WASHINGTON -- Today, on the 150th anniversary of the start of the Civil War, we're in the midst of another one. It's bloodless and less dramatic, but sparked by the same issue: the moral role and reach of the federal government.
This is a never-ending debate, one with roots that go back hundreds of years in our society. But it's more urgent now than it has been in decades.
There are two main reasons. The obvious one is that we are about as broke as the world's only superpower can afford to be. We have to make agonizing choices.
The other is that anti-government conservatives have been building to this moment for decades, and the defenders of Washington's role have preferred for most of those years to operate by stealth, by tactical retreats, and by shying away from debating the fundamentals.
Now they have no choice.
Republican Rep. Paul Ryan fired the fiscal equivalent of the first shot at Ft. Sumter. He has proposed sun-setting the modern capstone of American governmental commitment: Medicare, which, since 1965, has guaranteed taxpayer-funded health care to every American 65 and older. It looks like the GOP leadership is going to hope for the best and follow his lead and make the idea the centerpiece of their budget in the House.
Ryan wants to do to Medicare what major corporations have done with their health care plans: convert them from an open-ended commitment (a "defined benefit" plan) to a menu of outsourced private providers, with an individual cap for each employee -- a cap that's easy to ratchet down over time by the employer, AKA, in this case, the government.
Enter President Barack Obama. He is battered and distrusted by the left for his concessions in budget negotiations -- not to mention his past support of the Bush tax cuts and his retreat on Guantanamo and civilian trials for terrorists.
But tomorrow night, in a speech to the nation, a Lincoln-loving Obama will offer viewers and voters a strong defense of the moral role of the federal government.
He has no choice, but it also is an opportunity if he is willing to seize it with eloquence and conviction.
He and his advisors see the GOP's attack on Medicare as a fateful blunder, one that can allow Democrats to reframe the debate away from deficit-reduction to the need to preserve the social safety net and sense of one nation.
History moves in generational waves, and this is both the conclusion of one and the beginning of something, the course of which no one can predict.
Some forty years ago -- a generation, as measured by the Bible -- the Great Society was at its intellectual and political zenith in the presidency of LBJ. But the upheavals of the 1960s also gave birth to a new wave of conservatives, who have spent the intervening years building an alternative universe of antagonism to the moral prerogatives of a central government.
Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton rarely fought the conservatives on first principles. Carter and Clinton were small-town Southern Democrats who learned how to swim upstream in a slowly but steadily Rising Right tide embodied by Ronald Reagan.
Barack Obama was supposed to be something new and different. He ran by presenting himself as a Reagan-level change agent, a new synthesis. But aside from a health-care plan that is in large measure a give away to the industry -- and aside from spending tons of money on tax cuts and two and a half wars -- he hasn't really been either a force for change or a staunch defender of the progressive heritage. Witness the budget deal he just agreed to.
And yet he is, by background and inclination, a big-city progressive. He does believe in the ameliorative role that only the federal government can play in our system and in our culture. At least he says he does.
If the Obama thinks Medicare is essential to our Union, he had better make the case convincingly tomorrow. If he does so effectively, Republicans may decide that Private Ryan is a brave man, but not one to be followed into battle. If the president doesn't, say goodbye to Medicare as we know it.
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And of course, you would say you cannot raise tax in a depression, otherwise the rich would have to pay their share of debt
And instead of letting the worker suffer for 5 years while bailing out Wall Street, You can take away all the spending for the public the worker pays for too
A RPundit would not ask or request anyone else... even one of their Leaders to make the case....
They Would spend their own time Making the Case...
The Left does just the opposite.....
They tend to treat their Leaders like they are Gladiators...
Who must go out and Fight, on their behalf, SO THEY DON'T HAVE TO ...
He's a big ol' republican Trojan Horse. And what better person to go after Social security and Medicare than a big ol' republican Trojan Horse in dems' clothing.
Just watch.
To say he's a republican, is wrong. To say that today's democrats look like 1980s republicans would be more appropriate.
Obama isn't a 1980's Republican. Obama is a 2011 Republican.
I mean, Obama is basically assuming that about 65% of Americans are ignoring the news and will only check in a few months before the 2012 election.
It's a very clever plan of Ryan's. Or a very stupid plan, depending on which way you look at it and depending on whether you are rich or not, or worse.
If "framing" is everything, why haven't the Dems. used this to get through to voters as to what this plan REALLY means. If seniors will eventually have to use all their S.S. checks to buy health care under Ryan's plan, who else but they're children will take care of them? They're children, thanks to Ryan, can't even take care of their own retirement/old age.
I don't understand why no one is talking about this possibility.
Dems. should be talking about what it was like for seniors before medicare. Constantly. The "Ryan like" idiots are too young or have forgotten.
My view is that at this point we can stand up for our rights at this point only through peaceful nonviolent demonstrations. Republicans fight for the upper 1% but it is also the democrats main constituency. Obama is not to be trusted because of his record of breaking so many of his campaign promises.
Very telling is his blaming the government deficits on government spending ( the Republican view) rather than the impact of the Great Recession and the resulting loss of joblessness as if having 22 million American who want work unemployed (counting those who fell of the rolls) and underemployed has no affect on the tax revenues. Another problem is that the extremely wealthy and corporations are paying a historically smaller share of the GDP in taxes. THERE SHOULD BE A JOBS PROGRAM. However these factors are invisible toObama as he competes with the Republicans to see who can best cut entitlements etc.
Who's "we" buddy? Did "we" choose to spend trillions on wars?
Did "we" choose to hand over billions to health insurance companies?
Democracy and Republic are not Mutually Exclusive terms....
Democracy means that each Citizen has the Right and Ability to Vote... ( with a few exceptions )... not just a privileged class..... and each vote carries the same weight...
A Republic just means that we are not a Monarchy....or a Kingdom....
Where power is exchanged within a Family .....
Think of The People's REPUBLIC of China.... for example....
It is a Brave New World, unfortunately that was not a story, but a prediction. Atlas Shrugged and the Whole world trembled
Has anyone REALLY looked over the SIMPSON BOWLES COMMISSION report. Why do you think the really rich 2% LOVE it? IT'S BECAUSE IT SADDLES THOSE WHO CAN BEARLY GET BY WITH HIGHER TAXES AND LOWERS THE TAXES FOR THAT VERY SAME 2%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
When to worker eventually will get 0 Sum Gain. He will still be to busy working to understand his plight.
He goes off sending his kid to fight political wars. Instead of sending them to washington where they could realy defend their country, If you know what I mean
But, as usual, the joke is sadly on them. Prices will "neccessarily skyrocket" (as Obama explained on the stump) and they will be, as usual, worse off than they were. And we Millionaires and Billionaires will just work a few more hours, keep our car an extra year and layoff another lower level employee to compensate.
That is real world economics.
http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html
or
http://www.american.com/archive/2007/november-december-magazine-contents/guess-who-really-pays-the-taxes
or
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/incometaxandtheirs/a/whopaysmost.htm
I can give you about 300 sites that say exactly the same thing.
We have too little money in the hands of the citezens, THAT is what is crashing the economy.
The pols in his own party underminded him at every term, and cowered when they were presented with questions as to whether they supported reforming health care because of the nuts that turned out at the town halls who were mostly repubs. And while these people got out in the heat of summer, and screamed and hollered to the top of their lungs and disrupted town hall meetings that dems were holding, we sat at home and did nothing to counter their protest and when things didn't work out the way you wanted it to, you blamed the president when you should have blame yourself for sitting back and letting the repubs frame the debate.
The dems have only their own laziness and apathy to blame for not getting what they wanted, and the president was forced to accept what he could get. When will we realize that we are our own worst enemy, and stop using the excuse that the dems don't follow their leader's blindly for your own lack of loyalty, impatience and vision?
Stop using the excuse that it's the liberals fault. We have been correct, Obama and the DLC dems are messing up.
Vote for the Kucinich progressive or continue to let the multinationals rule the world.
Obama and the DLC dems continued the bush cut and failed to pass a budget when they had the power to do so, all of our current problems stem from that.
Look up the DLC democrats, they have publicized their agenda. See how corporatist it is.