Cynicism and the Anti-Entitlement(Repubs deliberately designed bad bill)

[RedEarth]

Cynicism and the Anti-Entitlement
I used to be obsessed with the Medicare Prescription Drug bill, especially when I was starting my blog more than two years ago, but I haven"t written anything about it since the law took effect this month and all manner of chaos ensued. Why not? Aside from the usual excuses (Where"s that promised follow-up on lobbying reform? What about my half-finished takedown of the "unitary executive" theory?), none of this feels like news to me. Every single thing that"s happened this month was entirely predictable at the time the bill passed. Not just predictable, it was predicted, not just by me, but by everyone who wasn"t engaged in trying to get the bill passed or profit from it.

That"s a very important point to get across to the seniors who are now so predictably outraged. Their GOP representatives will blame it on "unintended consequences" and glitches in implementation, but that spin must not be allowed to stand. Every problem they are encountering was built in from the start in the structure that forces elderly and disabled people, their adult children or helpers, to make immensely complicated financial and medical choices, for a benefit that amounts to nothing more than a modest discount on wildly inflated prices. This is what they voted for, and they know it.

But this brings me to my main point: They really did know it. The Republican leaders who forced this bill through in a three-hour vote are many things, but they are not, in the main, complete idiots. They have their ideology about market systems and they don"t necessarily have an Yglesian appetite for analysis of policy detail, but they surely knew that there would be a backlash when this bill took effect. They had to have known it, at least some of them. They"ve got mommas. And yet as far as the public record shows, and accounts such as one published in The Hill on the anniversary of the three-hour vote which included a lot of the private conversations, none of this seemed to play any role in the debate. Advocates for the bill largely touted its immediate benefit for the President"s and their own reelection -- delivering on a promise, capturing the senior vote, never mind the details -- while opponents, or those who needed to be "persuaded," challenged the expense, or the betrayal of small government ideology, but for some reason never seemed to doubt the political calculation.

I"m skeptical, though. I think they expected a backlash and thought they could either ride it out or benefit from it. Sometime after the bill passed, I tried to write an essay called, "Bad government is good politics." It turned out not to be publishable because it was largely speculative and because the Medicare bill was really the only example I had at the time. But I wish I"d stuck with it. . My thesis was that Republicans knew there would be a backlash against the Medicare bill, but they understood that it would take the form of a backlash against government in general, and that would be to their advantage. Seniors struggling over a dining table covered with complicated forms, small-print prescriptions, and no-win choices weren"t going to be muttering, "Goddamn Dennis Hastert, I"m never voting for his party again." They would be muttering, "Damn government, can"t do anything right."


http://markschmitt.typepad.com/decembrist/2006/01/cynicism_and_th.html

[Zenlitened]

1. "... it would take the form of a backlash against government in general"

I think that's EXACTLY what's going on here, what the intent was all along.

[Sal Minella]

2. Yes, this just shows what sort of mess happens when government

tries to get involved with health care. This shows why socialized medicine would be bad.

But there's no reason we can't let Big Pharma make a few bil while we prove our point.

[applegrove]

3. Neocons designed a bad war, a bad responce to Katrina. Making

government work badly - so that business can be perceived as stepping in a doing a better job is what it is all about. Unfortunately, due to the nature of business and the goals of business - they do an even worse job than anyone. The UN programs were the only ones working in Iraq. Rummy hired a corporation to train Iraqi police & military and they came out of nowhere, with no experience, and didn't manage to train a unit. So the army had to take over.

[bemildred]

4. Congress will deliberately screw up programs they don't like.

Especially public services like Medicare, SSI, public education, AMTRAK, the Post Office.
The government can work fine when they want it to, and there are many examples of that.
And of course there is the military which gets lots of money and works really bad.

[salin]

5. beware of their next push

trying to end employee funded health insurance. Bush is already trying the rhetoric on - it is ridiculous - but they are about to do it in the name of... get this... increasing the number of insured americans. On one front they are going to push the rhetoric - then on another front the vehicle for their goal is *s "simplifying tax codes" agenda - which has reportedly (first noted in Jan of 05 and periodically mentioned in the news ever since) includes ending tax incentives for companies for providing health insurance.