I was all set to write a big post on the Supreme Court’s Obamacare decision when it came out last week, but its only in the last few days that I’ve gotten a handle on why Roberts voted the way he did. As David Frum suggested, it appears the dealkiller for Roberts was the four other conservatives wishing to throw out the entire law. That would have created, in a legal sense, a trainwreck involving nuclear waste, forest fires and school buses, so not good.
For one thing, Medicare adjusted its reimbursement schedule two years ago based on the law. Would throwing out the entire law mean all of those payments were illegal and require charging back hospitals and doctors for wrongly paid invoices? The Obamacare law also, for who knows what reason, dramatically reformed the student loan program (the Dept of Education now makes direct “single payer” loans instead simply guaranteeing private loans). Does that make the billions in loans already made ultra vires acts requiring immediate repayment? In a dozen different ways (oh, sorry Indian Health Services, you no longer exist since you were reauthorized in the Obamacare law) it would have created an infinite feedback loop of litigation. I think Roberts voted with the liberals based on the age-old legal principle that un-ringing a bell is damn hard if you don’t have a time machine.
Its all for naught though, Obamacare is a terrible plan that is not long for this world. Seeing as the insurance sector is the only industry Congress has specifically exempted from federal anti-trust laws, dropping half a trillion in “premium assistance credits” into insurance exchanges is a really bad idea. The tax subsidies are uncapped, so competitor collusion to jack up premiums (remember, there ain’t no antitrust law in Deadwood, c********r)– actions than in any other industry would lead to federal indictment– only mean bigger corporate welfare checks courtesy of US taxpayers. Its kind of bizarre that Obamacare commencement was delayed for 4 years after its 2010 signing, (LBJ started enrolling seniors into Medicare the very month it was enacted– he personally signed up Harry and Bess Truman AT the bill signing). Seeing as crashing before takeoff is usually less painful than crashing after takeoff, its a pity Obamcaare was upheld by the Court (it could have severed the unconstitutional part and kept the rest). The sooner we junk it and start over the better.
I’ve written before what I think the optimal way is to provide healthcare ((MMT – JG) + Medicare = MMT) but it seems to me the best way to move the ball forward is for congressional Democrats to hijack the Ryan-Wyden Medicare reform plan (which Romney endorsed, if predorsed were a word, he did that too).
http://www.forbes.com/sites/aroy/2011/12/15/ron-wyden-and-paul-ryans-bipartisan-plan-for-health-care-and-medicare-reform/
So next winter, offer President Romney (let’s face it, the Yellowstone supervolcano erupting is more appealing than a second term of Obama) a bill that repeals Obamacare’s exchanges and mandate and then auto-enrolls everyone into the Ryan-Wyden Medicare Advantage program. Once everyone’s on the bus, there’s plenty of time to improve Medicare benefits.
1. The individual mandate is very unpopular, Medicare is very popular. There’s a rather large political arbitrage play here.
2. It puts House Republicans (Paul Ryan, in particular) in the curious position of explaining why they won’t replace the hated Obamacare with the beloved Medicare (hard to make the case that Medicare is good for 65 year olds but bad for 64 year olds).
3. Romney would probably go for it. Obamacare’s resemblance to Mass.’s Romneycare is both intentional and politically awkward. It will only get more awkward if its still around to commence in 2014. This is a way (perhaps the only way) for Romney to cut the Gordian knot. After all, “expanding Medicare at the expense of private insurers” is “consistent with the Reagan philosophy of providing coverage where possible at the lowest possible cost. (I suppose Romney could call this Reagancare, but I’d stand pat with Medicare).
http://articles.latimes.com/1987-02-12/news/mn-2917_1_medicare-beneficiaries
“The Yellowstone supervolcano erupting is more appealing than a second term of Obama” – well, that is, at least, very clear as to the Anti-Christ currently occupying the Oval Room. Will Romney perform an exorcism before getting down to work?
Dan,
I didn’t vote for him in the primaries (I voted for Ron Paul) but there’s no question that the government is stuck and is just grinding gears. The only possibility for forward progress next year is a Romney win. If I had my druthers, Pelosi would take back the House. Boehner isn’t a bad guy but he can barely keep the GOP caucus from chewing the nose off his face, he has no hope of controlling them. Sucks for Obama, but he let the Republicans get inside his head with their deficit hysteria and its probably going to cost him re-election. Fortunately, deficits only matter when Democrats are in office, so Romney won’t have that problem.
Romney’s real problem this campaign is taxes. He’s going to get hammered all summer by the Obama campaign on his tax shelters and his 14% rate until he’s ready to burn his ships and and start marching. Somehow or another, he has to come up with a plan to make the tax code more progressive. This is the issue that can lose him the election if he can’t figure out a way to reboot his argument.
One option is making capital income taxable at ordinary income rates (more than doubling is own taxes), another is Bob Reich’s proposal to dramatically expand the EITC, or to throw the long bomb, there’s Ronald McKinnon idea of replacing income and estate taxes with annual wealth taxes (might as well replace the regressive payroll tax with a VAT while we’re at it).
http://taxprof.typepad.com/taxprof_blog/2012/01/the-conservative.html
I see Obama as an ineffective neoliberal caretaker trying to avoid big political risks and trying to hang on in a socially and economically decadent era with a “no drama” approach to corruption and stagnation. I see Romney, on the other hand, as a similarly characterless leader of a profoundly reactionary party that – whatever his own temperamental orientation – will seek to satisfy his party’s electoral base by stuffing each branch, department and administrative arm of the government with troglodytes. He will also appoint more Scalitos to the court.
You just summed up our losing options in November, pretty nicely.
Yes, the immediate political landscape is thoroughly dismal. At the beginning of the 20th century, they called the Ottoman empire “the sick man of Europe” – a very important and powerful state unable to turn its hierarchical institutions around to generate the dynamism needed to confront a challenging new, evolving world. Eventually, the Ottomans were swept away by revolution.
I think right now much of the US and Europe constitute the sick man of the global economy: important places stuck in the mire of late 20th century neoliberal capitalism with a bloated financial sector devoted to collecting rents on an enfeebled society, by hook or by crook, and delivering them to the most fortunate members of the hierarchy. The inability of the political structure to generate solutions to our decadence, and the inability of the popular culture to generate anything other than mind-wasting and escapist entertainments and lessons in subordination for the vanishing middle class, suggest to be that our society is headed for a similar crackup.
Yeah, it’s sort of coming down to Yellowstone supervolcano vs. the Chicxulub meteor. Can you buy backyard political survival shelters?
Your hopey-changey theory of Romney the “super rich so I don’t give a fuck” wild card is touching, but I think a more sober estimation is that Romney will be what he appears to be: carte blanche for capitalism and a permanent mardi gras for billionaires.
Romney’s probably a bigger Keynesian than you are, Dan.
““if you take a trillion dollars, for instance, out of the first year of the federal budget, that would shrink GDP over 5 per cent. That is by definition throwing us into recession or depression. So I’m not going to do that, of course. I don’t want to have us go into a recession in order to balance the budget.”
“There is need for economic stimulus. Americans have lost about $11 trillion in net worth. That translates into about $400 billion a year less spending that they’ll be doing, and that’s net of additional government programs like Medicaid and unemployment insurance. And government can help make that up in a very difficult time. And that’s one of the reasons why I think a stimulus program is needed.”
“If you just cut,” he said in Michigan, “if all you’re thinking about doing is cutting spending, as you cut spending you’ll slow down the economy. So you have to, at the same time, create pro-growth tax policies.”
Indeed. Ever since Reagan, and Cheney’s infamous “Reagan proved deficits don’t matter” comment, I think the GOP has actually been more Keynsian than the Dems. A Romney presidency will lead to tax cuts and larger deficits, exactly what we need. Romney is clearly scared of the class warfare attacks, so I think he will probably structure the tax cuts fairly progressively to avoid these attacks.
Obamacare is a horrible law that tries to solve the problem of soaring costs by subsidizing the existing system further. It needs to repealed and replaced with a system like Singapore or Switzerland.
Romney won’t have much say in the matter. It all depends on who is running Congress. They will no doubt cut taxes, but they will also continue to dismantle the capabilities of democratic government, and turn our future over to corporations, the financial sector and laissez faire whim
I’m a neo-socialist now. I can’t tell you how profound is my contempt for people like Mitt Romney.
Our options are pretty bad to be sure. But I read Romney’s book. He is an extremely intelligent, pragmatic and data driven man. I think you might be surprised at the types of solutions he offers and his ability to bring congressional GOPers along for the ride.
The problem is that the actual distribution of wealth and income in society will determine ‘how individual utilities are compared’ in the economy, and there is no guarantee that this will correspond to this ‘social welfare function.
Unless of course you believe that the entire nation behaves like one big happy family, and optimally reallocates income between its members prior to consumption.
C’mon guys. Obama is timid. Romney is actively evil. Balanced budget amendment CHECK. Openly lies about anything. CHECK Panders to dangerous nuts CHECK.
Anyway, I agree that Ron Paul had some good thoughts on foreign policy. But he is of course wrong about the gold standard. Let’s hope and pray for an Obama victory, or we could get a Supreme Court that will try to unring bells with no rhyme or reason other than partisan nonsense.
I wish we had another choice, but Obama has actually had fairly good results (on just about everything) compared to W. Bush. If anything, Romney is even more ridiculous than Bush. Why anyone would want to return to those hellacious days is beyond me…
I don’t see a whole lot of similarities between W and Romney, please elaborate.
Both complete idiots, for one. Have you ever watched Fox News? Do you understand the Republican base? They are fascists through and through…
Beowulf plays into the whole fascist Republican bit in supporting them in saying they don’t really mean what they say.
Sorry– But Republican balance the budget, gold standard nonsense is much worse than Obama’s conventional wisdom. Republicans are aggressively and violently stupid. Politicize the judiciary. CHECK.
Where did Romney say anything about Gold? You’re usually seem to be very level, but this seems to be nothing but rhetoric, that all Republicans are exactly the same, they’re all George W. Bush.
And remember, this is coming from an independent.
Sorry, but you’re wrong there- that’s blind rhetoric. Fox news is pretty ridiculous, but I know many, many people who are registered Republicans who are good people. Insulting people will not help win over the independent voters like myself, Dan. (Not that you were trying to, just saying).
I see the upcoming election as a lose lose. You could literally pick a name out of a hat and the results will probably be pretty similar by 2016 no matter which name you pick. I do have to give Obama big time credit for keeping the deficit as large as he’s kept it. But he’s increasingly likely to pull a Bill Clinton and leave us with the “gift” of a balance budget as well. Bottom line is, none of these guys are even close to being in the MR or MMT paradigm so the results are likely to be horrible no matter what.
I see it all depending on Congress. I don’t know why people are so focused on the Presidential election – which as you say is kind of a lose-lose business – when the focus should be on replacing the entire Congress. We were actually getting a recovery of sorts, it seemed to me, until we got the new “spend nothing” Congress in 2010. It’s true, Obama made a terrible mistake when he decided to pivot to deficit commissions, grand bargains and “out-of-money” fear mongering. But I have to believe that with all these lousy job reports, and the instinct for political survival, would have caused Obama and a Dem Congress to pivot right on back to fiscal stimulus programs and jobs programs. Instead, the electorate handed the country a Congress determined to strangle the country economically until it coughs out the President they are trying to dislodge.
All of the deficit hysteria wrought by both ends of the mall has been incredibly destructive to national confidence, including business confidence and consumer confidence – in Europe too. The “out of money” line is a Big Lie, and all it has done is spread the stink of fear over everything.
Here’s how Kevin Drum puts it today:
“Over the past couple of decades, Republican leaders have become such stone ideologues, and have made outrageous proposals (e.g. gold standard, balanced budget amendment) such a standard part of their stump speeches, that a lot of voters just don’t take them seriously anymore. They view these things less as actual plans than as statements meant to show group affiliation. As the bar gets raised year after year, Republicans have to say ever more outrageous things to demonstrate that they’re real conservatives, but it’s still just blather. They don’t actually intend to do any of this stuff if they get elected.”
http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2012/07/nobody-takes-conservative-wingnuttery-face-value
Certainly Beowulf doesn’t believe anything Romney says (or is very selective at best)…
I don’t understand why you guys are such staunch Obama supporters either though. This is a man who has killed govt jobs, which is one of the key MMT positions. You might not have liked GW Bush, but the fact is he ran big fat deficits and loved to hire people on the govt workforce. If Obama were hiring govt workers at the rate Bush was we’d likely be seeing consistent 200K+ job reports and everyone would be slurping Obama’s economic genius. I’m no rah rah Romney guy, but let’s be consistent about Obama as well. Calling yourself a “Democrat” doesn’t mean your policies have been good. And Obama’s done a lot of bad things that even Bush managed to avoid. And if your theory is based on a job guarantee funded by the govt then this is a chart that should pretty much make your head explode.
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/graph/fredgraph.png?&id=USGOVT&scale=Left&range=5yrs&cosd=2007-06-01&coed=2012-06-01&line_color=%230000ff&link_values=false&line_style=Solid&mark_type=NONE&mw=4&lw=1&ost=-99999&oet=99999&mma=0&fml=a&fq=Monthly&fam=avg&fgst=lin&transformation=lin&vintage_date=2012-07-06&revision_date=2012-07-06
Well speak of the devil. Here’s a chart from Mosler:
This includes state and local hiring, right?
Yes, and President Obama should know that state & local govt’s are revenue constrained entities with balanced budget amendments. If they don’t get federal aid when tax receipts collapse then they have to cut jobs. He chose to pass a healthcare plan instead of focusing on jobs in those first two years.
True, but he did then go back to proposing federal support for the states – not enough, but better than Republicans who are determined to drown governments in bathtubs wherever they find them
Its the republican governors who are turning down stimulus money and firing /furloughing all the unionized wrokers that are driving the public sector numbers down Cullen. Its not federal workers. Every bill that is targeted to help states get federal transfers is killed because the republicans are insisiting on “paying for it” by cutting elsewhere.
Ive been very disappointed in Obama but he at least thinks he is trying to do the right thing (short term stimulus long term balance). The repubs dont even think they are doing the right thing they are just playing hardball cuz all they want is power. Romney has certainly previously shown to be very moderate. If he governed the country like he did Massachusetts we would likely be fine but I dont think he will be able to. He sold out too much to get the nomination. No party that has behaved as the republicans have should be rewarded with running arguably the most important country on the planet. They have gone off the deep end.
I voted for Obama thinking that his economic platform was superior to McCain’s. But I’ve really been disappointed by his ability to work with Congress. I think his choice on healthcare at first was a big mistake and I think he could have played into the R’s hands much more by advocating tax cuts. I think McCain would have been even worse, but you don’t get points for being “better than average” in the White House.
And on the spending side, I think he could have done much more at first to help the states get more federal funding. States are currency users. If their rax receipts collapse they need federal aid. They didn’t get it so they made the cuts. I know it’s not Obama firing the workers, but if he understood how this all works he would have foreseen the need to help the states more.
Cullen – have you read the Ryan budget… the one Romney supports???? It is 99 pages of fear mongering about the debt, and criticizing Obama for deficit spending. So like in ’08 it is a choice btwn “worse” and “better than average”.
Of course if you think Romney is lying and will turn on Ryan and the Tea Party, you still have to hope that somehow Romney knows somethink MR-like that Obama doesn’t. I think it is a whole lot more likely that Obama cares less about deficits in a 2nd term than Romney in a first term.
There is such a thing as a Republican who tells the truth, works with the other side and isn’t afraid to say a good word about President Obama…. and that Republican’s name is Charlie Crist.
Crist was the most popular governor in then country two years ago, a thoroughly decent guy who was boxed out of the GOP Senate nomination because he didn’t pander to the crazies. Romney knows this story, in fact, his chief campaign strategist (Stuart Stevens) used to work for Crist. If Romney wants to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, great, he can go practice law in Tampa with Charlie Crist. If he wants to be President he has to pander to the GOP conservative base. Obama did the same when he pandered to the Democratic liberal base in 2008. You should give Romney credit for holding the right people in contempt. o)
David Frum dug up an awesome 100 yr old quote by F.S. Oliver that goes precisely to this point:
“Politics unfortunately abounds in shams that must be treated reverentially for every politician who would succeed. If you are the sort of man whose stomach revolts against treating shams reverentially, you will be well advised to stay out of politics altogether and set up as a prophet; your prophecies may perhaps sow good seed for some future harvest. But as a politician you would be impotent. For at any given time the bulk of your countrymen believe firmly and devoutly, not only in various things that are worthy of belief, but also in illusions of one kind and another; and they will never submit to have their affairs managed for them by one who appears not to share in their credulity. … A wise politician will never grudge a genuflexion or a rapture if it is expected of him by the prevalent opinion”.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/06/20/advice-for-politicians.html
The GOP has created and fed some of the most ridiculous and hateful beliefs the population holds. No one expects Romney or anyone else to “tell nothing but the truth” but come on…. how about not CREATING the nonsense that they later pander to?????
I’ll be voting for Obama because of the Supreme Court – if you like Citizens United and want abortion and gay marriage out-lawed, etc, etc, by all means vote for Romney.
As for Obama – he has moved center-right on virtually everything – stealing just about every GOP position (not that GOP rhetoric acknowledges that – but from his health care law to lower Gov spending and more, he sure seems like he’s using the GOP playbook). My hope is that without a concern for a 3rd term he will start to act more Dem-like.
Now if Beowolf is right that Romney will be the old Romney and not the tea party b***h that he is now, then great for the economy, but I don’t see how you can know that any more than I can know that Obama will become more Dem-like in a 2nd term. So to me, it all comes down to the potential for supreme court nominees because if we get another conservative one the country is f***ed
Exactly wrong. People like you are the reason we live in a country where the govt can force people to buy things or pay a tax. The court has usurped our freedom. I cant wait to watch liberals turn against mandates when they are mandated to do something they hate for the first time.
lol – people like you don’t realize the mandate is a Republican invention, and we liberals hate it. We want single payer. Obama should have never have gone for Romneycare since people like you were going to hate him no matter what, and gone for a true liberal idea.
I am well aware the mandate is a Republican invention. I’m not a partisan, so that doesn’t make me feel any better about it. For me it’s not just about health care, but about the legal precedent it establishes. And single payer still involves all payment being made by a middle man, therefore still leading to the cost spiral that can only be contained by price controls. The best systems in the world use first party payments to a much higher degree a la Singapore, Chile, Switzerland etc.
The idea of single payer and costs is that a monopsony has tremendous power to control prices. There is no spiral if there is only one buyer.
Hence why I said “use price controls”. But then controls are only contained via dictate leading to an inefficient distribution of resources that would not have resulted had buyers actually been exposed to prices.
OMG! The government can force me to pay taxes? What will those awful governments do next? Govern?
By the way, since I pay my taxes I pay mandated sums every day for the support of all kinds of government operations that I would not personally endorse. That’s life in a democracy. Sometimes your preferences get licked fair and square through the democratic process and you have to cough up the cash.
“I pay mandated sums every day for the support of all kinds of government operations”
Remember Dan that is not how it actually works
… your taxes do not operationally support govt spending under a FFNC regime (looks like they would though under a gold standard)… it would be good if anti-defense people on the left and anti-abortion people on the right would come into this realization… may help them sleep better if nothing else. rsp,
Actually, if taxes aren’t collected and credited to the Tsy’s account then the Tsy doesn’t have balances to spend. That’s how the system ACTUALLY works. Only in MMT’s alternate reality (the mythical “general case”) do taxes not get credited. Of course, if you’re not into accounting and reality then the operational fact is easy to shrug off. Better yet, if you’re politically motivated you might even stretch this myth into all sorts of other contradicting stories about money monopolists and banks who serve public purpose and other things that make a policy agenda more palatable.
The problem is that the actual distribution of wealth and income in society will determine ‘how individual utilities are compared’ in the economy, and there is no guarantee that this will correspond to this ‘social welfare function.
Unless of course you believe the entire nation behaves like one big happy family, and optimally reallocates income between its members prior to consumption.
Hilarious. If you want to oversimplify it and ignore the real issue that’s fine. But don’t complain when a future GOP president mandates the purchase of assault rifles, GOP t-shirts, Limbaugh bumper stickers etc or otherwise you must pay a tax. It doesn’t even have to be considered interstate commerce now to be constitutional.
Erik – you claim not to be partisan, but you are repeating ill informed Fox news talking points. Read up on the broccli rebuttal. HC and virtually everything else including all of your ridiculous examples have nothing in common. Only partisan’s could concoct the broccli defense and not see how utterly idiotic it is
This is not the broccoli example. That was brought up in response to Commerce clause and Necessary and Proper clause justifications for the mandate. The fact that the mandate has been deemed constitutional only under Congress’ authority to tax makes things different. Congress now has the ability to impose essentially any mandate as long as they structure it as a tax. Now, it is true that that a future “mandate tax” that was so high as to be clearly punitive could still be ruled unconstitutional. Politics will also hopefully prevent any ridiculous mandates from being passed. But the legal precedent was just a logical pretzel that Roberts tied and is not a good thing.
Name just 1 realistic mandate you envision so I can be scared too. Otherwise it is just hyperbole.