{"id":20772,"date":"2015-05-17T11:34:04","date_gmt":"2015-05-17T15:34:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/?p=20772"},"modified":"2015-05-17T11:34:04","modified_gmt":"2015-05-17T15:34:04","slug":"senate-democrats-work-with-republicans-throw-medicare-under-the-bus-as-part-of-tpp-fast-track-sausage-making","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2015\/05\/17\/senate-democrats-work-with-republicans-throw-medicare-under-the-bus-as-part-of-tpp-fast-track-sausage-making\/","title":{"rendered":"Senate Democrats Work with Republicans Throw Medicare Under the Bus as Part of TPP Fast Track Sausage-Making"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>Naked Capitalism<\/em> has the article <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nakedcapitalism.com\/2015\/05\/senate-democrats-work-with-republicans-throw-medicare-under-the-bus-part-tpp-fast-track-sausage-making.html\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"Naked Capitalism article\">Senate Democrats Work with Republicans Throw Medicare Under the Bus as Part of TPP Fast Track Sausage-Making<\/a> by Lambert Strether.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nSo, Congress is preparing to loot Medicare not just for this one program, TAA, but as standard operating procedure. I think that qualifies as \u201cthrowing Medicare under the bus.\u201d\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Strether took to the idea idea with the same skepticism that I showed in my previous post, <a href=\"http:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/2015\/05\/16\/u-s-senate-reject-medicare-cuts-and-reject-fast-track\/\" target=\"_blank\">U.S. Senate: Reject Medicare cuts and reject Fast Track<\/a>.  He also came to the same conclusion that I did.  His article includes far more detail than mine, though.<\/p>\n<p>I made two observations about this.  <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nakedcapitalism.com\/2015\/05\/senate-democrats-work-with-republicans-throw-medicare-under-the-bus-part-tpp-fast-track-sausage-making.html#comment-2444847\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"My first comment\">The first<\/a> is the following:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nThe reason why the politicians like the \u201cpay for\u201d paradigm is that it is a way to try to get people to stop complaining. I have always said that when you ask Congress to close tax-loopholes, their response has always been, \u201cOk, if you want us to close tax-loopholes, we\u2019ll gladly cut the ones that you use.\u201d They hope that the lesson people will finally learn is that you\u2019d better not ask Congress to close tax-loopholes.<\/p>\n<p>If the politicians have to make cuts in government programs, they first make cuts in the most popular programs that help the most people. They want you to feel the pain, so you will stop pestering them.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Then I followed it up the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nakedcapitalism.com\/2015\/05\/senate-democrats-work-with-republicans-throw-medicare-under-the-bus-part-tpp-fast-track-sausage-making.html#comment-2444855\" target=\"_blank\" title=\"My second comment\">this observation<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\nThe reason why the politicians like the \u201cpay for\u201d paradigm is that it is a way to try to get people to stop complaining. I have always said that when you ask Congress to close tax-loopholes, their response has always been, \u201cOk, if you want us to close tax-loopholes, we\u2019ll gladly cut the ones that you use.\u201d They hope that the lesson people will finally learn is that you\u2019d better not ask Congress to close tax-loopholes.<\/p>\n<p>If the politicians have to make cuts in government programs, they first make cuts in the most popular programs that help the most people. They want you to feel the pain, so you will stop pestering them.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Naked Capitalism has the article Senate Democrats Work with Republicans Throw Medicare Under the Bus as Part of TPP Fast Track Sausage-Making by Lambert Strether. So, Congress is preparing to loot Medicare not just for this one program, TAA, but as standard operating procedure. I think that qualifies as \u201cthrowing Medicare under the bus.\u201d Strether [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[166],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-20772","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-stevegsposts","7":"czr-hentry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20772","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20772"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20772\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20773,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20772\/revisions\/20773"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20772"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20772"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ssgreenberg.name\/PoliticsBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20772"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}