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The appetite for entitlement changes
Activists hold signs that read "Hands off my Medicare" during a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C.
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Tess Vigeland: Now to our own domestic budget battles. There is no legislative business today on Capitol Hill, of course. But as soon as lawmakers get back to work, they'll return to a familiar topic in the news: the U.S. budget deficit. Republican leaders are insisting that their proposal to transform Medicare into a voucher system is still on the table in budget negotiations. Democrats are insisting the Republican proposal would "end Medicare as we know it." Is any kind reform for Medicare or Social Security possible in this political environment?
We asked Marketplace's Nancy Marshall Genzer to take a look.
Nancy Marshall Genzer: Entitlement programs, like Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security, are the biggest and fastest-growing parts of the federal budget. So it would be pretty hard to make a serious dent in the deficit without tackling them. The question is how, especially after last week's House election in New York.
Larry Sabato: This election may have killed any real chance at entitlement reform.
Larry Sabato teaches political science at the University of Virginia. He says both parties have reasons now to steer clear of major changes. Republicans don't want to be accused of weakening Medicare. Democrats and their supporters have made opposition to the Medicare voucher plan a major part of their strategy for the 2012 elections.
Roger Hickey is co-director of the liberal group Campaign for America's Future. He's telling Democrats the takeaway from the election is: don't tamper with entitlements.
Roger Hickey: It has sent a message that if you get on the side of the American people on Medicare and on Social Security, you can win just about anywhere in the country.
And last week's election in New York showed voters lean toward leaving Medicare alone. Medicare advocates have another, less public message for Democrats: If you trim entitlements, we'll go after you in the primaries, throwing our support behind a candidate who promises not to touch them.
Teddy Downey is a senior policy analyst at MF Global. He says, with that kind of pressure, Congress won't get serious about entitlements until after 2012.
Tedd Downey: The outcome of the 2012 election is the most important event deciding what entitlement reform will really look like.
Until then, Downey says, budget negotiators will just nibble at the edges, making incremental changes -- like slowing payments to doctors or making recipients pay just a teensy bit more.
In Washington, I'm Nancy Marshall Genzer for Marketplace.
@Jonathan Lovelace: You must have been listening to Fox. On Planet Earth, the NY district had a prior Republican Congressman (forced to resign over a sex thing) who won by something like 20 points, went for John McCain over Obama(!), and was never considered competitive--for Democrats. This is a big upset--just as big as Scott Brown. And I think the takeaway is that the pendulum has already swung back from the 2010 election, as voters evaluate the Ryan Abolish-Medicare Plan.
So when Scott Brown was elected last year on a platform of "Stop Obama's disastrous health care plan," we shouldn't conclude anything, but when *New York* elects a Democrat with no serious and competitive challenger, this supposedly spells doom? Sorry, we do not live in a world where so-called liberals are always right.
Your entire story was predicated on the idea that Democrats are against entitlement reform (or are too afraid of being primaried from the left). This is total nonsense. Obamacare was a step towards Medicare reform, and the Democrats paid dearly for their support of it, with the Republicans' hallucinations about death panels hyped by the Right Wing Noise Machine night and day.
This year, the Republicans (viz., Paul Ryan) finally came out of the closet with their plan to abolish Medicare in all but name. Ryan-Medicare would be an utterly inadequate voucher program, and whatever money it saved would, in Ryan's own plan, be swallowed up by even more tax cuts.
This isn't serious economics, it's Kool-Aid from cranks of a no-tax and no-safety-net cult, but somehow your show (and the rest of the media) are reluctant to say that straight out. Indeed, when the Democrats point out this simple truth, you gasp. The Emperor has no clothes. Either report that, or at least remain silent.
You did it again. You gave out mis-information on the Marketplace program today. Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are NOT the biggest part of the federal budget. The military is at least 60% which all social services cost the taxpayers 7% of their tax dollar. Why the deliberate untruth?
