(c) 2010 F. Bruce Abel
See my comments at the very end re why I have veered off to research Goolsbee.
Alum to advise Obama
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By Ilana Seager
Contributing Reporter
Published Monday, December 1, 2008
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It took Austan Goolsbee ’91 GRD ’91 17 years to go from being an aide to Yale’s economics faculty to being an aide for the President of the United States.
On Nov. 26 President-elect Barack Obama appointed Goolsbee, now a professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, to the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, a three-member body charged with developing much of the White House’s economic policy. The 39-year-old Goolsbee will also serve on the White House’s newly formed Economic Recovery Advisory Board, which the Office of the President-elect claims will provide “independent, non-partisan” advice to Obama as he implements a policy response to the current financial crisis. Goolsbee’s colleagues at the University of Chicago said it is likely that Goolsbee, an expert on tax policy, will serve as the administration’s economic point man on taxation issues.
“Austan is one of America’s most promising economic minds, known for his path-breaking work on tax policy and industrial organization,” Obama said in a Nov. 26 speech. “He’s one of the economic thinkers who has most shaped my own thinking on economic matters.”
Goolsbee deferred comment for this story to spokesmen for the Obama transition team, who did not respond to repeated requests for comment last week.
Since Obama’s 2004 run for U.S. Senate, Goolsbee has been one of the President-elect’s closest advisers on economic policy. He was particularly influential in Obama’s advocacy of income tax breaks for workers.
In his new role, Goolsbee will serve as chief economist and staff director of the Economic Recovery Advisory Board under Paul Volcker, a former chairman of the Federal Reserve. There, Obama said, Goolsbee will be the “primary liaison between the board and the administration.”
His appointment comes as little surprise to University faculty who worked with Goolsbee when he was a summa cum laude undergraduate standout in economics. University President Richard Levin, once a professor of economics and management at the Yale School of Management, served on the faculty committee that reviewed Goolsbee’s work for his master’s degree in economics, a degree Goolsbee received concurrently with his B.A. in 1991.
“I, for one, never doubted that he would make a substantial mark on the field,” said President Levin in an e-mail. “And I am not at all surprised that he has been so influential as an adviser to President-elect Obama.”
Deputy Provost for Faculty Development and economics professor Judith Chevalier ’89 said that Goolsbee’s expertise derives from his specialty in tax policy and public finance along with his contacts in the field. Although no one economist can be eminent in all the field’s disciplines, Chevalier said, Goolsbee knows “all of the leading experts in the areas that are not his.” Chevalier, who has co-authored three academic papers with Goolsbee, said that she is not surprised by his appointment.
“I don’t think there was ever a question that he would in some way join Obama’s team if Obama asked,” she said. “And I don’t think, given the extent that he has been a trusted advisor, that there was ever a question that Obama would ask.”
One of Goolsbee’s colleagues at the University of Chicago suggested that Obama’s administration will turn to Goolsbee on matters of tax policy.
“He knows a lot about taxation and about how people react to different tax policies,” said University of Chicago professor Chad Syverson. “I think that anything that comes out of the administration about taxes will have had a good look over by Austan.”
As an undergraduate, Goolsbee and debate partner David Gray ’92 won the 1991 Team of the Year award given by the American Parliamentary Debate Association. Goolsbee was also a member of improvisational comedy group Just Add Water, the Yale Political Union and secret society Skull and Bones.
Gray said Goolsbee was a dedicated economist, teaching his University of Chicago microeconomics lecture even on his wedding day.
“This just shows his commitment to the field of economics,” Gray said. “And this is how you get to being on the President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board at the age of 39.”
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(c) 2010 F. Bruce Abel
OK, I'll admit it. David Gray, Goolsbee's debate partner at Yale, is the son of a good high school and Yale friend of mine, Edman Gray, of Dayton.
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Showing posts with label goolsbee. Show all posts
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Saturday, February 13, 2010
Goolsbee '91
Goolsbee ’91 puts economics degree to use for Obama
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By Aaron Bray
Staff Reporter
Published Friday, October 12, 2007
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During a 2004 campaign debate with Alan Keyes, his Republican opponent for an Illinois Senate seat, Democrat Barack Obama repeatedly cited the opinions of a “Professor Goolsbee.”
After spending a night hearing his advice referenced on television while sitting beside the candidate’s wife Michelle, Austan Goolsbee ’91, who had recently been appointed Obama’s economic adviser, finally decided to meet the candidate in person backstage.
He knocked on the dressing room door and found himself face to face with Obama.
“Who are you?” the candidate asked.
“Professor Goolsbee,” Goolsbee replied.
“What? You are Professor Goolsbee?” Obama exclaimed. “You don’t look anything like a professor, and you don’t look anything like a Goolsbee!”
Three years later, Goolsbee holds a position on Obama’s staff he never anticipated: chief economic policy adviser for a leading presidential candidate. In an interview with the News, Goolsbee painted a picture of himself as bound for academia ever since his days at Yale — where he graduated summa cum laude, finishing top in his major with a joint bachelor’s and master’s degree in economics.
But while his friends, classmates and former professors agree that his love of theoretical economics has always been apparent, they say Goolsbee was clearly destined for a more public role.
Illiam Carrillo ’91, who dated Goolsbee during their sophomore year at Yale, vividly recalls one conversation in particular in which Goolsbee expressed his political aspirations.
“I remember him saying, ‘I may not want to be the guy in the White House, but I would love to be an adviser to a president,’ ” she said.
Other classmates said Goolsbee’s current position as adviser to a presidential candidate is no surprise. They pointed to his academic excellence and sincere concern for the fate of those Americans left behind by economic growth — a trait some credited to his “humble beginnings” in Waco, Tex. — as signs that Goolsbee was headed for politics. Economics professor and Nobel laureate James Heckman, for whom Goolsbee did research as an undergraduate, said his former assistant always seemed destined for public policy even as an undergraduate.
Still, Goolsbee said even if he had considered working on the campaign trail, he never would have expected it to be for Obama.
Goolsbee said he remembers former classmate Greg Jacobs ’91 — an early fan of Obama’s — speaking glowingly of the future presidential candidate, then a law professor at the University of Chicago.
“Greg told me, ‘He’s going to the president,’ ” Goolsbee said.
After Obama lost his 2000 bid for a seat in the House of Representatives, Goolsbee recalled mocking Jacobs for supporting “this guy” who couldn’t even get elected to Congress.
But now Goolsbee — who said his boss thinks of him as “another skinny guy with an even funnier name” — is an Obama convert as well.
Goolsbee’s outlook on America’s economic future reflects Obama’s idealism and emphasis on bridging the two-party divide. Goolsbee said the policies he recommends address both the short- and long-term rejuvenation of the economy, in the hopes of providing a safety net while the country’s economy rebuilds.
“If this income structure remains in place for 20 years, it implies a very different America and a very different American dream,” he said.
For the first time in almost 100 years, Goolsbee said, productivity growth is not translating into wage increases for the majority of Americans.
“The top income levels have blown off the chart, but that’s not the issue,” he said. “The bottom 95 to 98 percent of income have been stagnant for the last six years. … That is extremely disturbing.”
The solution to this problem will ultimately be a new education plan that sends more Americans to college, he said. While the United States used to lead the world in the number of young adults with college degrees, Goolsbee said, it now ranks 33rd, between Bulgaria and Costa Rica. As a result, income levels will fall to the equivalent of the levels in those countries unless the United States reverses the current trend, he said.
“Education is the human growth hormone of the masses,” he said. “But education reform is still a process that will take decades.”
In the meantime, he said, gasoline, health care and college are all getting more expensive, and people are feeling the financial squeeze. He said the nation will need comprehensive health care and tax relief for the lower and middle classes to offset economic struggles until wages begin to rise again.
But while his policy prescriptions may sound stereotypically Democratic, Goolsbee’s conservative friends and colleagues said his centrist economic proposals set Obama’s campaign apart from those of other Democratic candidates.
Doug Webster ’91, a friend and fellow economics major from Trumbull College, said while his own politics are consistently conservative, he thinks even voters who usually lean Republican should take a second look at Obama because of Goolsbee’s advising.
“It’s putting conservatives in an interesting position,” Webster said. “Obama is changing the dynamic of the two-party system … he’s a Democrat with a strong fiscal policy. Other candidates would be hard-pressed to find anyone like Austan.”
Although some of his centrist economic prescriptions may disenchant liberals who distrust the benefits of globalization, Goolsbee said economic data indicate that free trade leads to higher wages.
“The issue of globalization is overblown as the cause of income inequality,” Goolsbee said. “The principal causes are increasing technology and demand for skilled labor.”
While Goolsbee said he is committed to applying his research to the real world, economics professors interviewed for this article said they disagree on how difficult it is to advise candidates without letting it interfere with academic work.
Barry Nalebuff, a Yale professor who taught economics while Goolsbee was an undergraduate but did not know him personally, said there is no conflict of interest.
“It’s good for the country to have great people contributing ideas,” he said. “Either Obama gets elected and uses his ideas, or Clinton gets elected and borrows them.”
But Heckman said Goolsbee’s role is “something of a compromise,” since the theoretical economic conclusions might prescribe a politically unpalatable solution. In that case, he said he expects Goolsbee will tell Obama the truth, and Obama will have to decide how best to proceed.
Goolsbee said Obama will not seek advice from him alone.
“He likes to bring in three or four people who disagree with each other,” he said. “Then he’ll have them debate while he quizzes them.”
Goolsbee has never been one to avoid controversy. In the spring of 1991, Goolsbee and his 14 fellow members of Skull and Bones tapped women for the first time. The campus buzzed with excitement, incredulity and exasperation as former Bonesmen locked the tomb and sought to reverse the decision.
Friends and classmates said they remembered Goolsbee vigorously defending the decision. They said he believed it was ultimately an issue of fairness; Carillo said Goolsbee considered those who were resisting the change to be “living in the Dark Ages.”
“He was militantly pro-tapping women,” said Andrew McLaughlin ’91, who was a member of the improvisational comedy group Just Add Water with Goolsbee. “He was generally willing to blow things up to make a stand for principle.”
Several other classmates interviewed said Goolsbee stood out for his combination of intensity and easygoing nature.
Robert Meinhardt ’91, also a Trumbull economics major, said he remembers sitting in the back row of an economics lecture in freshman or sophomore year while Goolsbee dominated discussion from the front.
“He was always the guy who sat in the front row and asked questions,” he said. “We would sit in the back and roll our eyes. We couldn’t understand the questions, let alone the answers.”
Still, Meinhardt said, Goolsbee was easy to get along with.
“He was never condescending,” Meinhardt said. “He was incredibly fun to hang out with.”
Goolsbee was known for his incessant economics jokes, his friends said, but most preferred watching his performances with Just Add Water.
Well, not everyone, Goolsbee admits.
Nobel Prize laureate James Tobin — for whom Goolsbee did economics research — had heard his assistant was a member of Just Add Water and asked Goolsbee repeatedly whether he and his wife could attend a performance. Goolsbee reluctantly agreed, and one night Tobin and his wife entered the dank interior of the Ezra Stiles Little Theater.
“The guys [in Just Add Water] got up and said there was a Nobel laureate in the audience,” Goolsbee recalled. “No one believed them. Then they were laughing at him for being a Nobel laureate, and everyone thought he was just someone’s grandfather.”
In class the next Monday, Tobin did not even mention it.
“He never spoke of it again,” Goolsbee said.
Goolsbee should have known, even then, that improvisation and economics do not mix.
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By Aaron Bray
Staff Reporter
Published Friday, October 12, 2007
Submit Close
During a 2004 campaign debate with Alan Keyes, his Republican opponent for an Illinois Senate seat, Democrat Barack Obama repeatedly cited the opinions of a “Professor Goolsbee.”
After spending a night hearing his advice referenced on television while sitting beside the candidate’s wife Michelle, Austan Goolsbee ’91, who had recently been appointed Obama’s economic adviser, finally decided to meet the candidate in person backstage.
He knocked on the dressing room door and found himself face to face with Obama.
“Who are you?” the candidate asked.
“Professor Goolsbee,” Goolsbee replied.
“What? You are Professor Goolsbee?” Obama exclaimed. “You don’t look anything like a professor, and you don’t look anything like a Goolsbee!”
Three years later, Goolsbee holds a position on Obama’s staff he never anticipated: chief economic policy adviser for a leading presidential candidate. In an interview with the News, Goolsbee painted a picture of himself as bound for academia ever since his days at Yale — where he graduated summa cum laude, finishing top in his major with a joint bachelor’s and master’s degree in economics.
But while his friends, classmates and former professors agree that his love of theoretical economics has always been apparent, they say Goolsbee was clearly destined for a more public role.
Illiam Carrillo ’91, who dated Goolsbee during their sophomore year at Yale, vividly recalls one conversation in particular in which Goolsbee expressed his political aspirations.
“I remember him saying, ‘I may not want to be the guy in the White House, but I would love to be an adviser to a president,’ ” she said.
Other classmates said Goolsbee’s current position as adviser to a presidential candidate is no surprise. They pointed to his academic excellence and sincere concern for the fate of those Americans left behind by economic growth — a trait some credited to his “humble beginnings” in Waco, Tex. — as signs that Goolsbee was headed for politics. Economics professor and Nobel laureate James Heckman, for whom Goolsbee did research as an undergraduate, said his former assistant always seemed destined for public policy even as an undergraduate.
Still, Goolsbee said even if he had considered working on the campaign trail, he never would have expected it to be for Obama.
Goolsbee said he remembers former classmate Greg Jacobs ’91 — an early fan of Obama’s — speaking glowingly of the future presidential candidate, then a law professor at the University of Chicago.
“Greg told me, ‘He’s going to the president,’ ” Goolsbee said.
After Obama lost his 2000 bid for a seat in the House of Representatives, Goolsbee recalled mocking Jacobs for supporting “this guy” who couldn’t even get elected to Congress.
But now Goolsbee — who said his boss thinks of him as “another skinny guy with an even funnier name” — is an Obama convert as well.
Goolsbee’s outlook on America’s economic future reflects Obama’s idealism and emphasis on bridging the two-party divide. Goolsbee said the policies he recommends address both the short- and long-term rejuvenation of the economy, in the hopes of providing a safety net while the country’s economy rebuilds.
“If this income structure remains in place for 20 years, it implies a very different America and a very different American dream,” he said.
For the first time in almost 100 years, Goolsbee said, productivity growth is not translating into wage increases for the majority of Americans.
“The top income levels have blown off the chart, but that’s not the issue,” he said. “The bottom 95 to 98 percent of income have been stagnant for the last six years. … That is extremely disturbing.”
The solution to this problem will ultimately be a new education plan that sends more Americans to college, he said. While the United States used to lead the world in the number of young adults with college degrees, Goolsbee said, it now ranks 33rd, between Bulgaria and Costa Rica. As a result, income levels will fall to the equivalent of the levels in those countries unless the United States reverses the current trend, he said.
“Education is the human growth hormone of the masses,” he said. “But education reform is still a process that will take decades.”
In the meantime, he said, gasoline, health care and college are all getting more expensive, and people are feeling the financial squeeze. He said the nation will need comprehensive health care and tax relief for the lower and middle classes to offset economic struggles until wages begin to rise again.
But while his policy prescriptions may sound stereotypically Democratic, Goolsbee’s conservative friends and colleagues said his centrist economic proposals set Obama’s campaign apart from those of other Democratic candidates.
Doug Webster ’91, a friend and fellow economics major from Trumbull College, said while his own politics are consistently conservative, he thinks even voters who usually lean Republican should take a second look at Obama because of Goolsbee’s advising.
“It’s putting conservatives in an interesting position,” Webster said. “Obama is changing the dynamic of the two-party system … he’s a Democrat with a strong fiscal policy. Other candidates would be hard-pressed to find anyone like Austan.”
Although some of his centrist economic prescriptions may disenchant liberals who distrust the benefits of globalization, Goolsbee said economic data indicate that free trade leads to higher wages.
“The issue of globalization is overblown as the cause of income inequality,” Goolsbee said. “The principal causes are increasing technology and demand for skilled labor.”
While Goolsbee said he is committed to applying his research to the real world, economics professors interviewed for this article said they disagree on how difficult it is to advise candidates without letting it interfere with academic work.
Barry Nalebuff, a Yale professor who taught economics while Goolsbee was an undergraduate but did not know him personally, said there is no conflict of interest.
“It’s good for the country to have great people contributing ideas,” he said. “Either Obama gets elected and uses his ideas, or Clinton gets elected and borrows them.”
But Heckman said Goolsbee’s role is “something of a compromise,” since the theoretical economic conclusions might prescribe a politically unpalatable solution. In that case, he said he expects Goolsbee will tell Obama the truth, and Obama will have to decide how best to proceed.
Goolsbee said Obama will not seek advice from him alone.
“He likes to bring in three or four people who disagree with each other,” he said. “Then he’ll have them debate while he quizzes them.”
Goolsbee has never been one to avoid controversy. In the spring of 1991, Goolsbee and his 14 fellow members of Skull and Bones tapped women for the first time. The campus buzzed with excitement, incredulity and exasperation as former Bonesmen locked the tomb and sought to reverse the decision.
Friends and classmates said they remembered Goolsbee vigorously defending the decision. They said he believed it was ultimately an issue of fairness; Carillo said Goolsbee considered those who were resisting the change to be “living in the Dark Ages.”
“He was militantly pro-tapping women,” said Andrew McLaughlin ’91, who was a member of the improvisational comedy group Just Add Water with Goolsbee. “He was generally willing to blow things up to make a stand for principle.”
Several other classmates interviewed said Goolsbee stood out for his combination of intensity and easygoing nature.
Robert Meinhardt ’91, also a Trumbull economics major, said he remembers sitting in the back row of an economics lecture in freshman or sophomore year while Goolsbee dominated discussion from the front.
“He was always the guy who sat in the front row and asked questions,” he said. “We would sit in the back and roll our eyes. We couldn’t understand the questions, let alone the answers.”
Still, Meinhardt said, Goolsbee was easy to get along with.
“He was never condescending,” Meinhardt said. “He was incredibly fun to hang out with.”
Goolsbee was known for his incessant economics jokes, his friends said, but most preferred watching his performances with Just Add Water.
Well, not everyone, Goolsbee admits.
Nobel Prize laureate James Tobin — for whom Goolsbee did economics research — had heard his assistant was a member of Just Add Water and asked Goolsbee repeatedly whether he and his wife could attend a performance. Goolsbee reluctantly agreed, and one night Tobin and his wife entered the dank interior of the Ezra Stiles Little Theater.
“The guys [in Just Add Water] got up and said there was a Nobel laureate in the audience,” Goolsbee recalled. “No one believed them. Then they were laughing at him for being a Nobel laureate, and everyone thought he was just someone’s grandfather.”
In class the next Monday, Tobin did not even mention it.
“He never spoke of it again,” Goolsbee said.
Goolsbee should have known, even then, that improvisation and economics do not mix.
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Read more from Aaron Bray
Subscribe to the Daily Headlines E-mail
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Robinson: Palin’s bigger blunder
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Yalies, under the covers
Google to run Yale e-mail
One in four, maybe six
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Drugs caused sophomore’s death
For faithful few, a balancing act
In Branford, a book club — or cult
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For faithful few, a balancing act
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Robinson: Palin’s bigger blunder
Robinson: Palin’s bigger blunder
Yalies, under the covers
Ivy Muslims hold conference
One in four, maybe six
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Olivarius: A pregnant pause
Narcisse '12 died of drugs, autopsy shows
In Branford, a book club — or cult
Reverend reconciles sex and religion
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Krugman
(c) 2010 F. Bruce Abel
I'm with Paul Krugman all the way in his writings, but....I'm also over 65 and not rich, and I jealously do not want to expand Medicare to those under 65. I wonder if Krugman is younger than 65. I bet he is.
(I feel guilty about what I just wrote. Don't tell anybody.)
Op-Ed Columnist
Republicans and Medicare
comments (277)
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: February 11, 2010
“Don’t cut Medicare. The reform bills passed by the House and Senate cut Medicare by approximately $500 billion. This is wrong.” So declared Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, in a recent op-ed article written with John Goodman, the president of the National Center for Policy Analysis.
Skip to next paragraph
Times Topics: Medicare
Read All Comments (277) »
And irony died.
Now, Mr. Gingrich was just repeating the current party line. Furious denunciations of any effort to seek cost savings in Medicare — death panels! — have been central to Republican efforts to demonize health reform. What’s amazing, however, is that they’re getting away with it.
Why is this amazing? It’s not just the fact that Republicans are now posing as staunch defenders of a program they have hated ever since the days when Ronald Reagan warned that Medicare would destroy America’s freedom. Nor is it even the fact that, as House speaker, Mr. Gingrich personally tried to ram through deep cuts in Medicare — and, in 1995, went so far as to shut down the federal government in an attempt to bully Bill Clinton into accepting those cuts.
After all, you could explain this about-face by supposing that Republicans have had a change of heart, that they have finally realized just how much good Medicare does. And if you believe that, I’ve got some mortgage-backed securities you might want to buy.
No, what’s truly mind-boggling is this: Even as Republicans denounce modest proposals to rein in Medicare’s rising costs, they are, themselves, seeking to dismantle the whole program. And the process of dismantling would begin with spending cuts of about $650 billion over the next decade. Math is hard, but I do believe that’s more than the roughly $400 billion (not $500 billion) in Medicare savings projected for the Democratic health bills.
What I’m talking about here is the “Roadmap for America’s Future,” the budget plan recently released by Representative Paul Ryan, the ranking Republican member of the House Budget Committee. Other leading Republicans have been bobbing and weaving on the official status of this proposal, but it’s pretty clear that Mr. Ryan’s vision does, in fact, represent what the G.O.P. would try to do if it returns to power.
The broad picture that emerges from the “roadmap” is of an economic agenda that hasn’t changed one iota in response to the economic failures of the Bush years. In particular, Mr. Ryan offers a plan for Social Security privatization that is basically identical to the Bush proposals of five years ago.
But what’s really worth noting, given the way the G.O.P. has campaigned against health care reform, is what Mr. Ryan proposes doing with and to Medicare.
In the Ryan proposal, nobody currently under the age of 55 would be covered by Medicare as it now exists. Instead, people would receive vouchers and be told to buy their own insurance. And even this new, privatized version of Medicare would erode over time because the value of these vouchers would almost surely lag ever further behind the actual cost of health insurance. By the time Americans now in their 20s or 30s reached the age of eligibility, there wouldn’t be much of a Medicare program left.
But what about those who already are covered by Medicare, or will enter the program over the next decade? You’re safe, says the roadmap; you’ll still be eligible for traditional Medicare. Except, that is, for the fact that the plan “strengthens the current program with changes such as income-relating drug benefit premiums to ensure long-term sustainability.”
If this sounds like deliberately confusing gobbledygook, that’s because it is. Fortunately, the Congressional Budget Office, which has done an evaluation of the roadmap, offers a translation: “Some higher-income enrollees would pay higher premiums, and some program payments would be reduced.” In short, there would be Medicare cuts.
And it’s possible to back out the size of those cuts from the budget office analysis, which compares the Ryan proposal with a “baseline” representing current policy. As I’ve already said, the total over the next decade comes to about $650 billion — substantially bigger than the Medicare savings in the Democratic bills.
The bottom line, then, is that the crusade against health reform has relied, crucially, on utter hypocrisy: Republicans who hate Medicare, tried to slash Medicare in the past, and still aim to dismantle the program over time, have been scoring political points by denouncing proposals for modest cost savings — savings that are substantially smaller than the spending cuts buried in their own proposals.
And if Democrats don’t get their act together and push the almost-completed reform across the goal line, this breathtaking act of staggering hypocrisy will succeed.
I'm with Paul Krugman all the way in his writings, but....I'm also over 65 and not rich, and I jealously do not want to expand Medicare to those under 65. I wonder if Krugman is younger than 65. I bet he is.
(I feel guilty about what I just wrote. Don't tell anybody.)
Op-Ed Columnist
Republicans and Medicare
comments (277)
By PAUL KRUGMAN
Published: February 11, 2010
“Don’t cut Medicare. The reform bills passed by the House and Senate cut Medicare by approximately $500 billion. This is wrong.” So declared Newt Gingrich, the former speaker of the House, in a recent op-ed article written with John Goodman, the president of the National Center for Policy Analysis.
Skip to next paragraph
Times Topics: Medicare
Read All Comments (277) »
And irony died.
Now, Mr. Gingrich was just repeating the current party line. Furious denunciations of any effort to seek cost savings in Medicare — death panels! — have been central to Republican efforts to demonize health reform. What’s amazing, however, is that they’re getting away with it.
Why is this amazing? It’s not just the fact that Republicans are now posing as staunch defenders of a program they have hated ever since the days when Ronald Reagan warned that Medicare would destroy America’s freedom. Nor is it even the fact that, as House speaker, Mr. Gingrich personally tried to ram through deep cuts in Medicare — and, in 1995, went so far as to shut down the federal government in an attempt to bully Bill Clinton into accepting those cuts.
After all, you could explain this about-face by supposing that Republicans have had a change of heart, that they have finally realized just how much good Medicare does. And if you believe that, I’ve got some mortgage-backed securities you might want to buy.
No, what’s truly mind-boggling is this: Even as Republicans denounce modest proposals to rein in Medicare’s rising costs, they are, themselves, seeking to dismantle the whole program. And the process of dismantling would begin with spending cuts of about $650 billion over the next decade. Math is hard, but I do believe that’s more than the roughly $400 billion (not $500 billion) in Medicare savings projected for the Democratic health bills.
What I’m talking about here is the “Roadmap for America’s Future,” the budget plan recently released by Representative Paul Ryan, the ranking Republican member of the House Budget Committee. Other leading Republicans have been bobbing and weaving on the official status of this proposal, but it’s pretty clear that Mr. Ryan’s vision does, in fact, represent what the G.O.P. would try to do if it returns to power.
The broad picture that emerges from the “roadmap” is of an economic agenda that hasn’t changed one iota in response to the economic failures of the Bush years. In particular, Mr. Ryan offers a plan for Social Security privatization that is basically identical to the Bush proposals of five years ago.
But what’s really worth noting, given the way the G.O.P. has campaigned against health care reform, is what Mr. Ryan proposes doing with and to Medicare.
In the Ryan proposal, nobody currently under the age of 55 would be covered by Medicare as it now exists. Instead, people would receive vouchers and be told to buy their own insurance. And even this new, privatized version of Medicare would erode over time because the value of these vouchers would almost surely lag ever further behind the actual cost of health insurance. By the time Americans now in their 20s or 30s reached the age of eligibility, there wouldn’t be much of a Medicare program left.
But what about those who already are covered by Medicare, or will enter the program over the next decade? You’re safe, says the roadmap; you’ll still be eligible for traditional Medicare. Except, that is, for the fact that the plan “strengthens the current program with changes such as income-relating drug benefit premiums to ensure long-term sustainability.”
If this sounds like deliberately confusing gobbledygook, that’s because it is. Fortunately, the Congressional Budget Office, which has done an evaluation of the roadmap, offers a translation: “Some higher-income enrollees would pay higher premiums, and some program payments would be reduced.” In short, there would be Medicare cuts.
And it’s possible to back out the size of those cuts from the budget office analysis, which compares the Ryan proposal with a “baseline” representing current policy. As I’ve already said, the total over the next decade comes to about $650 billion — substantially bigger than the Medicare savings in the Democratic bills.
The bottom line, then, is that the crusade against health reform has relied, crucially, on utter hypocrisy: Republicans who hate Medicare, tried to slash Medicare in the past, and still aim to dismantle the program over time, have been scoring political points by denouncing proposals for modest cost savings — savings that are substantially smaller than the spending cuts buried in their own proposals.
And if Democrats don’t get their act together and push the almost-completed reform across the goal line, this breathtaking act of staggering hypocrisy will succeed.
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