Quote:
Originally Posted by Sidd Finch
They could reverse Medicare Part D.
Oh, wait -- that was a W program. Those don't increase the deficit. They were paid for with tax cuts.
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The fiscal credibility of the parties in two paragraphs (per Ezra Klein):
Quote:
During the Bush administration, Democrats made a big deal of the Republicans' tendency to pass big initiatives without paying for them. The tax cuts, for instance, went right onto the deficit. So too did the Medicare Prescription Drug Benefit. The Democrats promised that they'd be more responsible. They'd pay for their big projects.
When health-care reform came around, they made good. They cut $500 billion from Medicare, handing conservatives a potent attack line. They introduced a tax on high-value health insurance plans, infuriating their union supporters. They didn't just pay for the bill: They overpaid for the bill, packing it with enough spending cuts and revenue increases to cut the deficit by more than $100 billion in the first 10 years, and then used the momentum of the bill to get liberals to sign off on cost controls, like an independent board designed to control Medicare's costs, that they'd have never countenanced in normal times
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Where's club been anyway?
