The Associated Press sees it differently:
How in the world could these two different news outlets differ by $352 billion? Well, the GOP budget plan theoretically calls for a full $375 billion, but they’ve only actually accounted for $23 billion in new cuts. The TAPPED blog explains what happened to the remaining $352 billion:
- We’ll worry about the specifics later. The GOP proposes capping discretionary spending on a variety of domestic priorities, from veterans to education and roads, which is certainly one way to stop spending, even if it’s a foolish one. But the GOP doesn’t even bother to specify what programs would get cut. So a “real budget cut” apparently means promising to spend less in the future and not saying how you would do it. The last time the GOP proposed this kind of fuzzy thinking, they were ridiculed by reporters. This proposal is not going to get anywhere in congress, so subtract $317 billion from the GOP number.
- What, you’re already doing that? The Republicans are promising to use repaid TARP funding for deficit reduction. It’s a good idea — so good, in fact, that it’s already worked into the budget. TARP repayments are already set to go back into the Treasury and aren’t earmarked for any other purpose. Subtract $45 billion from the GOP number.
I’m particularly flabbergasted at the completely hollow proposal to cap… umm, something… to the tune of $317 billion. That’s a lot of money — like a large enough amount of money that maybe we should actually have a concrete plan for it. It’s easy to just say Let’s spend less money! It’s harder to actually come up with a plan to do it.
In particular, I’m not happy with the word “cap.” That implies that the GOP isn’t even interested in finding savings; they just want to decree that we’ll stop spending money and be done with it. Even if they had identified targets for their budget cuts, which they’re presumably too busy to be bothered with, simply establishing a cap is the worst possible way to do it.
Ultimately, another nice try, but once again the Republican party has proven themselves incapable of actually coming up with a plan to reduce spending. You’d think they’d just quit trying, but I suppose they realize that if they’re going to attack Obama’s spending, they need to propose some cuts of their own — even if they’re not willing to actually put any effort into crafting a real plan.
The GOP proposes capping discretionary spending on a variety of domestic priorities, from veterans….
Which, of course, is one reason I loathe the (cheney)in’ GreedOverprinciples party.
They wrap themselves in the flag, and stab veterans in the back every chance they get.
They’re no good after they’re done being fodder, Tommy.
Say, lo? Who are you referring to, as “no good”?
This is another one of those stories that gets repeated all the time. Cries come to cut spending, and when someone asks “where?” there’s hemming and hawing, a few minor, chump-change cuts to “frivolous” programs, and a promise that the whole thing will be worked out later. The specifics never seem to come out, because, let’s face it, every nickel the government spends is spent because some taxpayer or group of taxpayers wanted it.
Sending is easy, cutting taxes is popular, but cutting individual programs is a trickier matter.
I meant, “spending is easy.”
Well, Randy - what P’s me off, is how the Veterans Administration spending is considered “discretionary” spending.
Bull-(cheney)in’ (droppings).
Taking care of veterans is an obligation.
No argument there.
“Say, lo? Who are you referring to, as “no good”?
The troops (according to republicans actions toward them)
You got that “right”, lo.
In right wing world, there are some who treat our troops like disposable heroes.
I say this not because of what is said, but by how they consider any criticism of the treatment of our heroic verterans as just another wedge issue, without looking at the actual real stories of how our veterans and their families are treated financially when they come home injured.
What the Republican party is not bright enough to figure out, apparently, is that the era of being able to turn any issue into a political opportunity using fallacious arguments to win elections is over.
The reply from some people who blog at “True North” will be “yeh Democrats do it too”.
It always is that, when you back a Republican blogger into a corner. That excuse is not an excuse for bad behavior.
One observation I have is that from a typical Democrat’s point of view, it is all very black and white. Money is the gauge of sentiment. If you back an issue, you fund it. If you really support an issue, you really fund it. If you don’t support an issue, you don’t fund it.
Someone who supports a cause 10% more than another guy shows it by funding it at a rate that is 10% more than what the other guy would.
That kind of thinking is asinine. That kind of thinking is what makes bureaucrats spend every penny of their budget every year even if there is not a need to. That kind of thinking is what makes politicians claim that anything short of a traditional budget increase is somehow a “cut”. I’ve always been amused by that one.
DantheMan,
“Money is the gauge of sentiment.”
Are you projecting?
Money is the foundation and base of the Republican party.
Money has a prominent place in both parties.
In the GOP, the emphasis is on keeping it in the hands of the people.
With the Democrats, the emphasis is on redistributing it though the government black box.
I’ve seen so many times, more often with the Dems, a Congressman or Senator standing at a podium declaring victory. Patting himself on the back saying he did his job well. Why? Because he extracted more taxpayer money for this cause or that issue. The end game, so often, is to get more funding.
Do these people care HOW it is spent, or if the system could deliver that service in a better manner? Or is that up to the bureaucrats? Because if it is, I can gaurantee the money will be spent, somehow, some way. And next year, a requested budget will show up from that bureaucrat with a 5% increase. Anything less than the 5% increase will be considered a “cut”.
Insane.
DtM, you’ve outdone yourself in ad hominem and non sequitor. You are like a Jedi in your ability to state nearly nothing and seem perfectly rational and reasonable in doing so.
In the GOP, the emphasis is on keeping it in the hands of the people.
Absolutely true but which people? The top 1 or 2%? The top most useless parasites on society, sucking off of the efforts and labor of those who work for a living? If that’s what you mean, then I agree completely.
With the Democrats, the emphasis is on redistributing it though the government black box.
Jeez, that doesn’t sound good at all. If I were a low info GOP partisan, I would be shouting out, “Those bastards.”
But I’m not, so I have to ask, “Redistribute to whom? and for what?” Single mothers and their children? Unemployed families on hard times? All of a sudden, it doesn’t sound so bad, if fact, it sounds like the humane thing to do. But GOP’ers are humane. They are greed driven sociopaths.
I’ve seen so many times, more often with the Dems, a Congressman or Senator standing at a podium declaring victory. Patting himself on the back saying he did his job well. Why? Because he extracted more taxpayer money for this cause or that issue. The end game, so often, is to get more funding.
Site me chapter and verse big boy. If you have time between yelling at your pool boy and busting on your gardener. You really post nothing of value and it’s more amusing then anything. But also, it’s revealing about your lack of character and the moral vacuum you must live within.
Richard, I enjoy your company too. And you raise a good point. Both sides have an argument they can fall back on which sounds compelling but only tells half the story.
The GOP can say “why take money from our citizens’ pockets and redistribute it through a massive, inefficient bureaucracy which is run mainly by political ambition?” But we forget to include that, no matter how much that politically-motivated bureaucacy sucks at getting things done efficiently, it is in the end helping some people.
The Democrats can say “but what about the single mother? And what about the hard-working guy who just lost his job? How are we going to help the lower-income kid who could be college-bound?” Man… hard to disagree with that, if you have a heart, isn’t it. But you forget to talk about where the money will come from, and that when we sign up to run a program we sign every future generation up for that obligation. You forget to talk about how, in America, we have historically allowed people the freedom to chart their own course and keep most of what they make. Some taxes are inevitable, even good, but where we are killing the golden goose to feed our addiction to bureacracy. Many also assume that the only way to help people is through tax dollar redistribution. The most heart-touching stories of transforming fragile lives I hear are usually coming from nonprofits.
But in the end, I’m not sure if I can reason with someone who enters a dialogue so prejudiced against a portion of our community as to say “The top 1 or 2%? The top most useless parasites on society, sucking off of the efforts and labor of those who work for a living?”
I have political views, but I don’t enter the arena of discourse holding an automatic grudge, even hatred, against 2% of our population. I’ll pray for you tonight, Richard.
Cutting spending isn’t necessarily cutting services, TPT. When you have a VA health system of 150+ hospitals, for example, there are bound to be redundancies. In fact, you may be able to provide better service to Veterans by have centers of excellence instead of spending $5 million on a medical machine for every hospital, the type of machine that 1 of 200 Veterans will need to use once in his life.
Also, VA was a large, large recipient of Stimulus funds…. I think they’ll be able to improve their service to Veterans even with a few efficiencies.
But, back to the point of this post, the GOP didn’t give details so we have no idea how they plan to save the money.
“Cutting spending isn’t necessarily cutting services”
Apologist sophistry, at best. Frankly, utter bullshit.
DtM - “In 2006, there were about 24 million living veterans of the U.S. military, according to VA’s estimates. In that year, the department provided medical services to over 5 million of those veterans and to over 400,000 other patients.1 An additional 2.9 million veterans were enrolled in VA’s system but did not seek services from the department that year.”
Now, you want to go to a “centers of excellence” system?
Travel costs will eat you alive.
And you’re ignoring the “Agent Orange” of today’s Iraqi veteran: DU.
Quite frankly, ChickenHawks that advocate the cutting of the perennially under-funded VA disgust me.
Which, of course and again, explains my loathing of the GreedOverPrinciples party.
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/88xx/doc8892/MainText.3.1.shtml
SO, for A more thorough example of why DtM’s idea about “centers of excellence” is crap:
I live in Minnesota’s fifth largest city. Our VA’s most expensive piece of equipment is an x-ray machine.
Under DtM’s “plan” if a febrile vet with a cough comes in, he would have to drive 80 miles round trip to Minneapolis to diagnose pneumonia vs. a simple viral illness.
Way to support our vets, “Dan” the “man” Just like a republican.
Or perhaps, and I know this is quite radical:
In the example you give, a Veteran could go to his/her favorite doctor who lives 5 minutes away. The doctor sees him with no wait, because it is a small, private practice. The Veteran flashes his VA card, and by doing so the doctor knows that his only job right then is to give this Veteran the best care he can. Everything else is taken care of.
In order to diagnose a case of pneumonia, doesn’t that make a little more sense than continuing to redundantly expand a dual-healthcare system in a country where healthcare is already insanely expensive?
Oh, and if they find that the Vet’s cough is actually from lung cancer and not pneumonia, then yes, there would be a VA Center of Excellence in Minneapolis for Oncology (perhaps shared with Fairview or Park Nicollet) where he can get the best care we can give him.
School of thought A: Spending more money on Veterans shows we care
School of thought B: Giving Veterans the best possible healthcare shows we care
I’m with B.
How about
School of thought A: Spending more money on Veterans
so that
School of thought B: Giving Veterans the best possible healthcare
The best quality always, without fail, costs more. The question becomes, how much value do we wish. Quality is always your best value. To suggest that we can spend less and get the same value is ignorant and dishonest.
Oh my god. I can’t believe what I’m reading.
That kind of linnear thinking explains why our government has grown into a bureacracy with a level of inertia that is nearly impossible to improve.
One of the great government operations victories was the Base Closing and Realignment Commission. BRAC objectively looked at the system, asked how we can provide the service to Americans without spending so much money, and made the recommendations. To do so, it required a non-partisan commission. Any Congressman or Senator would have lack any objectivity to do the right thing. They simply would have argued for the status quo, or in your scenario the status quo plus another 20%, in order to improve how we serve Americans.
BRAC will save the taxpayers tens of billions of dollars. And we didn’t have to sacrifice quality. It can happen.
DTM
“The Veteran flashes his VA card, and by doing so the doctor knows that his only job right then is to give this Veteran the best care he can. Everything else is taken care of.”
Replace the word “veteran” with “citizen” and you have a not-for-profit single payor health plan. You are advocating HillaryCare for veterans. Don’t you want that for everyone?
Yes, this is quite a radical idea if you are confused by all of the political and ideological rhetoric that surrounds this issue but in the end, you are right.
Veterans don’t exist in a vacuum. They were raised by families in a society which they have accepted the responsibility to defend. Wouldn’t most veterans want their children, wives and parents and, by extension, the larger society to have those same benefits? If soldiers fought only out of self interest, They would be mercenaries. We were headed in that direction. That is part of what the last election was about.
Richard rebuffed you I believe because you repeated the tired rhetoric of the far right about keeping money in the hands of the people as opposed to the left’s notion of the redistribution of wealth. If you don’t like the concept of the redistibution of wealth then think of it as the redistribution of health. Same thing.
Most of the individuals you would be talking about, including the veterans, are hourly or salaried workers who are essentially non-capitalists. When wealth is allowed to be concentrated in the hands of a few individuals, it negatively affects all of the remainder of the society that works for a wage. Redistribution of wealth doesn’t only refer to money. It refers to all things that bring value to life like health, education, opportunity and security. These are the true wealthy possesions that society creates and they must be widely distributed in a just society.
I understand your desire to achieve our goals in a cost effective way that improves the quality of the services deliverd. That is fiscal conservativism and should be a basic premise that guides the thinking of all of those, whether in the public or private sector, that engage in activities that serve themselves by serving the needs of others. Serving only your own needs, aka greed, is a primiitive motivator that is in fundamental conflict with the needs of society.
Richard,
You can spend less and get more when you are talking about healthcare. When a lot of the money we spend on healthcare goes to corporate profits, CEO and top level officer salaries, defensive medicine and lawyers, disputed work related injuries and the treatment of acute illnesses while prevention is neglected; there is a powerful argument in defense of the concept of spending less and getting more. That argument is reinforced by the existence of many systems around the world that do just that.
The flip side is that it is the way we have structured health care payment that fosters these inefficiencies. Those on the right usually want to maintain the status quo and simply spend less. That won’t work because the savings will mostly come from denial of care by the payors. Some of those on the left want the government to lake over the entire system. That won’t work very well either because much of the innovation in medicine is spurred by independent entrepenurial businesses like private physicians, the medical equipment manufacturers and the drug companies. Innovation is necessary to advance medicine.
To spend less and get more, some fundamental restructuring of our health care payment and delivery systems and some tough bargaining with the medical support industries will be necessary. It isn’t about health care. The science of medicine is well advanced. It is about money and who will be allowed to profit indisciminately from this essential service.
A system that improves quality and reduces cost will have these basic features.
1. A single payor source with funds managed separately by each State under Federal guidelines.
2. Mandated universal coverage.
3. Privately held, non profit hospitals.
4. Privately held provider services that negotiate fee schedules with the government.
5. Privately held medical equipment and pharmaceutical companies that negotiate contract prices with the government.
6. Mandated electronic medical records.
7. Mandated systems for monitoring and sharing boad outcomes of care.
8. Payor supported clinical research systems for basic medical research in the academic setting and for clinical investigation of the outcomes of applied medicine in the practice setting that drives improvement of best practices.
9. Payor supported dessemination of information technologies that allow the dispersal of advanced and specialty medical services to rural setting so that universal access is achieved.
We already have the technology to do all of these things. We also have more than enough money in the system to do them. What we lack is the wisdom, will and courage to change.