Bush wants $200 billion in Medicare cuts
How will this play with Americans while Bush and congress is spending 9 billion a month in Iraq?
Setting the stage for one last budget battle with the Democratic Congress, President Bush plans to propose $178 billion in long term cuts to Medicare in the fiscal 2009 budget he will unveil on Monday.
A White House official confirmed Thursday that Bush will propose $208 billion in mandatory budget reductions in all, with Medicare cuts taking up the majority of that figure.
The administration declined to release specifics of what programs under Medicare would be affected in the budget, but this proposal is nearly three times the $66 billion in cuts to Medicare last year. The Medicare cuts would be carried out over five years.
The spending decrease would come primarily from mandating a slower pace of growth of the massive senior citizen health care program. In recent years, Medicare has grown at more than 7 percent per year, and the Bush budget will propose slowing that growth to 5 percent a year.
Across the board, Bush is looking to freeze nondefense programs, and will propose less than 1 percent increase in all domestic programs. As Politico reported last week, Bush will not ask for full funding for the war in Iraq, and will instead only ask for funding through early 2009, when a new president will take over.
Democrats seem highly unlikely to embrace cutting benefits for senior citizens in an election year.
“It’s outrageous to try to balance the budget on the backs of senior citizens given the fact that under this administration we’ve seen more than a $3 trillion increase in the national debt,” said Jim Manley, spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.).
Trying to control the Middle East with troops on the ground is like defending yourself against trees by standing at the bottom of a mountain during a mudslide with a chainsaw.
Damn John…Bush spends money on Medicare for prescription drugs and you bitch.
Now he proposes a second round of cuts in Medicare spending and you bitch.
This is welcome news in the continuation of Bush’s spendthrift ways over the past couple of years. Congress should have worked with him to reform entitlements…it’s their fault, not Bush’s that the programs are going bankrupt.
The administrators of Medicare are calling for a 122% tax increase or a 53% cut in benefits.
Hmmm? Higher payroll taxes or fewer benefits? Seniors will love that choice.
However, with the coming “single payer,” national health care program, there may actually be a significant initial savings to this and without a cut in benefits. Since we usually only look at short term benefits or problems, I believe the lure of a national health care plan that includes all people currently in Medicare will pass within a year and 1/2. Possibly even this year.
At least it is a “reform.” I may not be the best or even a good one in the long run but, for now, it may be the best we can hope for given the mind of the voters, currently.
Bill, this is the challenge, I think we face. I got the email again today and thought I’d share it with you as a way to explain why I think we will have a national health care plan soon. The fences are up and the gate is open.
quote:
CATCHING PIGS
THIS IS TRULY THOUGHT PROVOKING. TAKE THE TIME TO READ IT AND SEND IT ON TO THOSE THAT YOU THINK ARE WORTH SENDING TO.
There was a chemistry professor in a large college that had some exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab, the Prof noticed one young man, an exchange student, who kept rubbing his back and stretching as if his back hurt.
The professor asked the young man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country who were trying to overthrow his country’s government and install a new communist regime.
In the midst of his story, he looked at the professor and asked a strange question. He asked:
“Do you know how to catch wild pigs?”
The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line. The young man said that it was no joke.
“You catch wild pigs by finding a suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they are used to coming.
When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, which are used to the free corn, start to come through the gate to eat that free corn again.
You then slam the gate on them and catch the whole herd. Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught.
Soon they go back to eating the free corn . They are so used to it that they have forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their captivity.”
The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he sees happening in America . The government keeps pushing us toward Communism/Socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tax cuts, tax exemptions, tobacco subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare, medicine, drugs, etc. while we continually lose our freedoms, just a litt le at a time..
One should always remember two truths:
1) There is no such thing as a free lunch
2) and you can never hire someone to provide a service for you cheaper than you can do it yourself.
If you see that all of this wonderful government ‘help’ is a problem confronting the future of democracy in America , you might want to send this on to your friends.
Jan
How do you think the farmer pays for the fence? And of course the “fat and dumb” variety is preferable.
The early “farmers” didn’t pay for the fence. It was constructed out of limbs and materials found in the woods.
That is like what we have done to ourselves. Our fence has been created by our own materials. Greed, foolish spending, lack of common sense, inability to budget, etc. are the materials we used to build the fence and the gate. The government (we the people) only has to slam the gate shut now.
We have trapped ourselves with personal, city and state spending that requires constantly increasing debt, as well as Federal debt and deficit spending.
Now with home loans, equity loans, car loans, boat loans, 2nd home loans, time shares and credit card debt of $8,000 or so, we are paying more and more for interest and less for actual goods.
Debt is the “gate,” and it is slamming shut on us.
The government slams the gate shut by encouraging more debt instead of allowing a corrective recession to purge the system. The gate may not slam shut this year, however. If they pull this off with more spending and credit, it will mean waiting until more pigs are in the trap. By waiting, we may end up with more pigs in the trap than are still roaming free.