Beyond Rebates, How Much Are Consumers Saving from Obamacare Medical Loss Ratio Provision?

Beyond Rebates, How Much Are Consumers Saving from Obamacare Medical Loss Ratio Provision?

Most of the conversation around the Affordable Care Act’s Medical Loss Ratio (MLR) provision has centered on the requirement that insurers issue consumer rebates when they fall short of spending a certain portion of premium dollars on health care and quality improvement expenses.  This makes sense as rebates are one of the more tangible ways consumers have benefited from the law so far, and it likely contributes to the MLR provision being among the more popular aspects of the health reform law.

However, as we’ve written before, rebates represent only a portion, albeit the most concrete portion, of the MLR rule’s savings to consumers.  The primary role of an MLR threshold is to encourage insurers to spend a certain percentage of premium dollars on health care and quality improvement expenses (80 percent in the individual and small group market and 85 percent in the large group market).  The MLR rebate requirement operates as a backstop if insurers do not set premiums at a level where they would be paying out the minimally acceptable share of premiums back as benefits.  Only if those thresholds are not met are insurers required to provide rebates to consumers or businesses. (You can read more about the MLR rule here).

Consumers and businesses, therefore, can realize savings in two ways as a result of the MLR requirement: by paying lower premiums than they would have been charged otherwise (as a result of lower administrative costs and profits), or by receiving rebates after the fact. So while insurers paid out considerable amounts for rebates – last year’s rebates totaled $1.1 billion – this is not the whole story for consumers.

Of course, it is hard to know with certainty what premiums would have been if the MLR rules were not in place: we cannot know for sure how insurers would have priced their products or what rates regulators would have allowed (to the extent that they reviewed rates prior to the ACA). It is also difficult to separate out the direct effects of the MLR provision from other aspects of the health reform law, particularly rate review, which works to moderate unreasonable premium increases and thus increase loss ratios.  There are also data limitations. For example, prior to new reporting requirements put in place to enforce the MLR provision, there were not good data sources that break out premiums and claims on a consistent basis for major medical coverage by all types of carriers. In the initial years this data became available (2010 and 2011), there were some issues with the quality of the data, particularly regarding expenses for quality improvement and other new categories of administrative expenses that are reported on the exhibit.

Within these limitations, we constructed an analysis that looks at the basic proportion of premiums that health plans paid out as claims for medical care over the three years since the ACA was passed, both before and after the MLR requirement went into effect for coverage in 2011.  These proportions do not include adjustments for quality improvement expenses, taxes or other factors that are used when determining whether or not rebates need to be paid; they simply represent the total payments for medical care as a proportion of premiums.  This is the traditional way medical loss ratios have been calculated.  Generally, if the proportion is rising, that means insurers are paying out more of each dollar they receive on enrollee health care, which in most cases would mean that enrollees are getting better value for the premiums they pay. We then quantify what the change in the traditional MLR means to enrollees by estimating how much they would have paid in premium if the observed MLR for 2010 (before the MLR requirement went into effect) were held constant for 2011 and 2012.1 This approach addresses the following question: If insurers had targeted the same claims to premium ratio for 2011 and 2012 as they achieved in 2010, would premiums have been higher or lower, and by how much?  In other words, it addresses how much consumers may have saved in lower premiums as a result of the MLR threshold in addition to receiving rebates.

Our analysis uses insurer data filed to state regulators and compiled by Mark Farrah Associates. These data (filed on the Supplemental Health Care Exhibit) suggest that the main beneficiaries of the MLR rule’s upfront premium savings are people who purchase insurance on their own.  The majority of plans sold to small and large businesses were already in compliance with their respective MLR thresholds before the law went into effect, and our analysis shows that traditional MLRs (claims divided by premiums) for group plans have stayed relatively flat over the past three years.  In the individual market, by contrast, fewer than half of plans were in compliance with the ACA’s MLR thresholds in 2010, and the average traditional MLRs in this market have been steadily increasing since the requirement went into effect. This means that individual market insurers are devoting a greater portion of premium dollars to health care claims and less to administrative costs and profits compared to before the ACA’s MLR rule went into effect.

This pattern is consistent with the idea that some insurers needed to improve their MLRs to comply with the new rebate requirements.  We know that the individual market MLR requirements in the ACA are higher than those that were in effect in many states, and there have been numerous reports that insurers worked to reduce their commissions and other administrative expenses to become more efficient.

So how might these changes have affected premiums?  As noted above, one way to address this question is to compute what these consumers would have paid in premiums in 2011 and 2012 had traditional individual market MLRs stayed at 2010 levels (the year before the provision went into effect). Looked at this way, premiums would have been $856 million higher in 2011, and premiums would have been $1.9 billion higher in 2012.

Adding to the premium savings the amount individual market consumers received in rebates yields a total savings of $1.2 billion for 2011. This year, individual market insurers are expecting to issue $241 million in rebates (based on our analysis of early estimates from insurers filed with state insurance departments), bringing the total estimated savings for 2012 to $2.1 billion.

There are some potential limitations to this approach. While the pattern of increasing MLRs over the three years makes sense given the incentives under the ACA and reports of insurer behavior, we do not have comparable data from earlier years to tell us whether or not the 2010 MLR was typical for the pre-ACA period (though the available evidence suggests that it was).2 Also, MLRs in 2011 and 2012 might be overstated because insurers simply underestimated how much health care expenses would rise following the recession, though increasing MLRs still means that consumers have been getting better value for their premium dollars. Finally, rebate amounts for 2012 are based on preliminary estimates filed on the Supplemental Health Care Exhibit to state insurance departments, and actual rebate amounts will be based on insurer filings with the Department of Health and Human Services, which were due June 1.

If insurers’ preliminary estimates hold true, this year’s rebates (at a total of $571 million across all markets) are expected to be about half the amount of last year’s $1.1 billion in insurer rebates. Smaller rebates, however, are not an indication that consumers are now saving less money as a result of the MLR provision, but rather that insurers are coming closer to meeting the ACA’s MLR requirements and that this provision is having its intended effect of consumers getting more value for the money they spend on premiums. In fact, in the individual market, the $241 million consumers are expected to receive in rebates for 2012 represents roughly one tenth of our estimate of the overall savings from the provision in that year. Perhaps ironically, when the MLR provision is working as intended and insurers set premiums to meet the thresholds, consumers save money but are less likely to get a check in the mail as tangible demonstration of those savings.

A bit wonky, insurance lingo combined with statistics, but it clearly shows that ordinary working Americans are already saving money and getting better insurance for their dollar because of the ACA (Affordable care Act) or Obamacare. Perhaps 11% of self insured will probably see their premiums go up a little. Though those people will also be entitled to rebates and tax credits to offset the expense. Of course conservative lie about "rate shock". Conservatives cannot have an honest debate because they lack the common decency required to have such a debate.

Why Wacky Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) Is Not The Savior of Conservatism

Why Wacky Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) Is Not The Savior of Conservatism

Since Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) abandoned his opposition to providing undocumented immigrants with a pathway to citizenship and embraced a bipartisan framework for comprehensive immigration, political pundits and Republican leaders have anointed the Florida Congressman the future of the GOP.

Consequently, the likely 2016 presidential candidate has become a media darling, appearing on conservative talk shows and mainstream outlets to tout his reform principles and convince skeptics of the wisdom of reforming the nation’s broken immigration system. The media idolization reached its zenith on the cover of this week’s issue of TIME magazine. The publication prominently features a picture of a defiant Rubio under the headline, “The Republican Savior [2]: How Marco Rubio became the new voice of the GOP.”

But dig beyond Rubio’s newfound embrace of immigration reform, and you’ll find that the GOP’s future appears stuck in the past, as the great hope of the party still espouses many of the extreme policies voters rejected in November:

    1. Refused to raise the debt ceiling. Rubio voted against [3] the GOP’s compromise measure to temporarily suspend the debt limit through May 19 in order avoid defaulting on the national debt. In a statement posted on his website, Rubio insisted that he would hold the debt ceiling increase hostage “unless it is tied with measures to actually solve our debt problem through spending reforms [4].”

    2. Co-sponsored and voted for a Balanced Budget Amendment. “Now more than ever, we need a balanced budget amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” Rubio proclaimed in 2011. A Balanced Budget Amendment would force the government to slash spending during an economic downturn, driving up unemployment and making the downturn worse, in a vicious cycle. If the amendment were in place during the last financial crisis, unemployment would have doubled [5].

    3. Signed the Norquist pledge. Rubio pledged to never raise taxes [6] under any circumstances and even voted against the last-minute deal to avert the fiscal cliff, since the deal included $600 billion in revenue. “Thousands of small businesses, not just the wealthy, will now be forced to decide how they’ll pay this new tax [7],” Rubio noted in a statement.

    4. Backed Florida’s voter purge. Rubio defended [8] Florida Gov. Rick Scott’s (R) attempted purge Democratic voters from the rolls, brushing off its disproportionate targeting of Latino voters. He also defended Florida’s decision to shorten its early voting period from two weeks to eight days by pointing to “the cost-benefit analysis.” After Election Day, several prominent Florida Republicansadmitted [9] that the election law changes were geared toward suppressing minority and Democratic votes and researchers found that long voting lines drove away at least 201,000 Florida voters [10].

    5. Doesn’t believe in climate change. During a recent BuzzFeed interview, Rubio claimed has “seen reasonable debate [11]” over whether humans are causing climate change. Scientists have long agreed that the debate is now over.

    6. Opposed federal action to help prevent violence against women. Rubio voted against the motion to proceed to debate the Violence Against Women Act, noting that he disagrees with portions of the bill. Rubio claims [12] he supports a scaled-back version of the legislation.

    7. Believes employers should be able to deny birth control to their employees. Rubio co-sponsored a bill — along with Sen. Roy Blunt (R-MO) — that sought to nullify Obamacare’s requirement that employers provide contraception to their employees without additional co-pays by permitting businesses to voluntarily opt out of offering birth control [12].

    8. Recorded robo calls for anti-gay hate group. Rubio has previously boasted the endorsement [13]of anti-gay hate groups like the Family Research Council and during the election recorded robocalls [14] for the National Organization of Marriage urging Americans to deny equal rights to gays and lesbians. He recently wouldn’t take a position on legislation that would prohibit employers from firing employees on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identify and wouldn’t say [15] “whether same-sex couples should receive protections under immigration law.”

Rubio is pretty wacky and radical Right, but his jack-booted thug theory of government is still not far Right enough for the Republican tea freaks, charlatans, egotistical plastic patriots and snake oil vendors.

New Immoral Anti-American Republican Idea: Punishing Rape Victims With Jail Time

New Immoral Anti-American Republican Idea: Punishing Rape Victims With Jail Time

If you’re looking for evidence that the differences between men and women are greatly exaggerated, the fact that women are equally capable as men of mind-blowing misogyny should erase all doubt. New Mexico state Rep. Cathrynn Brown(R) proved that this week by introducing a bill aimed at throwing rape victims in jail if they refuse to honor their rapist’s right to control their body

Of course, the entire idea that having a rapist’s baby would somehow be treated as proof of a rape is beyond silly. After all, the defense against the charge of rape is rarely to claim that the penis didn’t go into the vagina, but to accuse the victim of consenting and then, due to the unique viciousness of women, claiming it was rape for the laughs. Or to conceal her epic sluttiness by having the police grill her about her sex life, the defense attorney question her about it for the public record, and the entire community gossip about what a big slut she must be to press rape charges. I suspect Brown knows this, coming from the same anti-choice circles as Todd “Legitimate Rape” Akin, where the belief is that women are  deceitful creatures who will lie and kill to conceal how much fun sex they’re having.

To understand what’s going on here, you have to understand that anti-choicers primarily understand abortion as an attempt by women to hide how naughty they are. Never mind that most women getting abortions are in their 20s and are mothers already; the myth that abortion patients are young girls having all this sexy fun they’re not supposed to have and then hiding the “evidence” with abortion is so erotic and enticing for anti-choicers that they’re not letting it go. That’s why hanging out in front of abortion clinics and yelling at patients is so crucial to the movement: They believe you’re trying to hide your shameful non-virgin status, and by gum, they’re going to be there to make sure they get a chance to see your face and cast judgment. You will not get to hide your non-virginity from them! They are entitled to pass judgment, and if they don’t get to do it by shaming you for being a single mother, they’ll show up and yell at you at the abortion clinic. And probably masturbate about it later. You laugh, but when you see behavior like this enough, you begin to realize that this anti-choice obsession with abortion is so profound that “sexual fetish, no matter how sublimated” is the likeliest explanation.

The narratives of sexual transgression and concealment that dictate how anti-choicers view abortion make this bill all the easier to understand. The possibility that women have abortions to reduce suffering in their lives, prevent economic catastrophe, or regain control over their lives are dismissed in favor of believing that an abortion means someone is hiding a sexy secret. It reduces rape to a “sexy secret” and, of course, reinforces the narrative that women are to blame for their rapes, because they are being so dirty and naughty and now that men have no choice but to put them in their place with some raping. (Implicit anti-choice narratives and really foul porn plots have a lot in common, which doesn’t strike me as a coincidence.) That’s why you get terms like “legitimate rape”. That’s why, I suspect, Republicans killed the Violence Against Women Act. The narrative that women bring violence on themselves by breaking the lady mandate to be quiet, chaste, and submissive seems to be gaining strength on the right, not that it ever really went away. Being raped is apparently a crime in and of itself, and if you won’t be punished by forced childbirth for being so rapeable, then jail time for you, in the eyes of Rep. Brown(R).

Brown proudly represents the political and moral ideals of the totalitarian state of  North Korea. How she was elected to office would be a mystery, but a combination of voter ignorance and apathy combined with enough deceptive advertising by conservatives who wrap their sick twisted beliefs in the flag and the Bible and you get fascists like Brown making decisions about how much the government can control your body.

Radical Anti-American Indiana Gov. Mike Pence (R) Proposes Regressive Tax Cut Even Republicans Say The State Can’t Afford

Why Vote For President Obama and Democrats in General

GOP U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock and Romney's friend believes pregnancies from rape are a gift from God. Where is he from? Iran?

Why Vote For President Obama and Democrats in General

Waiting in line for two-and-a-half hours is rarely an exciting experience. But when my son and I voted early—he for the first time—at a community center in Rockville, Md., both of us were inspired by the hundreds of other people intent on exercising democracy’s most basic right.

In our deep blue county, this was largely an Obama crowd, crossing the boundaries of race, class and age. It was white, African American and Latino, young, middle-aged and old. These citizens eager to lift their voices reminded us that in this campaign, one coalition includes almost every kind of American. If Obama wins, he will owe his re-election to a little bit of all of us: blue-collar white voters in the Midwest, upscale voters in the Northeast and on the West Coast, an overwhelming percentage of Latino voters turned off by a new nativism on the right, and near unanimous solidarity on his behalf among African Americans. Obama is not the sort to think about dismissing 47% of us.
The sweep of the Obama coalition represented in that snaking line led my son and me to conclude something else: The President Obama of 2012 may no longer stir the jubilation called forth by the Barack Obama of 2008. But the hope and resolve he spoke of then have not vanished.

Yes, those feelings have been tempered by hard times and four years of bitter political struggle. Obama appears now less as a savior than as a human being with flaws and virtues, failures and successes. The hope of four years ago has transformed itself into something more mature and durable: a confidence in what an increasingly diverse, tolerant and open America can achieve. It is a view that flatly rejects the fears of those who see our country in decline and who always insist that the good old days should be our standard for the future. A nation that has produced Greatest Generations in the past can do so again. Indeed, I think we’re doing so right now.

In making electoral decisions, voters sensibly combine hard judgments about where candidates stand with instinctive calculations about how character might influence their choices in situations we cannot imagine today.

Ronald Reagan offered the most widely honored question about the practical matters: Are you better off than you were four years ago? And for most of the country, the answer is yes. Obama inherited an economy in shambles—the GDP was shrinking at an annual rate of nearly 9% when he took office—and turned it around. Unemployment is well down from its peak, 4.5 million private-sector jobs have been created since January 2010, the stock market has doubled since it hit bottom, and the housing market is stabilizing. Mitt Romney can promise 12 million more jobs in the coming four years because Obama’s policies have already put us on track to produce them, courtesy of a revival of manufacturing, a rise in exports and a new wave of research and innovation.


Most relevant to this year’s choice is the fact that the economy is in far better shape than it would have been if we had followed the counsel of Obama’s foes. They would have allowed the auto industry to collapse. They would have ignored history’s lesson that government must step in to stimulate economic activity when private demand plummets. We know from the experience of Europe that austerity leads to stagnation. Obama made the better choice.

Romney has at times condemned Obama’s stimulus plan while standing in front of enterprises returned to prosperity by the stimulus. Paul Ryan denounced the stimulus and then sought its succor for companies in his district. Watch what they do, not what they say.

Obama has revived a practical, sober and realistic foreign policy in the tradition of George H.W. Bush. Democrats crow about the killing of Osama bin Laden and thrill to Vice President Joe Biden’s handy bumper-sticker line “Osama bin Laden is dead, and GM is alive.” But behind the quip is a reality: Obama has transformed the war on terrorism from an all-purpose slogan designed to rationalize all manner of foreign policy adventures to a focused effort to keep the country safe. By ending the war in Iraq, winding down our commitment in Afghanistan and abandoning grandiose adventurism, he has redirected U.S. foreign policy toward the classic and sensible goals of preserving our power and influence and shaping an international environment congenial to our prosperity and our values.

Republicans bridle at the idea that Obama has restored respect for our country around the world. But it’s true. An Obama defeat would threaten many of his diplomatic achievements, including building what one pro-Western ambassador called “a successful coalition of the unlike-minded and unwilling” to confront Iran.

The strongest endorsement of Obama’s choices came from his opponent. In the third debate, Romney abandoned months of bellicose rhetoric and lined up behind one Obama decision after another. In this polarized political era, poll-tested imitation is about the only form of flattery we can expect. When Romney declared that “we don’t want another Iraq,” he was blessing the transition from George W. Bush’s era to Obama’s.

Obama’s decision to ignore cautious political advisers and see through the health care reform fight came at great political cost. Even some of his allies think the electoral price was too high. But this is a measure of Obama’s fortitude. By bringing the promise of health insurance to tens of millions of our citizens, Obama ended a national scandal. No other wealthy nation allows so many to live without basic coverage for illness or to rely on emergency rooms as a last resort. They either arrive there long after the opportunity to get well has passed, or they survive only to face years, sometimes a lifetime, of debt. The Affordable Care Act is an achievement worthy of our great reforming Presidents.

Once again Romney’s behavior proves the point. He speaks of repealing Obamacare only in general terms. When it comes to so many of the specifics—on prohibiting insurance discrimination against those with pre-existing conditions, for example, or on making it easier for parents to cover their adult children—Romney winds up backing what Obama did.

Beyond these large questions are concrete Obama achievements: his support for women’s rights, including the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act; the end of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” and his endorsement of gay marriage; passage of Wall Street reform, including the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau; reform of the student-loan program; his appointments of Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, checking the right-wing drift in the judiciary that gave us decisions like Citizens United; and many of the investments in the stimulus package, notably in clean energy. In quieter times, these would be playing a much larger role in the campaign.

All are part of the case for Obama. But the best reason for his re-election goes back to what motivated so many middle-of-the-road voters four years ago. Americans who want to replace polarization with balance, extremism with moderation, obstruction with problem solving and blind partisanship with compromise need Obama to win again. An Obama defeat would empower those whose go-for-broke approach to politics is largely responsible for the distemper of our public life and the dysfunction in Washington.

This election does not represent a choice between left and right. It represents a choice between balance and a new, extreme form of conservatism. This new conservatism cannot accept any tax increases as part of a deal to reduce the deficit. For all his attempts to sound moderate in the campaign’s closing days, Romney has not altered the response he gave during a Republican-primary debate rejecting a hypothetical deal involving a 10-to-1 ratio between spending cuts and tax increases. This refusal to acknowledge the need for more revenue is a recipe for eviscerating government—and the cuts, as Ryan’s budget shows, would fall disproportionately on programs for Americans with the lowest incomes.

The new right has broken with conservatism’s past—and our country’s most constructive traditions—by adopting a new and radical individualism that largely ignores our country’s gift for community.

The America of Alexander Hamilton, Henry Clay, Abraham Lincoln and both the Republican and Democratic Roosevelts understood that government has a role to play in tempering the market and making investments the market depends on but will not make itself. The new conservatism measures freedom almost entirely in terms of the share of the nation’s GDP that flows to the state, as if spending on Medicare, Social Security, student loans, community colleges and infrastructure improvements somehow made us less “free.” And in the face of growing economic inequality, the new conservatism regularly discounts or condemns government’s role in leaning toward modestly greater equity, promoting upward mobility and checking concentrated economic power. It is this variety of conservatism that Romney bowed to in the primaries and would be forced to accommodate if he became President, whatever his constantly shifting views might actually be.



Obama, to a fault, devoted enormous energy during his first 21/2 years in office trying to move his opponents to compromise. Thus was almost a third of his stimulus plan devoted to tax cuts. Thus did he model his health care plan after Romney’s in Massachusetts. Thus did he seek a deal with House Speaker John Boehner during the debt-ceiling confrontation that, if enacted, would have disappointed many of the President’s progressive supporters. Only those who confuse compromise with capitulation can claim that Obama did not try mightily to keep his promise to end partisanship in Washington.

Obama should win a referendum on his stewardship. But this is also a choice—a “big choice,” just as Romney says—between moderation and a return to an approach to government more suited to the Gilded Age than to the 21st century. Obama is battling to defend the long consensus that has guided American government successfully since the Progressive Era. It is based on the view that ours is a country whose Constitution begins with the word we, not me, and that the private success we honor depends on a government that serves a common good and remembers the most vulnerable among us. The task of our moment is to revive that long consensus and renew it. Of the two major candidates, only Barack Obama accepts this mission as his own.


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Richard Mourdock On Abortion: Pregnancy From Rape Is 'Something God Intended'

Indiana GOP U.S. Senate candidate Richard Mourdock declared Tuesday night he opposes aborting pregnancies conceived in rape because "it is something that God intended to happen."

Debating Rep. Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) in their final Senate race showdown, a questioner asked them and Libertarian candidate Andrew Horning to explain their views on abortion.

All three said they were anti-abortion. But Mourdock went further, putting himself in territory near Missouri GOP Senate candidate Rep. Todd Akin, the anti-abortion congressman who infamously asserted that women don't get pregnant from "legitimate rape."

"The only exception I have to have an abortion is in the case of the life of the mother," said Mourdock, the Tea Party-backed state treasurer. "I struggled with it myself for a long time, but I came to realize life is that gift from God. I think that even when life begins in that horrible situation of rape, that it is something that God intended to happen."

Mourdock should offend every Christian, every descent human being in the USA for having the arrogance and morally bankrupt idea that God thinks rapes and their consequences are good deeds. How do utter wackos like Mourdock get even 2% of the vote.

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) is a world class moron unfit to be in Congress - Accuses Obama Of ‘Harming’ Auto Company That Went Defunct In 1988

Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) is a world class moron unfit to be in Congress - Accuses Obama Of ‘Harming’ Auto Company That Went Defunct In 1988

A Republican congresswoman accused the Obama administration of promulgating regulations that are undermining job creation at an auto manufacturer that has been defunct since 1988. She was responding to a question on Monday about Mitt Romney’s dishonest claims regarding Jeep moving its production overseas.

During an appearance on MSNBC, Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) dodged a question about Romney’s debunked Jeep claims and instead attacked the Obama administration for issuing regulations that are harming workers at American Motors Corporation, a company once headed by George Romney. AMC was sold to Chrysler during the Ronald Reagan administration and its brands were then discontinued..

Conservatives consider complete and utter incompetence a bonus rather than a disqualifying feature for public office.

What is a Nightmare? The Day After Morally Bankrupt Mitt Romney is Elected

What is a Nightmare? The Day After Morally Bankrupt Mitt Romney is Elected

Despite the difficulty nailing down a chameleon-like candidate's positions, we've tried to discern some of the economic measures that Romney would likely champion if he wins. We'll follow up with a look at non-economic policies in the coming days.

1. The Romney-Ryan Budget

Let's assume, for the moment, that the Republicans take the Senate.

Mitt Romney has at times embraced Paul Ryan's “roadmap [3],” and he's also distanced himself from it. But there will be quite a bit of pressure from conservative activists and the Republican House to enact something along the lines of the roadmap.

There are two things to understand about Paul Ryan's budget. First, it has been carefully written so that most of its provisions can be passed under a process known as budget reconciliation, which requires only a simple majority of votes in the Senate. Second, it is a right-wing fantasy that, if enacted as written, would trigger a major drop in employment and send the economy into a tailspin. Its cuts are so deep, and would effect so many constituents – including traditionally Republican constituents – that it would have to be modified. It's one thing to campaign on such a plan and another to govern with it.

What does it do? According to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities [4], “by 2050, most of the federal government aside from Social Security, healthcare and defense would cease to exist, according to figures in a Congressional Budget Office analysis.”

    The CBO report, prepared at Chairman Ryan’s request, shows that Ryan’s budget path would shrink federal expenditures for everything other than Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP), and interest payments to just 3¾ percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) by 2050. Since, as CBO notes, “spending for defense alone has not been lower than 3 percent of GDP in any year [since World War II]” and Ryan seeks a high level of defense spending — he increases defense funding by $228 billion over the next ten years above the pre-sequestration baseline — the rest of government would largely have to disappear. That includes everything from veterans’ programs to medical and scientific research, highways, education, nearly all programs for low-income families and individuals other than Medicaid, national parks, border patrols, protection of food safety and the water supply, law enforcement, and the like.

Ryan has already modified his plan in response to the outcry over a CBO analysis that found future retirees would face $6,400 more in out-of-pocket healthcare costs. We can expect further modifications because no Republican administration is actually going to slash veterans' benefits to the bone, to name just one example. It's untenable, but that doesn't mean President Romney wouldn't push through something moderately less damaging.

2. Tax Cuts or rewarding rich people for being rich, not for work.

Romney promises to slash taxes by 20 percent across the board, maintain deductions enjoyed by the middle class and not decrease the share of taxes paid by the wealthy (or anyone else). We know Romney's math simply doesn't work [5] – it's impossible. http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3708

But while the whole doesn't add up, Romney could get a number of those provisions passed, like eliminating the inheritance tax, the Alternative Minimum Tax (which hits high earners), and certainly keeping the “Bush tax cuts” on income investment in place.

When a candidate presents a plan that literally does not add up, it's not possible to predict what he'd do with any specificity once in office. Based on the recent history of GOP governance, the sharp right turn the party's taken in recent years and Mitt Romney's own background, one can be reasonably confident that Romney would cut taxes on high earners and corporations, but projecting by how much – and whether it would be financed through deficits, additional cuts or higher taxes on the middle class – is an exercise in reading the tea leaves.

3. ObamaCare

Mitt Romney has pledged to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with a plan that, while light on details, would be centered around health savings accounts and insurance deregulation. Employers would throw some cash into the accounts, people would get some tax breaks and then the miracle of the free market will supposedly swoop in and fix our broken healthcare system.

Repealing ObamaCare may not be as cut-and-dried as the Republican base has been led to believe, however. Contrary to the mythology surrounding the program, the Congressional Budget Office projects ObamaCare to reduce the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars in the coming decade and beyond. According to Senate rules now in effect, the reconciliation process cannot be used to pass anything that increases the budget deficit 10 years from now.

There are ways to get around procedural rules, and failing that, the executive branch has a lot of discretion in terms of implementation. A Romney adviser told Politico [6] that if the Dems hold the Senate, “we would just have to try to grind out changes by starving ObamaCare through regulations.”

If Romney is able to repeal ObamaCare and replace it with his plan, a study by the Commonwealth Fund [7] projects that it will leave 72 million uninsured by 2022 – 45 million more than is projected under ObamaCare.
A tragic irony is that Romney's healthcare plan would likely prove to be a fatal blow [8] to the best thing he's ever accomplished in public service – the “RomneyCare” scheme in Massachussetts.

4. Medicare

There is little doubt that Mitt Romney would pursue a variant of Paul Ryan's plan to voucherize Medicare for those who retire after a given date (in Ryan's plan it's 2023). Seniors would at first get a voucher sufficient to cover the cost of a private insurance plan comparable to Medicare. But the value of that voucher would only increase by the rate of overall economic growth plus 0.5 percent. The problem is that healthcare costs grow a lot faster. The difference would be borne by seniors themselves – it does nothing to contain healthcare costs, it just shifts them from the government to the backs of individuals.

When the CBO scored Ryan's first plan in 2011, it found that seniors would face an additional $6,400 in out-of-pocket expenses by 2022. After Democrats jumped on that figure, Ryan released a new plan, which called for Congress to come up with some unspecified remedy. CBO wasn't able to score it, but said [9] “beneficiaries might face higher costs.”

Ryan would also raise the retirement age to 67, a measure Romney has endorsed.

It's entirely possible that a President Romney would sweeten the deal a bit to make those numbers look better in the medium-term, but any voucher plan that doesn't keep up with the actual increase in healthcare costs achieves the same thing -- eventually shifting part of the burden onto seniors.

5. Medicaid

While Medicare has received the most attention, Ryan's plan for Medicaid, which Mitt Romney has endorsed, would be a more devastating hit to our threadbare social safety net.

Ryan's plan would turn Medicaid into a block-grant program, cap its funding – cutting $800 billion from the program over the next decade -- and then send it to the states to administer. The first problem is that states – presumably red states – would be free to make it harder to qualify, and the second is that the program wouldn't have the funding flexibility to enroll more people during economic downturns.

Medicaid serves 60 million Americans, about 10 million more than Medicare. Most people think Medicaid only serves the poor, but Medicaid is indespensible for the disabled, especially the severely diabled who require a lot of care. It also covers Medicare's out-of-pocket expenses for retirees with limited incomes.

6. Social Security

George W. Bush learned the hard way that privatizing Social Security is a great way to make voters hate you. That's why the Ryan plan is quite vague. It calls for "action on Social Security by requiring both the President and the Congress to put forward specific ideas and legislation to ensure the sustainable solvency of this critical program." The budget does tout "reforms that take into account increases in longevity, to arrest the demographic problems that are undermining Social Security's finances” – which sounds a lot like raising the retirement age.

7. State Children's Health Insurance Program (S-CHIP)

S-CHIP is likely to be hit hard under a Romney administration if he has a Republican Congress. Under the Ryan plan, S-CHIP could only increase by the rate of inflation, which again, is much slower than the projected rate of healthcare cost inflation. The CBO looked at Medicaid and S-CHIP together, and found that spending on the two programs would be about 70 percent less than currently projected by the year 2050 under Ryan's "roadmap."

8. The Rest

If the Republicans run the field in a big win, expect a lot of talk about a constitutional amendment capping federal spending at a given share of our gross domestic product. It will only be talk. It's a right-wing fantasy of a policy that can only be enacted with a constitutional amendment, which isn't going to happen.

That doesn't mean there won't be deep, deep cuts to non-defense discretionary spending under a Romney administration. Under the Ryan plan, non-defense discretionary spending would be on a downward trajectory leading to 39 percent less funding than currently projected by the year 2040. What is “non-defense discretionary spending”? Well, about 40 percent is education, training and research, and the rest is veterans' programs, various programs for low-income families, public safety and disaster response and the like. It's basically government, absent the Pentagon budget, Social Security and Medicare.

9. If Dems Have 40-50 Seats in Senate (With Ryan the Tie-Breaking Vote)

Although he has been vocal in his opposition in the past [10], there's a good chance that as Senate Majority Leader, Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, might embrace filibuster reform – dropping the number of votes needed to overcome a filibuster from 60 -- if the Dems hold a minority in the upper chamber.

Either way, one thing not to expect in this scenario is Senate Democrats turning the tables on the GOP and blocking their legislative agenda at every turn. That's a strategy the Republicans can undertake because their overarching narrative is that governent doesn't do anything right – it ultimately works to their benefit when they can “prove” that theory by rendering Congress incapable of action. Democrats still adhere to the idea that good governance can improve our society, so they can't play the same game and get away with it.

10. If Dems Hold Senate

If the Dems hold the Senate they will act as a firewall against the radical restructuring of the public sector promised by the Ryan budget.

That means maintaining the status quo, more or less, at least through 2014, with one painful exception. Cheered on by the Beltway media, the Democrats, having embraced the non-existent recommendations of the Simpson-Bowles commission (the chairmen drafted recommendations but the gang of 18 didn't vote to approve them), would almost certainly be willing to strike a “grand bargain” with President Romney along those lines.

The only question is whether Speaker Boehner (or Cantor?) would have any trouble coming up with the votes for a “balanced” deficit reduction deal – for a deal that raises some new revenues. If history is any guide, even the most ideological House Republicans will support a Republican president in such an effort.

Currently, non-defense discretionary spending is expected to hit its lowest level since 1962, and Simpson-Bowles would cut deeper still – with a 3:1 ratio of spending cuts to tax increases. That means programs that help the poor and middle class will be on the chopping block. Simpson-Bowles also called for a hike in the Social Security retirement age, despite the fact that life expectancies have only increased significantly for the well-to-do who don't rely on the program as heavily as working people and the poor.

The U.S. is still the richest nation in the world ( maybe 2nd, some economists think China passed us) yet Romney-Ryan would have half the population living in their own 3rd world like conditions. Conservatives talk about imgiinary death panels - the reality is that a conservative president and a conservative Congress will literary mean the deaths of millions of senior citizens and disabled. besides their wacky UnAmerican ideology, why are conservatives going to try and pass this kind of cruel legislation/ Because they do not want to rise taxes on billionaires who are complaining they're not making enough money. Seriously. These same billionaires and multimillionaires are also threatening to fire employees if they do not vote for immoral Mitt.

Paul Ryan Takes a Side in the War on Poverty: He's Against What Works

Condi Rice Pours Cold Water On ‘Benghazi-Gate’

The Republican propaganda channel and Anti-American Fox New's John Roberts Whitewashes Romney's Position On Auto Rescue

How the Media Enables Paul Ryan's Pants On Fire Lies

How the Media Enables Paul Ryan's Pants On Fire Lies

The myth of “Paul Ryan, serious budget wonk” has a history that dates since the 2010 Tea Party sweep of the elections, at least into the Bush administration. It's been untrue [3] for at least that long.

There were magazine stories [4] of the Young Guns of the GOP—Ryan, Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy. They even chose that title [5] to brand themselves [6], comparisons to the 1980s cowboy movies notwithstanding. If they were in a boy band, Ryan would've been the Serious One while Cantor was the Wisecracking One, and McCarthy, well, he was the One Everyone Forgets About. Other Serious Young Men gave Paul Ryan gravitas--even those ostensibly across the aisle, like Ezra Klein [7], who wrote in 2011, “Ryan is the kind of politician I fundamentally like. He’s smart, policy-oriented and willing to take political risks.” In 2010 Klein titled a blog post “The virtues of Ryan's roadmap [7],” calling Ryan's plan (the one that gutted Medicare) “a more honest entry into the debate.”

Klein at least has come around to become one of the stronger voices arguing that Ryan isn't a deficit [8] hawk but an ideologue bent on privatization [9]. But plenty of others are still pretending that the vice-presidential nominee is willing to have a serious debate on policy. It's no secret that Fox News is letting Romney and Ryan get away with anything, but it's commentators in the mainstream media that do the most damage. Reporters love a ready-made narrative. Writing on a deadline, it's easy to slot in conventional descriptors and fit politicians into stock roles. We've been told Ryan is a serious budget nerd, and the more it gets echoed, the more it will continue to be echoed. Here we bring you seven media enablers of the Paul Ryan myth.

1. Howard Kurtz, Daily Beast

Howard Kurtz [10] is supposed to be a media critic, which makes it even more grating that he's fallen into the same trap as most of the rest of the mainstream media when it comes to Ryan's bona fides.

“True to his reputation as one of the GOP’s leading intellectuals,” Kurtz wrote of Ryan's RNC appearance, “it was something of a wonky speech sprinkled with folksy references—such as one to his hometown of Janesville, Wisc., where 'a lot of guys I went to high school with' worked at a GM plant that shut down.”

That's not the only time Kurtz alludes to Ryan's wonkiness without actually mentioning any of Ryan's policy points—aside from pointing out that Ryan's misleading everyone by beating up on Obama's Medicare cuts without mentioning his own slash-and-burn plan for healthcare for the elderly. He also mentions the Janesville line without pointing out that it too was one of Ryan's biggest whoppers of the night, trying to blame the president for closing a plant that shut down in 2008 [11].

He wrote that Ryan delivered a policy-based attack on Obama but the example he gives is Ryan's attack on Obamacare, which Ryan said has no place in “a free country.” Serious policy analysis, indeed!

As an aside, the GOP can't seem to decide whether it loves or hates the auto bailout—at once beating up on Obama for bailing out GM and Chrysler and then, as Ryan does here, complaining that Obama didn't save a plant in his own district. Apparently auto plants are like military bases—they should be propped up by the government as “job creators” when it's convenient for members of Congress. Roosevelt Institute fellow Mike Konczal joked on Twitter [12], “Romney should announce a Works Progress Administration/Civilian Conservation Corps tonight, but one where everyone in it works in Janesville.”

In other words, here's the same man lauded as being “serious” for being willing to slice and dice social programs, apparently calling for government to bail out manufacturing. Will that be in his next budget proposal, you think?

2. Dan Balz, Washington Post

According to Balz [13], Romney and Ryan “share an essential geekiness.” He doesn't mean that they're both white men who can't dance—no, he's talking about, you guessed it, policy. “Ryan, like Romney, is a numbers person who likes to break down problems and solve them after digesting reams of data,” he writes.

Funny, I thought the only data Romney liked to digest was how many workers he could lay off [14]. And Ryan's publicly admitted that neither of them have “run the numbers [15]” on Romney's budget plan even while they trumpet their supposed deficit reductions.

As Peter Hart at FAIR [16] notes, Balz actually does source some of the comments about the choice of Paul Ryan—to an anonymous Romney adviser, who spoke anonymously in order to affirm that other people had called the Ryan pick “bold” and that Romney was “confident.” Because one really needs anonymity to assert the feelings of the candidate. Another anonymous source makes the same comment later in the piece that Balz makes on his own--“Romney and Ryan are both data-driven guys, and there’s no question they will win the intellectual argument about whether we need to reform Medicare.”

Why he needs anonymous sources to say things that he seems perfectly comfortable repeating as conventional wisdom, I can't quite figure out.

3. Michael Crowley, Time Magazine

Possibly the most gratuitous fluffing of Paul Ryan's reputation comes from Time, where senior correspondent Crowley [17] opens the piece with the assertion that “Paul Ryan may be America's most famous budget wonk.”

The reasons? Because Ryan likes to quote his many “intellectual idols.” Including, you guessed it, Ayn Rand!

But as Peter Hart points out at FAIR [18], where this article really gets weird is when it starts getting excited about Ryan's religion. Catholicism, you see, is where Ryan gets his ideas on “social issues”--which is, as is usual in the mainstream media, code for “gay marriage, abortion, and those pesky rights women and LGBTQ folks keep going on about.” But wait! It's not just social issues Ryan learned about from the church. No, his budget cuts are all Christlike too. Or at least drawn from the teachings of Pope Benedict XVI.

    But Ryan says Catholic doctrine informs more than his views on social issues. His mission to reduce spending is partly inspired, he said in April, by the Vatican. "The Holy Father, Pope Benedict, has charged that governments, communities and individuals running up high debt levels are 'living at the expense of future generations' and 'living in untruth,'" he said. In which case the Ryan budget could be interpreted as a play for fairness and honesty, at least in the eyes of its maker.

Right. Except that as we've noted, Ryan's budget—to say nothing of Romney's plans for the economy—doesn't actually reduce the deficit, and Ryan's cuts to Pell Grants [19] would explicitly be at the expense of future generations, saddling college students with massive debt even as earnings for college grads are sinking [20].

And what do you think the Pope say about the lies in Ryan's convention speech [21]?

4. Lisa Mascaro, Los Angeles Times

This short LA Times piece [22] is a near-perfect example of a reporter sticking to the narrative she's heard, using the descriptions of the candidate that his party would most like to believe are true without ever questioning whether they hold up. “The vice presidential pick has breathed new vigor into the campaign, as conservatives who had expressed lackluster support for Mitt Romney [23] embraced the budget wonk for the No. 2 spot,” Mascaro writes. And then, “Ryan is among the party's sharpest fiscal thinkers and the architect of the GOP's approach to steep budget cuts and the Medicare overhaul that has been attacked by Democrats as ending the social safety net.”

Balance! Too bad there's no “Republicans say” in front of “budget wonk” or “among the party's sharpest fiscal thinkers.” Those are givens, whereas the cuts that Ryan's Medicare overhaul would make to the beloved program are portrayed as things that Democrats made up rather than actual policy proposals made by the “wonk.”

As Simon Maloy at Media Matters [15] noted: “In the span of two weeks, Paul Ryan the 'wonk' has said he doesn't know when his campaign's budget will balance because they haven't done the math, and he can't give tax details until after the election. So the question for the media now becomes: Why keep hyping Paul Ryan's wonkiness when he keeps giving you reasons not to?”

5. Patrick O'Connor, Wall Street Journal

For O'Connor [24], Ryan's budget wonkery stems from the fact that he once was a policy aide in Congress and that other Tea Party Republicans are attached to his wildly unpopular budget ideas. Admitting that Ryan had only a few pages on the budget in Young Guns, the book he co-wrote with Eric Cantor and Kevin McCarthy, and that Ryan's commitment to deficit-reduction never seems to include a willingness to go after the military yet always targets social programs, O'Connor nevertheless repeats the popular narrative that Ryan is a “wonk.” What he doesn't do is question, in his rather extensive history of Ryan's career, why the budget hawk voted repeatedly to blow holes in the budget with massive tax cuts [25].

He does raise one tantalizing question, after hundreds of words listing Paul Ryan's appeal as a serious intellectual heavyweight on fiscal issues: if Ryan's budget plan is so appealing, why doesn't Mitt Romney want to use it?

While not the first time a conservative got a reputation for being a serious thinker on economics, Ryan might represent the height of that false advertising. he went around preaching the doctrine of Ayn Rand until oops, everyone found out that Rand was an atheist, can little sex cult and died collecting Social Security and medicare - two programs that Ryan would like to put under the knife. More here - Flip side of Sarah PalinThe past two weeks have shown us that Paul Ryan isn't so different from the GOP's last pick for vice president

And yet Ryan’s reputation for true wonkishness seems to be vastly overstated. He’s less a wonk than a policy naif’s idea of a wonk – just enough “baselines” and “percent of GDP” and charts to make it all look nice, but very little under the hood. As Paul Krugman said recently:

    Look, Ryan hasn’t “crunched the numbers”; he has just scribbled some stuff down, without checking at all to see if it makes sense. He asserts that he can cut taxes without net loss of revenue by closing unspecified loopholes; he asserts that he can cut discretionary spending to levels not seen since Calvin Coolidge, without saying how; he asserts that he can convert Medicare to a voucher system, with much lower spending than now projected, without even a hint of how this is supposed to work. This is just a fantasy, not a serious policy proposal.

Krugman is concerned in that post with how Ryan dupes self-proclaimed budget hawks, but Ryan is duping Republicans, too.

Romney and Ryan Owe America An Apology For Their Immoral Medicare Lies

Romney and Ryan Owe America An Apology For Their Immoral Medicare Lies

Republican attacks on President Obama’s plans for Medicare are growing more heated and inaccurate by the day. Both Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan made statements last week implying that the Affordable Care Act would eviscerate Medicare when in fact the law should shore up the program’s finances.

Both men have also twisted themselves into knots to distance themselves from previous positions, so that voters can no longer believe anything they say. Last week, both insisted that they would save Medicare by pumping a huge amount of money into the program, a bizarre turnaround for supposed fiscal conservatives out to rein in federal spending.

The likelihood that they would stand by that irresponsible pledge after the election is close to zero. And the likelihood that they would be better able than Democrats to preserve Medicare for the future (through a risky voucher system that may not work well for many beneficiaries) is not much better. THE ALLEGED “RAID ON MEDICARE” A Republican attack ad says that the reform law has “cut” $716 billion from Medicare, with the money used to expand coverage to low-
income people who are currently uninsured. “So now the money you paid for your guaranteed health care is going to a massive new government program that’s not for you,” the ad warns.

What the Republicans fail to say is that the budget resolutions crafted by Paul Ryan and approved by the Republican-controlled House retained virtually the same cut in Medicare.

In reality, the $716 billion is not a “cut” in benefits but rather the savings in costs that the Congressional Budget Office projects over the next decade from wholly reasonable provisions in the reform law.

One big chunk of money will be saved by reducing unjustifiably high subsidies to private Medicare Advantage plans that enroll many beneficiaries at a higher average cost than traditional Medicare. Another will come from reducing the annual increases in federal reimbursements to health care providers — like hospitals, nursing homes and home health agencies — to force the notoriously inefficient system to find ways to improve productivity.

And a further chunk will come from fees or taxes imposed on drug makers, device makers and insurers — fees that they can surely afford since expanded coverage for the uninsured will increase their markets and their revenues.

NO HARM TO SENIORS The Republicans imply that the $716 billion in cuts will harm older Americans, but almost none of the savings come from reducing the benefits available for people already on Medicare. But if Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan were able to repeal the reform law, as they have pledged to do, that would drive up costs for many seniors — namely those with high prescription drug costs, who are already receiving subsidies under the reform law, and those who are receiving preventive services, like colonoscopies, mammograms and immunizations, with no cost sharing.

Mr. Romney argued on Friday that the $716 billion in cuts will harm beneficiaries because those who get discounts or extra benefits in the heavily subsidized Medicare Advantage plans will lose them and because reduced payments to hospitals and other providers could cause some providers to stop accepting Medicare patients.

If he thinks that will be a major problem, Mr. Romney should leave the reform law in place: it has many provisions designed to make the delivery of health care more efficient and cheaper, so that hospitals and others will be better able to survive on smaller payments.

NO BANKRUPTCY LOOMING The Republicans also argue that the reform law will weaken Medicare and that by preventing the cuts and ultimately turning to vouchers they will enhance the program’s solvency. But Medicare is not in danger of going “bankrupt”; the issue is whether the trust fund that pays hospital bills will run out of money in 2024, as now projected, and require the program to live on the annual payroll tax revenues it receives.

The Affordable Care Act helped push back the insolvency date by eight years, so repealing the act would actually bring the trust fund closer to insolvency, perhaps in 2016.

DEFICIT REDUCTION Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan said last week that they would restore the entire $716 billion in cuts by repealing the law. The Congressional Budget Office concluded that repealing the law would raise the deficit by $109 billion over 10 years.

The Republicans gave no clue about how they would pay for restoring the Medicare cuts without increasing the deficit. It is hard to believe that, if faced with the necessity of fashioning a realistic budget, keeping Medicare spending high would be a top priority with a Romney-Ryan administration that also wants to spend very large sums on the military and on tax cuts for wealthy Americans.

Regardless of who wins the election, Medicare spending has to be reined in lest it squeeze out other priorities, like education. It is utterly irresponsible for the Republicans to promise not to trim Medicare spending in their desperate bid for votes.

THE DANGER IN MEDICARE VOUCHERS The reform law would help working-age people on modest incomes buy private policies with government subsidies on new insurance exchanges, starting in 2014. Federal oversight will ensure a reasonably comprehensive benefit package, and competition among the insurers could help keep costs down.

But it is one thing to provide these “premium support” subsidies for uninsured people who cannot get affordable coverage in the costly, dysfunctional markets that serve individuals and their families. It is quite another thing to use a similar strategy for older Americans who have generous coverage through Medicare and who might well end up worse off if their vouchers failed to keep pace with the cost of decent coverage.

Mr. Romney and Mr. Ryan would allow beneficiaries to use vouchers to buy a version of traditional Medicare instead of a private plan, but it seems likely that the Medicare plan would attract the sickest patients, driving up Medicare premiums so that they would be unaffordable for many who wanted traditional coverage. Before disrupting the current Medicare program, it would be wise to see how well premium support worked in the new exchanges.

THE CHOICE This will be an election about big problems, and it will provide a clear choice between contrasting approaches to solve them. In the Medicare arena, the choice is between a Democratic approach that wants to retain Medicare as a guaranteed set of benefits with the government paying its share of the costs even if costs rise, and a Republican approach that wants to limit the government’s spending to a defined level, relying on untested market forces to drive down insurance costs.

The reform law is starting pilot programs to test ways to reduce Medicare costs without cutting benefits. Many health care experts have identified additional ways to shave hundreds of billions of dollars from projected spending over the next decade without harming beneficiaries.

It is much less likely that the Republicans, who have long wanted to privatize Medicare, can achieve these goals.

Mitt Romney Cannot See Past His Supreme Arrogance To Apologize To President Obama and The American People

Mitt Romney Cannot See Past His Supreme Arrogance To Apologize To President Obama and The American People

It was hidden in plain sight as a Bain press release in July 1999. Here's how it described Romney's position at Bain when he says he had no responsibility whatever, despite remaining CEO, Chairman and Sole Owner as far as forms filed with SEC testify:

    Bain Capital CEO W. Mitt Romney, currently on a part-time leave of absence to head the Salt Lake City Olympic Committee for the 2002 Games said ...

So Bain now contradicts Romney. And one of the men mentioned in the press release, Marc Wolpow, described his relationship with Romney when Romney was on a previous part time leave in 1994 when running for Senate (while remaining CEO of Bain):

    “I reported directly to Mitt Romney . . . You can’t be CEO of Bain Capital and say, `I really don’t know what my guys were doing,’” Mr. Wolpow said of Mr. Romney role at the company during his leave.

So this much is now obvious.

1. Romney didn't quit Bain in 1999 for good, as he claims. He remained the CEO throughout, as SEC files show, and as the Boston Globe reported back in 2002.

2. He stayed active in Bain, but at a much reduced level, the entire time.

3. In any case, everything that occurred at Bain up to 2002 is completely fair game for criticism, since he was the formal CEO at the time and therefore responsible for the whole company. The SEC filings are dispositive. He has been lying about this in order to deflect some very dangerous stories about Bain in that period which shows it is knee deep in outsourcing and off-shoring, and because his signature is on a filing with respect to a company that Bain owned that disposed of aborted babies.

Romney basically said what was the most convenient for his self-interest at every juncture - and finally all the contradictions and changing stories caught up with him.

This SEC filing list Romney as "As member of the Management Committee of each of BCIP and BCIP Trust". How does one get to be on a management committee and have absolutely no knowledge of what is going in in a company in which Romney is the sole owner. Now we have Romney playing liar's bluff - calling out President Obama for an apology. Romney owes Obama and the America people for dumping a truckload of deeply deceptive and immoral lies. Exactly who or what country is Romney loyal to - Unanswered questions about Romney’s UnAmerican offshore finances - he seems have set himself up to avoid paying his fair share of America's infrastructure ( multimillionaire conservatives always think they're too good to pay their way. They're VIPs and should get everything for free). Mitt might have a good excuse - he has the mental temperament of a bratty 8 year old - Romney’s Top Six ‘I Know I Am But So Are You’ Moments. Romney clearly does not have the moral backbone or maturity to be president.

How A Radical Conservative Republican Group Is Infiltrating State News Coverage

When Did Conservatives Exploit Terrorist Deaths For Partisan Political Gain

When Did Conservatives Exploit Terrorist Deaths For Partisan Political Gain

Perusing the political media these days you can't help but notice the hand-wringing consensus that the Obama administration is running a risk by "politicizing" the death of Osama bin Laden. Foreign policy achievements, we're told, are somehow sacrosanct and shouldn't be sullied by the taint of electioneering.

The president, according to McClatchy, is in "a roiling dispute between his re-election campaign and Republicans, who accuse Obama of politicizing a unifying event by taking credit for ordering the raid that got bin Laden." The ever-eager Fox News reports that "President Obama faced mounting criticism Tuesday for allegedly politicizing the anniversary of Usama bin Laden's death, with Sen. John McCain scolding the commander-in-chief and former New York Gov. George Pataki going so far as to call on Obama to apologize."

It would be nice if the press, when wrestling with this narrative, could dive deep into their memories and travel all the way back to June 2006, when the government of Iraq announced that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of Al Qaeda in Iraq, had been killed in an airstrike. The Bush White House and the Republican Congressional majority, facing terrible poll numbers and an angry electorate, were ecstatic at the news that one of the world's most wanted terrorists had met his end at American hands and immediately set to work politicizing his death.

The New York Times reported on June 13, 2006:

    It came as Republicans began a new effort to use last week's events to turn the war to their political advantage after months of anxiety, and to sharpen attacks against Democrats. On Monday night, the president's top political strategist, Karl Rove, told supporters in New Hampshire that if the Democrats had their way, Iraq would fall to terrorists and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi would not have been killed.

    "When it gets tough, and when it gets difficult, they fall back on that party's old pattern of cutting and running," Mr. Rove said at a state Republican Party gathering in Manchester.

Rove (who is now busily and dishonestly trying to diminish the Bin Laden raid) was delivering a message that synced nicely with the House Republican strategy (elucidated in a confidential memo prepared by John Boehner) to use Zarqawi's death to draw "a portrait of contrasts between Republicans and Democrats with regard to one of the most important political issues of our era."

Per the memo:

    As a result of our efforts during this debate, Americans will recognize that on the issue of national security, they have a clear choice between a Republican Party aware of the stakes and dedicated to victory, versus a Democrat Party without a coherent national security policy that sheepishly dismisses the challenges America faces in a post- 9/11 world.

Of course, even if there were no high-profile example of Republicans "spiking the football" over the death of a terrorist, are we really to believe they wouldn't have done exactly that had he been killed under Bush's watch?

So please: before we lend credence to all the pearl-clutching bluster over "politicizing" the death of a terrorist, let's pay due respect to recent history and common sense.

Conservatives lied us into Iraq as a way to promote the conservative movement. They lied about connections between Iraq and Bin Laden. Conservatives exploited terrorism at the 2004 RNC conventions - as this video clearly shows. Conservatives have no shame and no honor when it comes to doing whatever they can to unjustly promote themselves, lie to the American people and trash the economy in their spare time. Conservatives are the enemy within. Everyday doing whatever they can to make America and Democracy weaker.

Romney Wrote NYT Op-Ed Entitled "Let Detroit go bankrupt." Now Claims Auto Industry Reorganization by Government Was His Idea

John McCain still whining about 'politicizing' Mitt Romney's opposition to bin Laden raid strategy. Of course McCain's personal war experiences were awful, yet he has exploited them for political gain at every opportunity.

Paul Ryan(R-WI) has a pleasant personality - that does not mean he should get away with being a fanatic. One who would gut Medicare and increase the deficit.


Michelle Malkin hates women. Hates equal pay for women who do the same work as men. Hates that women should not be discriminated against for health insurance. Malkin basically hates every democratic ideal America stands for.