's tendancy to give us Gen-Xers (and Gen-Yers too) the shaft and, not only that, to do it with self-righteousness. That said, the Baby Boomers aren't the first to play this game. The old--who vote--have been screwing the young--who don't--for at least the past 60 years.
- AaronW
November 8, 2010 at 10:00pm
Nuscholtz, You probably should add "end bailouts" and "Everything is on the table." Those are the other memes. P.S. The biggest one ---- "UNCERTAINTY!!!"
- MikeB.
November 8, 2010 at 11:01pm
It's all hot air. Obama might as well just whistle dixie while wearing a white robe for all the good it would do. People want the economy to be at least as good as it was before it went to shit; if Obama delivers, he could do it scantily clad with a coterie of white women and inter-racial relationships would become en vogue, or horns and a pitchfork with an inverted cross that spins on a chunky gold chain and fundamentalists would dismiss it as "nobody's perfect". If Obama doesn't deliver, he's gonna need that ability to walk on water to escape the angry mobs of voters who decide they don't want to wait until January to get the newly elected Republican into office.
- GSpinks
November 9, 2010 at 12:14pm