The Budget Clown Show Moves to the Republican Congressional Leadership...

Could the Post be making a joke? I mean, there is no doubt--no doubt at all--about the Republican Congressional leadership's willingness to tackle the deficit. It has no willingness to tackle the deficit at all. None. Zero. It has never had any. What "doubt" about this could there possibly be?

washingtonpost.com: Congress's Willingness To Tackle Deficit in Doubt. By Jonathan Weisman: In the same week that the House voted to permanently repeal the estate tax, 44 House Republicans broke with their leaders to demand that as much as $20 billion in Medicaid savings be stricken from the budget. The twin moves raise new questions about Congress's willingness to tackle the budget deficit. And they came just as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are to convene their annual meetings this weekend. The Bush administration was to use the meetings to tell the world's finance ministers and central bankers that Washington is serious about its red ink....

President Bush and congressional Republicans have vowed to cut the deficit in half over the next four years, but new data indicate that little progress has been made. Halfway through fiscal 2005, the federal government recorded a deficit of $291 billion, the Congressional Budget Office reported this month. That is just $10 billion less than last year's figure when the government was on its way to a record $412 billion deficit. Tax receipts -- buoyed by economic growth -- have risen over last year's levels, but spending increases have nearly kept pace. And Congress will soon approve an emergency spending package for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan amounting to $80 billion, which will exacerbate the problem.

Stanley E. Collender, a longtime federal budget expert at Financial Dynamics Business Communications, said the deficit this year could exceed the White House's $427 billion forecast, and may reach $450 billion. 'Clearly, the deficit is not anyone's concern,' he said. 'They're just barreling ahead.' Going forward, Congress has not given budget analysts reason for optimism. The House's vote for a full repeal of the estate tax beyond 2010 would cost the Treasury $290 billion over the next 10 years and as much as $70 billion a year once fully implemented. In the Senate, Republicans and Democrats have launched serious negotiations over a deep and permanent estate-tax cut that can pass this year, even if it falls short of a full repeal.

Republicans have long maintained that the deficit should be controlled by curbing government spending, not raising taxes. But, this week, significant numbers of Republicans appeared to give up on Bush's planned cuts on Medicaid, agriculture subsidies and student loans. Those cuts -- especially the Medicaid savings -- were supposed to be a test run for deeper cuts to come. 'The federal government has unfunded promises of $43 trillion on the books,' said Senate Budget Committee spokesman Gayle Osterberg. 'So the uproar over skimming even 1 percent off the growth of one program is disheartening.' On Wednesday, 44 House Republicans penned a letter urging House Budget Committee Chairman Jim Nussle (R-Iowa) to strip as much as $20 billion in Medicaid savings from the House budget resolution, one of the largest pieces of spending cuts under consideration. Senate budget writers had included about $14 billion in Medicaid reductions in their version of the budget, but last month, the full Senate voted to strike those cuts and instead empanel a commission to study changes in the Medicaid system that would determine how much in savings is feasible. Now, dozens of House members who initially agreed to the cuts say House negotiators should accede to the Senate's position.

'This is a program that is in significant need of reform, and we believe the policy should drive the budget, not the other way around,' said Rep. Heather A. Wilson (R-N.M.), who is leading the effort. Of the 44 Republican signatories, 43 had voted for the estate-tax repeal. Rep. Frank R. Wolf (R-Va.), one of the 43, said he sees no contradiction in his stands. 'Poor people need health care, and this is an important program,' he said of Medicaid. The estate tax 'is a tax issue,' he added. 'In my area, a lot of farms are being broken up because when the farmer dies, the family has to sell out. It's really about growth.' 'We should do everything we can to deal with [the deficit],' Wolf concluded. 'I think the Congress is very serious.'

The tough spending targets set by the House and Senate budget committees could still emerge relatively intact when a final budget deal is reached, perhaps by the end of the month....

One piece of evidence that the Post is not making a joke--is simply clueless about the budget--is its description of $20 billion in cuts in Medicaid spending over five years as "tough spending targets." Medicaid is not the first, or the second, or the tenth place I would look for savings in order to reduce the deficit. But $20 billion over five years is 0.2% of the total budget. It is tough on some Medicaid beneficiaries. It is not part of a tough overall spending target.

Comments

[P O'Neill]

I'm hoping it's another sign that the Post is joking that they let Frank Wolf trot the family-farms-broken-up rationale for the estate tax abolition.

[anne]

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/03/business/03tax.html?ex=1114674896&ei=1&en=6bb48645ab324c2c

Revenue collected from estate taxes in 2003, the last year for which we have records, was 20.7 billion dollars. This would be enough in a year to restore five years of proposed cuts to the Medicaid program.

[anne]

Considering what cutting Medicaid can mean:

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/12/nyregion/12wheelchairs.html?ei=1&en=3723f8e8eb88936b&ex=1114853856&pagewanted=all&position=

Medicaid Equipment Pleas Go Unanswered
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA

New York State has all but halted Medicaid payments for equipment used by severely disabled poor people in the metropolitan area, leaving thousands without devices like wheelchairs and walkers, according to the health professionals who treat them.

To cut costs, the State Health Department eliminated the Medicaid office in Manhattan that handled equipment orders for the downstate region, an office that had approved the great majority of requests within a few weeks.

Since the office closed on Nov. 1, the requests have gone through an office in Albany that has delayed and rejected nearly all of them, according to doctors, therapists and equipment vendors.

The department said those people have not adequately justified their equipment orders to Medicaid, the government health plan for the poor, but the professionals dispute that position....

Dr. Meg A. Krilov, who treats disabled patients at several clinics in New York City, said she had not had a single equipment request approved in months. She told of a patient who is homebound because he cannot get a new battery approved for his power wheelchair, one who cannot replace a broken belt to hold her in her chair, and one who can control her wheelchair only by moving her chin and cannot get a device that would let an attendant control the chair.

Cerebral palsy has left Howard Stone, 44, with little use of his arms or legs, he suffers from scoliosis, and he is moderately retarded, said his mother, Dorothy. His wheelchair tilts forward or back - movements he cannot make on his own - but after years of hard use, it is broken. He has been trying for two months to get it repaired, so far without success.

"At the doctor's office, the chair froze in the horizontal position, so it took four of us to get him in position to give him a shot, and we weren't sure we would be able to get him home," said Mrs. Stone, who, like her son, lives in the Bronx.

Frank Ortiz, 18, has cerebral palsy and can walk only a few feet at a time, so he relies on a wheelchair, but it is not powered. He does not have the strength to control it on uneven ground or gentle slopes, and his mother, Mayra, said he had grown too big for her to push around. So the shops a few blocks from the family's home in the Bronx are now beyond his reach, they said.

He has used the same wheelchair since he was 11, and it is small for him. The backrest does not go high enough for someone his size, and in any case, it no longer stays up, sliding down to the small of his back. The attachment for his crutches is held together with tape.

"When I fold the chair up, a lot of times something breaks or it's hard to open it up again," Mrs. Ortiz said. "He really needs a new chair, and he needs a power chair."

The doctors and therapists at Roosevelt Hospital in Manhattan agree with her, but their request to Medicaid was sent back....

[Tyrone Slothrop]

People read the Washington Post to find out what they're thinking inside the Beltway, right? So this is just reporting with a whole lot of verisimilitude.

[Bernard Yomtov]

Maybe if the Post has any actual reporters one of them could try to find out how many farms in Wolf's district have been sold to pay estate taxes.

One way to start is by asking him to identify some.

[Redshift]

"The Bush administration was to use the meetings to tell the world's finance ministers and central bankers that Washington is serious about its red ink...."

Oh, I don't think anyone doubts the Bush Administration is serious about its red ink -- oh, wait, did they mean serious about *cutting* it?

[praktike]

Jonathan Weisman is such a fool.

[Robert Waldmann]

I think the article is very clear. The use of "raise new questions about Congress's willingness" for "remove all doubts that idiot optimists might have had aobut Congress's willingness" is standard journalese. It is not, in this case, a barrier to understanding by even the densest reader, since the quotes chosen by Weisman make everything clear. He is not willing to be blunt without using quotes but does quote 'Clearly, the deficit is not anyone's concern,' and 'The federal government has unfunded promises of $43 trillion on the books,' said Senate Budget Committee spokesman Gayle Osterberg. 'So the uproar over skimming even 1 percent off the growth of one program is disheartening.'

Note the format he said/she said and he said that they are totally unserious and so did she.

Brad, you have done a great job policing Weisman but you should admit that you have had some success. Carrots and sticks you know carrots and sticks. I know he was rude to and about you in an e-mail. So how about you e-mail me "f*ck Jonathan Weisman" 1000 times so you don't mind using the carrot as well as the stick ...
to influence his coverage of budget controversies.

[chris]

Yeah, well, New York state consciously or unconsciously decided to reward fools like Kerik, Guiliani, and that plutocrat owner of the Jets specifically for a new socialist built football stadium. Those modern prosthetics cost a lot of money. A modern wheelchair must cost a few thousand dollars just for one person to get to the corner store.

Actually my true reaction is track down the family of the young man who's been using the same wheel chair since 11 and help them get a new one.

I'm inspired by Bush's example of tossing Halliburton a big fat no-compete contract. Now that was really helping the competitively disabled. Halliburton can't get into the international arena where the competition is all around, European, Korean, and Japanese construction firms getting all the mass transit mega-billion contracts going out to bid for example.

Hallie sits in Houston working on the big hair, painting its toe nails waiting for big daddy to come home with some juicy pork.

[Auros]

What's particularly galling is that this type of reporting lets Bush off the hook, when anyone with half a brain knows that he never seriously expected Congress to follow through on his proposed cuts. Where's the "Bush's honesty about budget in doubt" article?