I have not been talking about the insanity around the debt ceiling and debt and deficit and the efforts of Republicans to drive us all off the cliff, but I am today – and I’m going to do it by allowing you to grab ahold of this problem and see for yourself just how unbelievably bad this manufactured crisis is going to be.
You will hear a lot of conversation about the consequences from others; today, however, you are going to get the chance to be both the President and the Secretary of the Treasury, and you will get to decide for yourself exactly what bills the Federal Government should and should not pay as the cash runs out if a deal is not made by the time borrowing authority runs out.
At that point you’ll be able to see what’s coming for yourself – and once you do, you won’t need me to tell you what ugly is going to look like.
So I disappeared for a full week, right in the middle of what should have been a busy writing schedule, and I have to claim some "personal days" to cover the time we missed here at the blog - but it won't be time entirely wasted.
Instead, I'm going to jump into my own personal life for today's story, and I'm going to do it so that we can stimulate some thinking about where we really need to go to if we ever hope to make some sense out of the crazy way we deliver health care in this country.
Since this appears to be the weekend that a lot of decisions are either going to be made about the future of our "social safety net"...or they wont; we're entirely unsure...let's talk about how it actually works for a lot of us - and how it could work a lot better.
By now you have heard that President Obama has chosen to throw Social Security and the Medicare and Medicaid Programs over the side of his proverbial fishing boat as bait to see if he can get Republicans to give him another really lousy compromise, much as he did last December when he gave up billions upon billions of deficit reduction in order to help Republicans preserve tax cuts for billionaires.
And it looks like the President doesn't really lose if you or I get hurt here: in fact, it seems that, in his eyes, it's to his advantage to fight against his own base as he seeks to be "the adult in the room" in the runup to the '12 election.
So we're going to have to find a way to put The Fear on this guy - and I think I've got a plan to force this President to listen.
And it works like this: if this President ain't gonna be moved by our message...we do it by holding the rest of his Party hostage.
They tell us we're dropping about $10 billion a month in Afghanistan so we can catch that Bin Laden guy...but eventually, we're gonna catch him, and as soon as we do you can imagine that folks will be wondering why we're still over there - and I gotta tell ya, I'm one of those people.
I mean, we're over here talking about how we're so broke that we have no choice but to cut a couple of billion from heat assistance for the poor, and a billion-and-a-half from the Social Security operations budget, and money from food stamps and childcare assistance and tornado forecasting in Alabama...but every single month, just as regular as clockwork, we seem to be able to find another $10 billion to spend in Afghanistan, even as we have an economy that could badly use another round of truly productive stimulus.
And I don't think y'all even realize just how much money $10 billion really is - but today we're gonna see if we can't fix that with a bit of a thought exercise.
Imagine if we set up a program that took that Afghanistan money and spent it right here at home for a year or two - and it was spent in the form of a lottery, where we stimulate the larger economy, help fix the mortgage crisis, and create a more energy-independent nation, all at the same time.
I got all we need except a catchy name; with that in mind let's move on to the description of how the Happy Super Fun Day Peace Lotto Stimulus Thingy works.
Oh, my, has there been a lot of news since we spoke last about the Potential Impending Death Of Medicare: obviously we're going to have to talk about the implications of Osama Bin Laden's death (but we'll do that another day), President Obama very publicly congratulated Donald Trump for having the leadership skills to know that Gary Busey was the one who needed to be fired after the way he ran the men's cooking team on "The Apprentice", and, of course, there was that "extreme ironing incident" on the M1 near London's Mill Hill.
But what you may not have noticed is that in the past two weeks the Grim Weeper himself, Speaker of the House John Boehner, has gone from saying "I fully support Paul Ryan's budget, including on Medicare" to saying that the Paul Ryan "Let's Kill Medicare" plan is "an idea ... worthy of consideration"-and when that happens that quickly you know somebody applied what we might politely describe as being at least "an equal and opposite force".
And what I'm here to suggest today is that the opposite force in question...is you.
All summer long, Louisiana residents were subjected to non-stop lying and yammering by Governor Bobby Jindal and his allies about the potential threat to Louisiana jobs posed by the deep water drilling moratorium. Although the job losses never materialized, the mere thought of them had Jindal & Co. speaking in apocalyptic terms about Louisiana's economic future in the wake of the temporary drilling shutdown.
In contrast to his previous agitation regarding the possibility of job losses, the Governor seems eerily serene as he prepares to unleash new rounds of state budget cuts that will cut services and cost jobs in both the public and private sector.
In a note to supporters last week, Jindal reiterated his opposition to any form of tax increases. He also took credit for all good news in the state and laid blame for any bad news at the feet of others. That's just the way he rolls.
But a funny thing happened while Jindal was on an out-of-state jaunt: some inconvenient facts escaped into public view.
Turns out that the Governor's plan to close Earl K. Long Medical Center in Baton Rouge will cost about 400 people their jobs. That fact came via testimony from the hospital's CEO before the Louisiana Senate Finance Committee. That number is significant on a couple of scores.
Last week, Louisiana1976 highlighted an amendment put up by Senator Coburn of Oklahoma that will cut the $300 million that Senator Landrieu successfully inserted into the health care reform legislation prior to the vote to debate the bill in the Senate.
It all has to do with a tweaking of the Federal Medical Assistance Percentage, which determines how much money the federal government and the states have to put up for Medicaid coverage. The Louisiana FMAP has usually been around 67%, meaning that Louisiana usually puts up about 33% of the costs of Medicaid for a fiscal year. However, since the FMAP takes into account the average per capita income from five years to three years prior to the current fiscal year, that means for fiscal year 2011, it will take into account the per capita income of Louisiana between 2006-2008, the years that federal disaster assistance money flooded the state. Thus, the Louisiana FMAP drops from 67% to 63%, causing a $900 million hole in the state's budget this upcoming year.
Senator Landrieu fulfilled the #1 request of Governor PBJ by getting some funding to help close a $2.5 billion dollar hole in the state budget over the next five years.
While Governor PBJ has remained largely silent, the Sinning Senator has twittered his displeasure with "backroom deals" to get health care reform passed. Never mind that he's quite famous for some backroom dealings himself.
Ahhh, I digress.
Back to the FMAP funding issue ... according to The Town Talk, the Sinning Senator is:
"holding off judgment specifically on the Coburn amendment until it comes forward for an actual vote."
Hmmm ... what is there to decide, Sinning Senator? Either you'll vote nay to help out Louisiana, or you'll vote yea to appease your friend from Oklahoma, and you'll screw us all back home.
As Charlie Melancon said in a conference call on the Coburn amendment yesterday, and cut short in a tweet (tweet italicized):
"David Vitter needs to remember that he works for the people of Louisiana, not the Senator from Oklahoma. We're talking about $300 million to head off a state budget crisis and help families that need it most. It doesn't take a Harvard education to figure out that this is common sense and the right thing to do for Louisiana."
While most of us would expect that our Senators do the best thing for the people of this state, it doesn't always work that way with the Sinning Senator ... he looks out for himself before he looks out for the people of Louisiana.
