The debate over healthcare has pitted Democrat against Republican, Conservative Against Liberal, Young against Old . . . and CBO Director against CBO Director. Obviously Peter Orszag, who is now the head of Obama's Office of Management and Budget, is a big supporter of the proposed reforms. Doug Elmendorf seems worried about the cost-cutting side, but his job is to be cryptic. Doug Holtz-Eakin, who recently did a star turn as McCain's chief economic advisor, has been pretty vocally outspoken against it. And now June O'Neill, who was CBO director during the middle of the Clinton administration, has made an ad saying we need a rethink:
I'm trying, and failing, to think of any issue in which so many CBO directors have gotten so vocally involved. Perhaps because there are few issues outside of healthcare that so directly implicate an already frightening fiscal picture.
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This video was made by the Employment Policies Institute. Which is run by a scumbag named Richard Berman. So this isn't shocking at all. I bet he's supporting the tea parties. He's another idiot, like Pete Peterson, that hates it when a Democrat is President.
Looked at his bio -- so what exactly makes him a scumbag?
"... so what exactly makes him a scumbag?
He's alerting the public to the consequences of this bill's passage.
So of course he's a scumbag to them.
Dr. June O'Neill is an obvious racist. Proof? She's clearly trying to destroy Obama's presidency ... so that's the proof that she's a racist.
I guess you missed the part about his appearance on The Rachel Maddow Show. How Berman lied blatantly.
No, Wikipedia is lying blatantly. He said "..the average family income of a minimum wage worker today is approximately $50,000".
Which is true, inasmuch that minimum wage workers tend to be teenagers working for their own spending money, not to put food on the table for their families.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33209373
Wikipedia claims "...on the Rachel Maddow show Berman claimed the minimum wage was $50,000 per year".
There is a reason Wikipedia isn't considered a reliable source.
Yeah ... and everybody knows Rachel Maddow is an unbiased journalist and not a GE-paid Jeff Immelt-paid Obama Administration attack dog (and yes, I do mean dog).
I agree with O'Neill's message, but she is a Republican appointee having served as CBO director from 1995-99 when the GOP controlled Congress. The fact this occurred during the Clinton Administration is irrelevant.
That said, she seems to have solid good credentials and isn't just some hack:
http://zicklin.baruch.cuny.edu/faculty/profiles/oneill.html
I was dating it, not trying to imply that she was a Democrat.
Are Democrats sole arbiters of the truth?
So let's see. Yesterday, Megan posted an ad for health care reform. The post was all about the AARP motivations for the ad. After all, we shouldn't trust lobbies, and "the AARP is a gigantic money-sucking cancer on the American body politic".
Today, Megan posts an ad against health care reform, also financed by a lobby, the Employment Policies Institute. They are spending $10 million in a new advertising campaign, and hired an ex-CBO director. Yet, Megan treats June o'Neill's statements as perfectly innocent. O'Neill is just a disinterested party who became "vocally involved" because she is so concerned about the size of our debt. Suddenly, it doesn't matter who is paying for this. Even if it is a lobby ran by one of the sleaziest guys around.
Berman's companies have run numerous media campaigns downplaying the dangers of obesity, smoking, mad cow disease, drunk driving, the minimum wage and other issues.
I didn't post about Berman's motivations for making the ad. The point is, why is June O'Neill getting involved? That has nothing to do with who made the ad. If the AARP had made an ad wtih someone famous, I would probably have talked about the famous person. But they made an ad with a bunch of low-paid extras looking mournful.
Yes, that's the problem.
Because she got paid to do the ad? Or she has a vested interest in stopping reform? Maybe this isn't so, but you should stay away from the stink of lobbies like EPI if you want to present yourself as a neutral "concerned" party. She could have written an op-ed piece, show up on TV, etc.
The AARP also has legitimate concerns. They represent the interests of 40 million Americans, after all. And I also can't stand them, but that's not the point. The point is that you're automatically attributing the best possible intentions to O'Neill and the worst to AARP.
As for the AARP, I always attribute the worst possible intentions to them, because I hate the AARP--but that has nothing to do with health care, and my antipathy is of very long standing.
Meanwhile, if you'll go back and reread the post, you'll see that I was not in fact accusing them of being a cancer on the American body politic, but saying that they were afraid of fostering the perception that they are, to put it less colorfully, an extremely powerful lobby which is amazingly adept at extracting goodies for the management and members from Congress. That's something you want your members to believe, but everyone else to disbelieve, so you don't usually advertise it on television.
The point is that you're automatically attributing the best possible intentions to O'Neill and the worst to AARP.
Of course. She doesn't want to piss off her soon-to-be husband's gravy train. They don't call it wingnut welfare for nothing. You saw how fast Bruce Bartlett was cut off when he deviated even slightly from orthodoxy.
You can say anything you like about me, but insulting my family=not okay. This is a banning offense, and your first warning.
That doesn't explain anything. She may well have been paid. But given the culture of the CBO, and what I know about O'Neill, Orszag, Holtz-Eakin, and so forth, I can't imagine any of them taking a position in public simply because they'd been paid. They treasure their reputations, which are, to a large extent, their capital. If June O'Neill made this ad, you can be pretty sure she agrees with it--which is not terribly surprising, since she was the CBO director under Clinton, when Congress was controlled by Republicans. If Orszag goes to work for some liberal think tank when he gets out, that won't really explain things if he decides to stage a public war with a Republican CBO over some bill.
It seems as if you thought I was posting about this drop-dead awesome ad in which June O'Neill totally undermines the case for health care reform, but seriously, I was just posting about the fact that former CBO directors are getting publicly involved in a dispute about the budget in a way that I've never seen before. The source of the ad isn't really relevant, and I wasn't endorsing its content, which is extremely minimal and not all that persuasive. I kind of doubt that this is a decisive moment in the campaign.
Yesterday's ad was also the first thing that occurred to me. I'm kind of disgusted by the blatant double standard. And by this:
Perhaps because there are few issues outside of healthcare that so directly implicate an already frightening fiscal picture.
About our "frightening fiscal future", this has been said over and over again, but I'll say it anyway. The Iraq and Afghanistan wars had cost 533 billion up to 2007 according to the CBO. They have now vastly surpassed that amount, and the final cost is estimated to be close to 2.4 trillion.
People who weren't concerned about these values, funded by deficit spending when we weren't in a recession, and are now worried about 800 billion in 10 years... Sorry, they simply don't have any credibility.
Look, first of all, my hatred for the AARP is non-partisan--if you look back at my old blog, you'll find I've been calling them names for years over things that have nothing to do with health care reform, and everything to do with the AARP's position as the most powerful, ruthless, and greedy lobby in Washington. (I mean, the sum of all three is the worst, not that there may not be more ruthless and/or greedy lobbies in DC) Second of all, this is a total non-sequitur. You're comparing a stock to a flow. The problem is not the ten-year cost; it's that the ten year cost keeps growing after ten years. Third of all, which Democrats were against Afghanistan, permitting their supporters to claim no part of its costs? Fourth of all, what does any of this have to do with whether our fiscal future is, or is not, frightening?
"The Iraq and Afghanistan wars had cost 533 billion up to 2007 ..."
Wait ... you conveniently forgot to add how much we are paying per month for our continued military presence at Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo?
You remember the Kosovo War? The one you guys always seem to gloss over. The one that President Clinton committed US troops to without Congressional authorization and without UN authorization. The one where he bombed civilians. The one where he became a war criminal.
You forgot about that war. We're still in Kosovo. I'm sure you just forgot. So how much is that costing us per month for Clinton's illegal war?
What's the wrong with that? Some of those things are legitimately dangerous, but their dangers are vastly overstated. Are you saying that it's sleazy to suggest that the hysteria over mad cow disease was overblown?
The dangers of smoking and drunk driving are generally overestimated as well. Surveys of smokers show that their estimates of their odds of dying from a smoking-related illness are actually too high rather than too low. And laws reducing the legal blood alcohol level are very popular even at levels haven't been proven dangerous.
It's not just former CBO directors - former CBO analysts are getting in on the debate, too.
From The Hill, 11/20:
"In an estimate released this afternoon by the conservative-leaning American Enterprise Institute (AEI), departed CBO analyst Joseph Antos stressed his former employer's prediction that the bill would cost $848 billion actually depends on future Medicare cuts and reforms Congress is unlikely to authorize or enforce."