Dean Baker’s Beat the Press is the best Early Warning Media Mythbuster. It’s simple: You read it every morning before you read the papers (he is up before you are, trust me) and you’re well prepared to deal with the economic nonsense you’ll be subjected to.
Today (4/6/11) he proposes this headline for stories about Rep. Paul Ryan’s budget blueprint:
Representative Ryan Proposes Medicare Plan Under Which Seniors Would Pay Most of Their Income for Healthcare
Baker writes: “That is what headlines would look like if the United States had an independent press.” He explains that the central idea in Ryan’s plan–voucher-like “premium support” instead of Medicare–will leave people paying a lot for healthcare. It’s a simple idea, but not one that is expressed so simply in many press accounts.
Take one Washington Post article today (4/6/11) by David A. Fahrenthold. It leads with this:
This is the essential question for Rep. Paul Ryan: Can this man really manage the hardest sales job in U.S. politics?
That might be “essential” for him, but it’s of little importance to us. We need to know what the plan actually wants to do. But papers too often find space to run these kinds of man-in-the-news profiles at the expense of telling readers, as often as they should, how policy ideas will affect them.
In the piece we learn that Ryan “is the lanky, wonky chairman of the House Budget Committee” and “an unlikely revolutionary.” The Post tells us that “Ryan studied economics in college, and in Congress he has embraced the weedy issues of the federal budget.” One source seems to think that “sticking to his wonky reputation would be a good idea.”
Back to the sales job:
So far, the sales pitch appears to be classic Ryan. He will make his case with earnestness and a hope that a quiet explanation of budget math can swing the country in a way that previous politicians could not.
He’s just trying to explain math! That’s nice, since the Post article doesn’t:
The vision also includes a change in the Medicare program, in which the federal government acts as a health insurer for seniors. In coming years–Ryan’s plan does not apply to people who are already 55–he would shift the program so that seniors would choose a private health plan. The federal government would then provide “premium support” to help them pay for coverage.
The main math question is how much “support” seniors will get. The answer is not much,and certainly not enough to cover the skyrocketing cost of healthcare. Pointing this out should be part of every story–even ones that tell us that Paul Ryan’s a “wonk.”
This is a bunch of Republican crap once again, similar to the ‘charter school’ programs (and, unfortunately, Obama’s new health care bill) where we should pay our taxes to the government, so that they can subsidize the private/for-profit insurance companies, while we STILL end up paying hefty private insurance premiums, and then HOPE that we actually get the service that’s being touted. THAT sounds like a recipe for cost reductions?!? No, it sounds like a gift to the private insurers, because that’s what it is. And of course you can see that in 4 or 5 yrs after it would be implemented and costs are still WAY out of control, the Republicans would be ‘forced’ to reduce the government premium subsidies because those benevolent Republicans are only trying to reduce the federal deficit and protest our children/grandchildren (so they can send them to 1 of the 3 or 4 ongoing wars that they’ll be orchestrating). Then we’d be right back to the pre-Medicare days which is, of course, the true Republican agenda.
(PS – I’m in Rep. Ryan’s district and feel compelled to apologize for his election, but the ‘cheeseheads’ nickname is not entirely inappropriate here.)
any headline on the ryan budget that doesn’t include the word “unicorns” is being dishonest.
Thanks for that apology, Big Em, and I accept it. Ryan is a complete and utter fraud–but he has the NewsMedia behind him, so the stupider he gets (and he’s just gettin’ started), the more joyous the noise from his PR people.
Anyone started their list yet as to the real death panel gang? Ryan is leading the charge on much of it apparently. Then there is my Governor, Scott, who ran in a rally carrying the torch for people with disabilities, while signing legislation afterward to gut their funds. Also add to the list the New Hampshire Repub who verbally whiplashed people with disabilities and then said they all should be sent to Siberia. They make every effort to create a compassionate society sound like a dirty word. Their skin crawls at the word “entitlements”. People come after a corporate bottom line and that better be a huge figure before we even think of humanity.
Ryan’s plan shifts 1.2 trillion dollars from the sick, poor, disabled, and the not rich to the rich to pay for 1.3 trillion dollars in tax savings for their tax cuts. And then, we’ll all get a pony.
Surely this man knows the math does not work in his favor. So why do they, the Rethugnuts. insist on perpetuating such nonsense? Their plan is to trump money over popular opinion, and sadly it may work.
I heard that there were 4 bills voted on in the Senate that limited the EPA’s Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. 17 Democrats voted in favor of them and 4 Democrats sponsored 3 out of the four. Democrats, surprisingly, like Sherrod Brown, Stabenow, Max Baucus, and others. WTF??? Why on earth would a Democrat do this? Being independent is, I guess important in some cases, so that there is not just a rubber stamping of what a particular proposes, but that does not aplply here, so why would they make such a move? I emailed each of them and raised holy hell as well as signed a petition indicating the displeasure over their actions.
By the way the 4 EPA bills mentioned in a previous post failed to pass.
@raymond
this won’t make you feel any better, but southeast ohio is coal country and sharrod brown has to factor that into the equation…..
who pays for Ryan’s healthcare?
The taxpayers, of course….
Plus, Ryan’s dad died when Paul Jr. was 16. With his father’s passing, Paul then collected Social Security benefits until he was 18, which he put away for college.
Ryans budget is sticky, and Obamas is sickly……..Biden is sleepy. :)
Really could Obama had better crafted such a non starter budget?I think not.
Ryan?Ah Ryan…a young lad in a den of thieves thinking he has the right to address tough issues.Like a colt taking his first steps.As dear old grand dad would say with a shrug….its a start.
Krugman: I’m already hearing some people saying, â┚¬Ã…“Why don’t you subject Obama’s budget proposals to the same kind of criticism you leveled at Ryan?’
The answer is, because Obama doesn’t deserve it.
Any budget proposal will have things you don’t find convincing. I’d certainly like to know more about Obama’s proposed elimination of tax loopholes; I’d like to know how we’re going to manage with the low levels of domestic discretionary spending envisioned.
But Obama isn’t proposing to somehow make $3 trillion in tax cuts revenue neutral. He isn’t proposing to shift from Medicare paying 70 percent of bills to vouchers worth only 30 percent. He isn’t claiming that we can shrink government outside the major social insurance programs â┚¬” but including defense â┚¬” to Calvin Coolidge levels.
What the complainers want is for me to do â┚¬Ã…“Shape of the earth: views differâ┚¬Ã‚ analysis â┚¬” to pretend that Republican nonsense has an equal and opposite Democratic counterpart. But it’s not true. Obama’s budget proposal really is wonk-tested, in a way Ryan’s never was; trust me, I know the wonks! (And Ryan’s wonks are the people who projected 2.8 percent unemployment, plus higher revenue from tax cuts.)
If you want false equivalences, go somewhere else.
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/13/obama-ryan-and-the-shape-of-the-planet/
The Orange Crush sez Ryan’s hope, aka: the screw the poor budget, is the GOP budget
Boehner, in a statement after Obama’s speech said “Republicans, led by Chairman Ryan, have set the bar with a jobs budget that puts us on a path to paying down the debt and preserves Medicare and Medicaid for the future. This afternoon, I didn’t hear a plan to match it from the President.”