The subsidy portion of health reform would cost around a trillion dollars over the next decade. In all the plans currently on the table, this expense would be offset with a combination of cost savings elsewhere and additional taxes, so that there would be no overall effect on the federal deficit.
So what are the objections of the Blue Dogs?
Well, they talk a lot about fiscal responsibility, which basically boils down to worrying about the cost of those subsidies. And it’s tempting to stop right there, and cry foul. After all, where were those concerns about fiscal responsibility back in 2001, when most conservative Democrats voted enthusiastically for that year’s big Bush tax cut — a tax cut that added $1.35 trillion to the deficit?
But it’s actually much worse than that — because even as they complain about the plan’s cost, the Blue Dogs are making demands that would greatly increase that cost.
Paul Krugman parses the Blue Dogs' objections to healthcare reform and finds so many inconsistencies you have to ask yourself, what are they really doing? Not just opposing healthcare reform. This is not a matter of principle. Something else appears to be driving the Blue Dogs.
E.J. Dionne's op-ed piece today take on another hot issue: gun control. What Dionne suggests makes good sense.
Isn't it time to dismantle the metal detectors, send the guards at the doors away and allow Americans to exercise their Second Amendment rights by being free to carry their firearms into the nation's Capitol?
I've been studying the deep thoughts of senators who regularly express their undying loyalty to the National Rifle Association, and I have decided that they should practice what they preach. They tell us that the best defense against crime is an armed citizenry and that laws restricting guns do nothing to stop violence.
If they believe that, why don't they live by it?
I wonder how the Blue Dogs and their Republican friends would deal with Dionne's gun un-control bill? Or, as Dionne concludes: "I want these guys to put up or shut up. If the NRA's servants in Congress don't take their arguments seriously enough to apply them to their own lives, maybe the rest of us should do more to stop them from imposing their nonsense on our country."
Me? I'm piously against violence -- anywhere. But I would enjoy the sight of all of us serious healthcare reform advocates pointing our back porch shotguns at the Blue Dogs and their allies on the Senate floor.
