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I think the entire progressive blogosphere can get behind the Senate Majority Leader on this one:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) Saturday morning criticized a Washington Post columnist who called Democratic healthcare bills “budget-busters.”
“Now, Madam President, to focus on an editorial written by a man who has been retired for many years and writes a column once in a while is not where we should be,” he said in his speech on the House floor.
In his column this week, the Washington Post’s David Broder said that the Congressional Budget Office’s score of the House and Senate healthcare bill did not paint a full picture of the negative effect they would have on the federal budget.
Reid was reacting to Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who read parts of Broder’s column aloud on the Senate floor today.
It’s worth taking a look at Broder’s mess of a column. Here are the sources for his claim that the House and Senate health care bills will bust the budget:
… the executive director of the Concord Coalition, a fiscal-scold group founded by fiscal scold emeritus Pete Peterson, who pops up every time there’s a Democratic President to yammer about the deficit, while going silent during times of millionaire tax cuts and trillion-dollar wars,
… Maya MacGuineas of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, which is ALSO a Pete Peterson organization, as the Peter G. Peterson Foundation funds them,
… Douglas Holtz-Eakin, John McCain’s chief economic advisor during the 2008 campaign.
This represents the opinions from across the political spectrum which agree with Broder’s contention. Two foundations funded by the same person, and McCain’s econ guy.
The truth is that Broder would rather see 45,000 Americans die from a lack of health insurance because his right-wing buddies want to keep financing tax cuts for the wealthy and the war machine while crying poor about everything else.
So if Harry Reid wants to call Broder a dilettante, I don’t think there’s a strong argument against it.
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Thanks for revealing that it’s Pete Peterson behind the curtain.
Why anyone should take seriously the opinions of David Broder anymore is a mystery. In his prime he was once worth reading, but now he comes across as a cranky old man. And who could forget his self-inflicted coup-de-grace when he predicted after the 2006 elections that George W. Bush would leave office in Jan. 2009 with a 50% job approval rating?
Yeah, Broderella spans the commentariat from the far right wing to the extremely far right wing.
MATLOCK!
Also, pudding.
GOPers are constantly also quoting the Lewin Group, fully funded by United HealthCare (hey: no conflict of interest there), as stating that the CBO financial figures are completely wrong.
To state that Broder is a foolish tool (probably paid by Lewin or Pete Peterson or similar) to spin today’s rightwing talking point lie is to state the obvious.
Why anyone gives him the time of day (beyond the rightwing corporatists who pay tools like this to lie for their interests) is beyond me.
David Broder is the dean of the status quo circa four decades prior to whatever he’s talking about. The definition of conservative irrelevance.
Lemme see – Douglas Holtz-Eakin is unemployed and without health insurance… But not for long, I would hazard.
The mind reels, Broderella. Go pearls?
What they WILL bust is any hope of future action on providing true universal health care for all. The insurance industry will become even more deeply enriched, entrenched, and capable of whatever it wants to do, at the expense of the American people.
The Washington Post is famously opposed to any form of populist reform, and is a device the plutocracy. I am not of course referring to the actual health care “reform” legislation, which seems more a wealth distribution scheme serving the health insurance and pharmaceutical cartels. I am referring to the hypothetical real populist reform which would be possible if we didn’t have only two (corrupt) political parties.
I disagree. The genie is out of the bottle now and the American people have finally started to understand that we CAN have health care for all. Even the ones who are not for it now will see clearly when we don’t get what we should have. The national conversation has begun. Some of the dissenters will, in the coming months and years, be refused health care, or a loved one will, and that’s when they will finally realize that they were wrong.
Thanks for the optimism. I needed that.
Pony!
And I only thought that Broder was an irrelevant, senile fool. Then he spoke up and removed all doubt.
Where did you get your voodoo economic facts, David? From an Ouija board? The GOP?
I agree! Consider that many have now realized that HCAN and AHIP are joined at the hip and don’t really represent the needs or well being of we the people!
There’s been a HUGE increase in the overall knowledge base of more and more people, even centrists, and right of center folks. And we the people are becoming more and more educated and informed about it all, as a result of FAILURE of the system and the status quo.
The movement of increasing awareness is gathering steam, and as I’ve said a lot recently, this just HAS to fry the elected offals and the corporate feudalist overlords we challenge, more and more, on a daily basis!
*G*
We ain’t winning what we want, be we ARE beginning to worry the status quo, and have a footprint on shit.
In some cases we’ve (progs/libs/FDL) shed light on shit NO ONE thought we’d find (Eshoo).
Hope abounds! And we also know, those of us in our mid 50′s won’t live long enough to see an end game or HUGE change we want. But at least we’ll have hope, and help the future, one way or another.
That’s our job.
Some things that don’t get enough attention — and I don’t know, but I doubt these consequences of reform are examined by the CBO:
The impossible-to-estimate positive consequences of healthier school kids. Fewer missed days because illnesses are treated before becoming serious; fewer drop outs; more productive workforce; better school environments; in districts which are reimbursed on average daily attendance, more money.
Dramatically reduced burden on local hospital districts.
Newly empowered entrepreneurs who don’t have to stay in dead-end corporate jobs for the health insurance. In other words, more small businesses, where most new jobs are created.
All that means economic growth, that means improved tax revenues without tax hikes, that means improved infrastructure and public services, which feedback into the mechanisms of growth.
While I’d rather stay focused on the moral imperative, there’s no question that the availability of health care to 45 million Americans now left in the cold will be the opposite of a budget-buster. It’s a boon.
Lincoln will vote in support of cloture.
David has more on Blanche upstairs
Sorry I missed the party. Reid should come back Monday with real facts and Troll Slam *cough* Dean Broder like a Lefty Blogger would!
Budget buster? Hmmm… Would Bush’s imperial invasions and costly endless imperial occupations be “budget busters?” Would Bush/Republican tax cuts for the ruling class be “budget busters?” Would Bush’s sitting on his hands while the Dickster rolled out the red carpet on nine-nine and nine-ten be considered a “budget buster?”