"Parochial Considerations"

Last week, my newspaper column looked at how our media and political elites limit the scope of policy debates to very narrow, very ideologically driven parameters. In this Brave New World, the propaganda is somewhat subtle, in that there's no Big Brother overtly saying certain things can or cannot be discussed. Instead, it's propaganda and extreme ideology via omission and euphemism -- certain things get talked about in very vague platitudes, other things don't get talked about at all.

Case in point is the resurrected proposal to deal with the budget deficit by taking power away from our elected government, and giving it to an unaccountable "nonpartisan" commission empowered to slash expenditures as it sees fit, all under the veneer of pragmatic empiricism. This is a demand being made alternately by Sens. Joe Lieberman and George Voinovich, and by the loudest vote auctioneers in Congress, the "Blue Dog" Democrats. Here's how the Wall Street Journal's slavish D.C. bumlicker Gerald Seib describes it:

[The proposal] would establish a national commission to examine the nation's tax system and the mammoth entitlement programs of Social Security and Medicare, and come up with a coherent way to pay all the bills coming due.

The commission would have 20 members from both parties, from both the executive and legislative branches, and would be charged with drafting a proposal to fix the long-term fiscal mess...

This may be the only way to cut through the parochial considerations that are causing fiscal problems to fester.

First, notice how the commission would be limited to balancing the budget only through tax "reform" and Social Security and Medicare spending "reform." This, of course, is far from empiricism -- it is extremist ideology unto itself. Somehow, a budget poised to spend $7 trillion on the Pentagon, $23 trillion on handouts to Wall Street, and billions more on ongoing corporate welfare subsidies must be balanced only through "reforms" to taxes and the two programs that care for the old and the sick.

We can thank Seib for putting it so plainly. Evidently, Congress isn't giving into "parochial considerations" when it hands Goldman Sachs billions of dollars to fund the company's executive bonuses. Apparently, there's no "parochial considerations" at work when a Vice President directs massive defense contracts to a company that still pays him. Clearly, there's no "parochial considerations" at work when defense contractors line lawmakers pockets in exchange for military pork projects. However, the two programs that undergird the basic health, welfare and retirement security of the general population of the United States? Sorry, that's a "parochial consideration" that must be dealt with harshly.

Of course, this absurd logic is precisely why the Washington Establishment knows it needs an authoritarian commission to do its dirty work.

You see, elected officials can't be expected to be able to go back home to voters and explain a plan to simultaneously slash Social Security and Medicare while preserving Pentagon waste and corporate welfare. Indeed, with polls already showing that the public thinks we're wasting way too much cash on bailouts and defense, if lawmakers come home with such a proposal, they'll get booted from office.

Put another way, basic democracy -- yes, the lumpen proles implicitly promising electoral retribution for those who prioritize corporate welfare over their retirement and health care -- is getting in the way of the Establishment's drive to divert cash from Social Security and Medicare into corporate welfare. And so the only way to make such an extremist plan possible is to empower a czarist commission to supercede Congress and completely circumvent democracy -- all in the name of noble, disinterested nonpartisan empiricists benevolently helping America "cut through parochial considerations."

The question is how much any of this will fool the country? It's hard to say, and I wish I was confident that the populace will pick up on the sleight of hand. But I'm not. The Political-Media-Industrial Complex is so fucking powerful these days, and Americans are so understandably busy just trying to survive the recession, that even the shoddiest and least convincing schemes could work. I sure hope they don't.

Comments

[GypsyJack]

"to deal with the budget deficit by taking power away from our elected government, and giving it to an unaccountable "nonpartisan" commission"

Taking the power away from our elected government..... for far to long that elected government has been taking power away from the population that elected it, That government has made itself unnacountable to no one.. A GOVERNMENT BY THE PEOPLE FOR THE PEOPLE... It's time the people get their rights back.. Government spending is so out of control that it requires accountablility. Gypsy

[mjc]

My thoughts exactly, Mr. Sirota. What is really going on in the debate on health care is NOT reform, NOT expanding health care for all, but cutting programs that do benefit certain segments of our society, seniors, for example, who can get Medicare and the very poor, who can get Medicaid. And Barack Obama, the champion of the underdog, the downtrodden, the poor and untitled, is buying into a plan that would indeed cut Medicare costs and Medicaid by charging more for some parts of the program or eliminating certain aspects of these programs. Single-payer programs apparently died a long time ago and any thoughts of using a program like that in Massachusetts or putting everyone on Medicare, bypassing the insurance companies, and made mandatory, just aren't going to go anywhere, certainly not with the Repugs but also not with conservative Democrats. We are just going to continue to be an unenlightened police state, endless wars and endless debt but no social programs worth their salt.

[billw8017]

My doctor wanted me to have my eyes checked, but I kept putting it off as the time of our next appointment neared. I saw a sale at a mall, eyes checked $50, and decided to just get it done.

Afterward, I asked that medicare might be applied and the optometrist consented. In due time, I got a statement for the co pay, $46. Medicare was charged $80 and paid $34.

The point is that doctors and pharmacies charge what the market will pay and, as the government doesn't haggle, continue to charge what the market has born and might continue to bear plus what medicare freely pays. This is merely good business practice, and I should be grateful that i was allowed a share in this looting of the government program since it was unnecessarily generous of the providers. This is how we pay about double what some other nations pay for their health care and despite that about half the payments are made through various government programs.

It is a good deal for the optometrists and a great deal for the private intermediaries who bill medicare on their behalf. Naturally, they oppose competitive bidding in the manner of the VA or the Canadians. Projections of the existing trends indicate health care will go to 20% and more of the GDP without getting any better care. The implication is that American health care costs are in a sort of bubble that must inevitably burst.

[billw8017]

So long as Medicare continues to function this way, the conversion to greater practicality has the potential of considerable savings.

The practices of insurance companies is even more egregious since their art is to cancel policies as claims upon them become more likely. We should all be grateful to the Bush administration since it treated all this as normal market practice, and allowed the uncovered to increase by about a quarter.

A lot of things came together under the previous administration: the "jobless" recovery that changed into a sudden and sharp fall in employment, the funny derivatives and securitized paper based in loans so bad that the gatherers lied to the beneficiaries (all this graded AAA ). Then the former CEO of Goldman Sachs, working at the Treasury, let Sachs' competitor Lehman go into bankruptcy and pumped billions into AIG, Sachs' insurer, and more billions directly into Sachs.

President Obama may be right to try to keep a policy consistent with Paulson and hope to recover some of the funds. It stinks of trickle down, but the Fed is committed with even greater expenditures so going along is the only available element of control. The NLRB, currently short of members and otherwise emasculated, might be used to promote full employment and good jobs.

Monetary policy will not do it all. Inflation, by reducing the value of money in circulation, has the effect of a deflation. Simple mindedness will not rescue a complex economy.

[jemborg]

What with all the ridiculous "birther" bs that's going on you have a right to be pessimistic Mr Sirota.

[billw8017]

Strongly put!

And, the matter is serious; it cannot be too strongly put.

[hivanh]

"Absurd logic" sums up the diabolical and dastardly goings-on nicely. "nuf said.

[jmpurser]

I hope we've got enough active brain cells to spot such an obvious hijacking of our nation but after seeing Obama take Single Payer off the table by distracting people with the "public option" scheme I'm beginning to doubt it.

[billw8017]

Obama is open to legislative input. His personal preference should seem to be single payer which, on the world experience, is the best system. However, vested interests make single payer hard to achieve here in the United States.

Actually, vested interests make any reform difficult to achieve and "public option" may transform to single payer. The industry is fully aware of this prospect, so "public option" is the compromise position that means whatever they or us can swing.

We need the "public option," and we need empathetic implementation to put it to work for us.

Notice, by the way, the biggest concession to the Republicans: The likely programs take effect in 2013 while we begin earlier to pay taxes to build the fund so the popular part has less effect on the next Presidential elections. If the Republicans continue intransigent, let coverage begin in 2012 and let them meet the consequences!

[Eggsackley]

Thanks for the information about the starting date. There is so little real news out there. I see no reason why the program could not be started even before 2012, especially since I understand we are talking about an expansion of a plan already in place, the Congressional health care plan. It will take time to expand any plan; the sooner we start the better. We need to consider setting up the plan administration using the Post Office model. It is successfully competing with the private sector even though it is stuck with subsidizing junk mail.

[schatsie]

Great article...Funny how they can spin on a dime to show why they should be richer and we should not have even basic health care....We need to be responsible and tax the speculation out of them....

[ld]

Yet another great article! You are the first to use the expression "Political­-Media-Ind­ustrial Complex" which captures the thing well.

I've been trying to get people that could have insurance coverage ONLY through national health insurance but they oppose it anyhow to tell me why. It seems always to come down to that they have a political response they've learned through the media and they're just too busy in their lives to examine their beliefs. So my experience matches what you say above.

[PeterNY]

Let's save $70 billion and close ALL our bases in Europe. We don't need NATO. The Soviet Union is defunct, and Russia won't bite too hard on all those western Europeans buying their petroleum and natural gas.

[johnashman]

I've long envisioned such a commission, though I do think everything should be on the table. The Federal government is over $3T (about $4T this year), it only really *needs* about $500B-$1T to do its actual job. If it would stop overreaching.

[Eggsackley]

If there is a commission absolutely everything MUST be on the table, but I won't hold my breath. With all the think tanks out there, why have another commission? It would just be another delaying tactic while the barn burns down.

[mbaty]

"mammoth entitlement programs..." Relatively they are about the furthest thing from mammoth you can get, but call it "entitlement" so it sounds like we are whiny gimme gimmes. Just the other day I was denied the credit I needed to get a necessary dental procedure because of my credit score. To me it was a metaphor of everything that is wrong with American heatlh care, among other things.

[MJinCanada]

Why isn't the term "massive entitlement" ever applied to the military industrial complex?

Lois McMaster Bujold put it very well in one of her novels when she said that war was a kind of alchemy -- it turns the blood of men and the livelihoods of ordinary people into gold for the few who have power.

[johnashman]

Because defense is one of the three basic functions of the federal government. Entitlement programs are not.

[jmpurser]

Only when you have a government defined by the republican party. Which is a REAL good reason not to let them have anything to do with your government.

[schatsie]

Why isn't massive Entitlement applied to our Corporate Oligarchical Queens?

[Gidster]

It is...In spades!!!

[bichn]

It seems the greatest talent among members of congress is their ever evolving ability to avoid accountability.

[billw8017]

Campaign costs actually require more accountability to the lobbyists. The independence of any Congress person is remarkable. Yet, it happens.

[pogo]

As long as we can afford the CIA and NASA, we don't need anything else. These agencies have done so much to improve our quality of life.

[billw8017]

Right. Spokesmen for the CIA have assured the New York Times and Washington Post that they have nothing to do with the drug trade. More evidence is top secret.

[TRYKER]

Good gawd Gertie! They've all been in Washington TOO LONG.
They've run out of common sense and their consciences are jello...jello shots. Their brains are pickled and we haven't got a chance of redeeming them, throw them all OUT.

[billw8017]

Right. The Chamber of Manufacturing and Commerce has a slate of candidates standing by to replace them. Or, do you think Ralph Nader can be elected?