Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Democrats Defend (Medicare) Benefits for Billionaires

The latest version of Democrats’ payroll tax proposal includes two provisions designed to reduce federal welfare subsidies paid to millionaires and billionaires from the unemployment insurance and food stamp programs.  But it’s worth emphasizing that the new bill does NOT impose additional means-testing on Medicare (or Social Security, for that matter).

If ever there was a program in desperate need of reform NOW, it’s Medicare:

  • The Congressional Budget Office projects that Medicare Part A will spend nearly $40 billion more than it takes in this fiscal year, and run a further deficit of nearly $30 billion next year.
  • At a time when Europe faces major sovereign debt woes, Medicare is now running a bigger fiscal deficit than Greece.
  • The President’s Chief of Staff, Bill Daley, said in July that the program “will run out of money in five years if we don’t do something.”
  • And the President himself acknowledged that “if you look at the numbers, then Medicare in particular will run out of money and we will not be able to sustain that program no matter how much taxes go up.  I mean, it’s not an option for us to just sit by and do nothing.”

The President’s most recent deficit submission proposed additional means-testing for wealthy beneficiaries.  One would think that a party breathlessly waiting to raise taxes on “the 1%” would be chomping at the bit to take Medicare subsidies away from people like Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.  Yet what have Democrats done on this Medicare reform?  Nothing.  And why do they want to do nothing?  In a word, politics:

  • One House Member objected to any agreement between the President and Republicans on fundamental entitlement reform, because reforming entitlements now would “cancel out any bludgeoning that Democrats might give the Republicans over Medicare and Medicaid.”
  • The Washington Post’s liberal Plum Line reported in July that Senate Democrats don’t want to pass Medicare reform because it would be “giving away the biggest [political] advantage” Democrats have had “in some time.”
  • In a story last week, Rep. Steve Israel, Chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, “declined to say whether a [deficit] agreement to cut entitlements might have hindered his political strategy.”  In other words, Democrats WANTED the supercommittee to fail – so that they could resume their “Mediscare” political attack ads against Republicans.

The latest payroll tax proposal only re-emphasizes one key difference between the parties: Democrats itching for a massive tax increase are unwilling to raise Medicare premiums on millionaires and billionaires to help improve Medicare’s solvency – because they would rather gain politically than fix the problem.