CNN video: Reporter Lisa Sylvester examines the identity and interests of some of the largest campaign contributors to the 12 members of the new Super Committee debt panel, and discusses their agendas with The Sunlight Foundation's Bill Allison. August 16, 2011.
The informative videos above about the Super Committee Debt group were in my YouTube Channel inbox today, and yesterday afternoon I received this latest email from Nicole Aro of The Sunlight Foundation, and I reprint it here for your edification:
Dear Sunlighter,
Congressional leaders have appointed members to the “Super Committee” -- 12 lawmakers assigned the power and responsibility of cutting $1.5 trillion from the national deficit -- by the end of the year. As you might expect, lobbyists and powerful special interests have already started to circle.
This “Super Congress” or “Super Committee” certainly has “Super Powers” -- but if they don’t pledge to be Super Transparent, we won’t know if they’re working for us or for the powerful, wealthy lobbyists and special interests in Washington. This work could stay in the shadows until the recommendations of the committee are released in December!
The creation of this committee -- totally outside normal congressional rules and accountability -- is a pretty clear signal that something is broken in our democracy.While the committee members are certainly entitled to some private deliberation, this process needs be open and transparent. Sunlight's come up with five demands to increase transparency in this committee, but we need your help to make sure others join our campaign.
The Sad Truth About Media Coverage, and a Modest Plan for Reform
by Amy Ridenour
August 7, 2011 at 5:06 PM
The sad truth about media coverage is not just the bias, but the focus.
The country has just had its credit rating downgraded for the first time ever. The cable networks are all over it. So do you suppose the focus is on how to fix it? Only a minority of the coverage, and a small, superficial minority at that, goes in that direction. Mostly, news interviewers want to know: which political party's fault is it?
Meanwhile, former MSNBC-er and new CBS News reporter Norah O'Donnell was part of a contretemps the other day about bias accusations at a recent White House press conference over the subject of the national debt limit, a fact that Andrew Breitbart noticed, too.
But in the current environment, no good deed goes unpunished.
AdWeek
Huffington Post Caves to Breitbart Retracts claim that he doctored video of WH press conference
By Emma Bazilian
August 2, 2011
Conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart is celebrating a victory over the Huffington Post after the site retracted an article alleging he may have doctored a video clip from a White House press briefing to make it look like CBS anchor Norah O’Donnell was upset about the recent debt compromise.
In an article posted yesterday, HuffPo said that Breitbart was being accused of doctoring video of an exchange between O'Donnell and White House Press Secretary Jay Carney.
The interview with Rep. Frederica Wilson concludes at 13:04 mark.
Well, to use a phrase that nobody uses any longer, "Here's mud in your eye."
For those of you who have doubted what I've said in the past to you, whether in person somewhere in South Florida or the Washington, D.C. area, or what you've read here on the blog, about the weirdly, disconnected sense of reality lived by many though not all of South Florida's pols, almost all of whom live in gerrymandered districts that ensure their election come the general elections, Sunday morning brought forth the latest glaring example of disconnected unreality.
Did you see it, too?
Did your jaw hit the ground at the stale memorized talking points being recited like a not-so-bright Third Grader standing in front of the class?
Did you get a real sinking feeling when you heard so much prattle expressed with so little thought or insight behind it, and realized that the silly person mouthing such nonsense makes $174,000 a year?
Yes, welcome to the second decade of South Florida politics in the 21st Century.
All of this came in the form of an alternately abysmal performance by freshman Rep. Frederica Wilson (FL-17) on Channel 10's "This Week in South Florida" with Senior Political Editor Michael Putney.
As most of you blog readers know by now, I respect him more than any other media personality in South Florida -even when we disagree- in large part, because he actually remembers many of the very same people, places and events of the past that I do, good and bad, that so many people, groups and institutions consciously prefer to forget.
(So many South Florida media types I've met either know very little about this area's political history and geography, or flat-out don't care, but that's another post for another time.)
The ostensible purpose of Wilson's appearance -from Washington- in the lead-off (longest) block of the popular public affairs program, was to discuss the federal debt limit crisis, the state of the economy, and to elicit her opinion on what specific steps should be undertaken.
As she has been a cipher since getting elected, I didn't expect much, but even my low expectations were too high.
Prior to this July 31st appearance with Michael Putney, NOT a single legitimate reporter in Florida had so much as asked Wilson even a reasonably hard question about this debt limit issue and asked her to explain herself on the issue.
Trust me, I've looked at searches for her on Google News day-after-day, and even emailed that to friends, who were shocked at how asleep the South Florida news media has been all these months.
Not me.
(I was even going to post all the citations & news articles here so you could see what lapdogs the South Florida press corps has been towards Wilson since she got elected. Minus the stories on Haiti, Edison & Central High Schools getting special treatment to stay open, or her hats, there wasn't much left, which made it easy for me to read all the articles. Just saying...)
In fact, I was going to post this blog post Sunday morning until I saw that she was going to be on the show. Then I decided to wait until Channel 10 put the link up to theentire broadcast so you could see it for yourself.
To me, Wilson has held common sense and taxpayers "hostage" for months without saying anything of merit, to use a word that she twice went out of her way to use to refer to Tea Party supporters, implying, like so many disconnected liberals, that their desire to actually have a more fundamentally sound financial structure for the country was dangerous.
(Unlike Wilson, some Americans inherently know that not every single federal program deserves to live in perpetuity, or to be equated with apple pie and the Bill of Rights. But try getting Wilson to name one to cut...)
As if, somehow, liberal families and their children were somehow immune to the very negative logical consequences of a template where the U.S. government borrows 40 cents for every dollar it spends, as Sen. Marco Rubio has said any number of times lately.
It won't surprise you a whit that her prescription was the usual one of a person who reps a gerrymandered majority-minority CD in Congress: spend, spend, spend...
And tax the "rich" especially the evil oil companies, whom she says pay nothing in taxes in the same exact way that small children routinely say dumb things but nobody bothers to correct them because they are, after all, just small children.
They're entitled to their fantasy world for a while.
Small children, not congresswomen.
Despite her own past actions and words to burden small business owners with more regulation and higher fees, she demands that someone create jobs in her CD, which has the dubious distinction of having among the lowest investment rates and one of the highest murder rates in the entire congress.
After you hear Wilson, you'd almost have to ask yourself why if you were a business owner seeking to expand, why would someone invest in poorly-educated, blame-someone else FL-17?
Now there's a question.
Wilson seems unable to appreciate the changed environment that has taken over this country the past few years, nor to appreciate the difference between being in Tallahassee and Washington.
The reality is that her constituents without jobs are going to be expected to do a whole lot more for themselves in the future than they have in the past, and that includes the strong possibility that for many of them, that choice involves leaving the area, as happens in every other part of the country.
Uncle Sam is not going to be dropping pallets of money into NW Miami anytime soon.
That plane has been permanently grounded.
Time to adapt!
When Michael Putney brought this poll up, do I even have to tell you that Wilson is a fervent supporter of the minority opinion? The one that says that we just have to keep doing the same things that don't work? It's mind-boggling sometimes, almost as if she has been in a coma.
Watching her appearance on TWISF made me think of many things but none quite so strong as the sense that she's so very used to only being around people that completely agree with her, that she literally has no ability or intuition to appreciate that, for a change, she really needed to come across on the program as a serious and sober official.
Instead, because it's her shtick, and she can't help herself, she chose on the air wearing one of the dozens of ridiculous hats that she insists on wearing to distinguish herself, more fitting for a Delta Sigma Theta luncheon in the spring.
Yeah, like the weird guy with head-to-toe tats who insists on showing up at the public park every weekend with the snake around his neck, the old guy who insists on wearing a tiny Speedo swimsuit at the beach -and not being foreign!- or, the older woman who insists on showing up at the beach in a two-piece swimsuit that more closely resembles dental floss, Wilson can't figure out a way to stand out for what she knows about a given area of public policy, or being able to explain complicated issues in ways that people understsnd.
Nobody has ever said that about her.
It's sad for her, of course, but saddest of all for us,her constituents.
As I reflected on what took place in the program later on Sunday afternoon, in between watching the Marlins game and snapping some photos up in Hollywood for a future blog post here, Wilson'sjuvenile performance just really continued to irritate me, since it was about as anti-intellectual an exercise as I've seen outside of the occasional segment of MSNBC'sHardball I've come across while flipping thru the channels during a commercial of something else.
If you're not really that familiar with the show, esp. if you are reading this overseas, the Republican Elephants in the bottom LEFT are a tip-off to MSNBC's avowed liberal ideology. Fortunately, not that many people watch the show, as more people watch The Cartoon Channel than MSNBC when Hardballis on.
When she successfully repeated a few simple talking points she remembered -the ones about the number of times the debt was raised during Reagan and Bush 41's presidencies, 18 and 7 respectively- I could almost picture her staff applauding, out-of relief. Really.
So what exactly were the things that she or her predecessors, Carrie Meek and Kendrick Meek proposed that would cut the federal budget and put the country on a more sustainable basis?
She never said despite having thirteen minutes to mention it.
Thirteen minutes that revealed her for the disconnected public official she is, who thinks the old solutions of Big Government spending their way out of a problem still works.
Give the devil her due, nobody in Florida demagogues & obfuscates like the dreaded Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL-20) -Politico: "Wasserman Schultz says GOP seeks ‘dictatorship..."
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.), chair of the Democratic National Committee, said Wednesday that House Republicans are trying to impose “dictatorship” through their tactics in the debt-ceiling negotiations. She said the GOP rhetoric could “spark panic and chaos,” which she called “potentially devastating” to the economy.
Meanwhile, north of here in the Panhandle part of Florida I've never ventured into, Tallahassee DemocratSenior Political Writer Bill Cotterell weighs in on the recent contretemps between DWS and Allen West that I wisely avoided writing about since it was everywhere you looked, and you could onlyNOT know about it if you lived in... well, no, you'd know about it there, too.
The above piece by the very insightful Bill Cotterell, is an exception to what I've often written here of the hagiography that goes on in the Florida press corps with regard to DWS, esp. at the South Florida Sun-Sentinel and local Miami TV stations.
The female reporters in South Florida are especially reluctant to ask DWS questions that are either hard or original, just the same softballs, year-after-year.
It's monotonous with a capital "M."
But then that's why so many female reporters here are simply not taken seriously by well-informed people regardless of gender.
Simply put, too many of the reporters are personally shallow ANDhappilyuninformed and really ought to be in much smaller media markets.
But like DWS -and most of the female sideline reporters atESPN-they are gerrymandered into their current positions.
In some cases by virtue of this area's low-pay and need to have a certain demographic group represented on TV, regardless of how unappealing they are -dopey women who really do think stories on plastic surgery ARE imp0rtant, and ought to be on within the first ten minutes of a newscast- but nothing short of video of them shooting someone will get them off the air or off the newspaper beat.
The joke is on us, the readers and viewers who have to tolerate the towering mediocrity.
Here's a recent example of the sort of hagiography I meant, which actually compelled me to write in and comment because it sounded so much like a puff piece from her own paid govt. flack.
St. Petersburg Times
Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz uses her resolve to fight cancer, lead DNC.
Is there no end in sight to the number of articles that can be written about this woman and cancer? Are there so few compelling political or government stories in the fourth-largest state in the country that this sort of filler must continue to be churned out, over-and-over? Simply put, there is nothing here that hasn't been written a dozen times before -and better. And I surmise THAT is something that both liberals and conservatives can agree on.
For instance, how about writing about the number of State House and Senate members that DON'T live at the addresses they claim they do, both before and after the election, and how the legislature just looks the other way, despite the fact that it's illegal? There are three of them in just South Florida alone! Just saying...
Alex, what happened to you? You used to show such promise. Is this how it ends, with a banal whimper?
Still waiting for the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, the BrowardPalmBeach NewTimes or any local Miami TV newscast to actually mention that FL-17 Congresswoman Frederica Wilson was THE only U.S. Rep. in Florida to vote YES for increasing the national debt Tuesday? (Wilson was on the losing side of a 319-97 vote.)
Don't hold your breath!
Fox News Channel: U.S. Budget Comm. Chair Paul Ryan on the House of Representatives rejecting a debt ceiling increase http://youtu.be/y3FYXnYswnQ Since February 1st, over four months ago, Wilson's name has been mentioned in the Sun-Sentinel exactly TWICE, and neither time in relation to anything that's an important every day issue to South Broward residents like me who have the great misfortune to be mis-represented by her in Congress.
As for the BrowardPalmBeach NewTimes -whose Daily Pulp blog people are positively deserting in droves ever since Bob Norman left for Channel 10, WPLG-TV, leaving only the name of his blog, not the spirit of it- they've mentioned Wilson exactly... ONCE.
And THAT was about something that was originally reported in the Sun-Sentinel!
Compare and contrast that paucity of useful information with the NewTimes' very creepy stalker-like behavior and observation of Rep. Allen West's every move and word, examined and then re-examined at theNewTimes -can you really even call them reporters?- as if they were amateur Kremlinologists trying to keep all their competing theories for what's 'really' happening, straight in their own heads.
Well, I mean besides thinking of how many times they can use the phrase 'tea party' as a pejorative. You'd think that at a certain point they'd realize that no longer rankles adn just comes across as annoying... but no.
From my perspective, I've always found it such a huge turn-off to see people with resources and opportunities to inform completely squander their time and resources, and even worse, compound that fwrite in so self-evident a biased fashion, and that's true whether you're talking about the Herald, the Sun-Sentinel or NewTimes, all of whom are GUILTY of this everyday to varying degrees -from perfectly awful-to-perfectly dreadful.
Seriously, those three are our print media choices in South Florida the year 2011?
Sadly, yes.
And when are the top management at the Broward NewTimes going to FINALLY post their public email addresses on their website, like the much-maligned and ridiculed Miami Herald and Sun-Sentinel, which I originally mentioned here on January 11th, with the headline, A longstanding question about the BrowardPalmBeach NewTimes that nobody else ever asks publicly at http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/longstanding-question-about.html .
It's almost halfway thru the year 2011 and the NewTimesSTILL doesn't list theirs so that readers can directly contact people with complaints about mistakes, errors and examples of apparent bias, and cc or bcc others with their comments.
Pretty backwards if you ask me, and not exactly the sort of thing that imbues people with confidence about sharing confidential information.
It's already June, when exactly are Wilson's Town Hall meetings with residents in SE Broward this summer, including Hallandale Beach?
Perhaps you should call her office and ask her staff, since it's clear the local news media aren't the least bit curious, even while thinking nothing of printing Allen West's, attending his meetingsand then publicizing professional misfits who want to draw attention to themselves at his meetings, not attention to issues.
NBC-TV's Meet the Press video -Host David Gregory speaks to Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida about the 2012 federal budget, the federal debt ceiling, saving Medicare, the (Paul) 'Ryan Plan,' and U.S. foreign policy, to wit, Libya. http://youtu.be/GdtR7s-nqcE
If you are someone who considers themselves pretty well-informed and are watching the video of this morning's Meet the Press program from outside of the U.S., and get the distinct impression that Sen. Rubio, who has been in office less than four months, is being asked to explain -and or defend- public policies in more detail than many longstanding members of the U.S. Congress you can name, who get nothing but softball questions... take a bow. You are correct. Sen. Rubio's YouTube Channel is at: http://www.youtube.com/user/SenatorMarcoRubio
American Roadmap YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/AmericanRoadmap The other U.S. Senator from Florida is Democratic two-termer Bill Nelson, who is up for re-election in 2012. He's a nice enough guy, but NOT nearly as dynamic, savvy or articulate as what this complex and crazy-quilt of a state demands, Florida being the country's fourth-largest.
Sen. Nelson'sYouTube Channel is at http://www.youtube.com/user/SenBillNelson I won't be voting for Nelson next year and currently have no GOP preference, but I am AGAINST a few GOP candidates for the office, the most prominent being the myopic, ethically-troubled Florida State Senate President, Mike Haridopolos; he's bad news personified! I'd much prefer Florida State Senator Paula Dockery or Orange County (Orlando) mayor Teresa Jacobs, both of whom are very smart and articulate people full of ideas who are NOT at all afraid to speak (and vote) against the state political orthodoxy and the establishment of Tallahassee in particular, and Florida in general. Nor are they afraid to speak against their own party and supporters when they think they're wrong.
For an excellent example of that attitude, read these two Mike Thomas columns from the Orlando Sentinel, since they're positive pieces of a sort that very, very few Florida pols could earn.
Orlando is $61 million short in getting the performing-arts center off the ground. So the city and arts supporters are hitting up Teresa Jacobs, Orange County's mayor-elect, for an advance on almost half of it.
She might as well get used to people groveling for money.
I have long supported an arts center. But this is like old Uncle Al, flat broke with holes in his shoes, hitting you up for $500 because he's got a sure thing at the track.
Give it to him and you know he's coming back for more.
None of this is a surprise for those of us who have followed the saga of the three downtown venues — the arts center, the arena and the Citrus Bowl.
The county budget-crunchers knew this day was coming back in 2007 when they negotiated the $1.1 billion venues deal with Orlando. They thought Mayor Buddy Dyer and Co. were out of their fiscal minds for taking on this much risk.
So the county built a firewall.
It would give the city enough resort-tax money to build a new Magic arena for billionaire Rich DeVos.
But the performing-arts center and Citrus Bowl would have to get in line behind a long list of priorities already funded by the resort tax.
If Buddy's gamble failed, the county was protected.
On paper, at least. That doesn't take into account the intangible of political pressure that would accompany the request for a bailout. If you don't give us the money, the project will not get built, and it will be your fault.
Now that we are there, what will Jacobs do?
She is, by nature, a cautious fiscal conservative. In fact, it was Jacobs who put a caveat in the venues deal, requiring that the arts center be fully funded before any debt was issued to waste money on a Citrus Bowl renovation.
During the mayoral campaign, Jacobs was criticized for being too focused on details when the job required a big-picture consensus builder. Being branded as the person who killed the arts center wouldn't help that perception.
But there are so many pitfalls here, she could hardly be blamed for doing so. Here are a few of them:
•The city is broke, which raises the question of where it plans to come up with its half of the shortfall. The county also doesn't have a spare $30 million stuffed in a mattress, meaning it could be forced to raid a reserve fund set aside for the convention center. That would be ill-advised.
•This deal would allow construction of phase one of the arts center — an amplified arena for events such as Broadway shows and a small 300-seat theater. Will the city come back for another cash advance when it comes time to build phase two — a 1,700 seat acoustical hall?
•The county could be the money pile of last resort to cover operating deficits. Some of this tab was going to be paid by leasing property next to the center for a hotel and office building. But the economy put the kibosh on that.
There also are disturbing rumors about donors backing out of their pledges, which could create an even deeper fiscal hole for the county to fill down the road.
The problem in dealing with Orlando is that the city is tapped out. So the minute a bulldozer rolls onto the site, the county could find itself sucked into a black hole, from which there is no politically feasible escape.
At a minimum, Jacobs should insist that the city raise its $31 million share of the shortfall first. She then should demand to see an updated list of all donor pledges and the contracts they signed with the arts center.
The county needs some guarantee it won't bankroll operating expenses.
The city must agree not to spend any more money renovating the Citrus Bowl until the arts center is finished and its operating costs are known and accounted for.
Every dime the city spends on that empty stadium is another dime the county probably will have to make up for at the arts center.
Finally, Jacobs should insist the city contact Magic owner Rich DeVos about providing a loan, which would be repaid as resort-tax funds become available. He could take his interest out of the $10 million he has pledged to the arts center.
Jacobs has a lot of options. The worst one is writing out a check for $30 million with no questions and no demands.
OrangeMayor Jacobs gives Orlando a dose of reality on arts center
Mike ThomasCOMMENTARY 5:59 p.m. EST, February 12, 2011
Business as usual in this town officially ended at noon on Feb. 10.
That's when OrangeMayor Teresa Jacobs hit the send button and delivered a scathing review of the planned performing-arts center to inboxes across OrangeCounty.
Her staff uncovered millions in waste, slipshod construction contracts, double-billings and overall gross mismanagement. Given that Orlando is ultimately in charge of building the center, she left City Hall in pretty much the same shape that the Air Force left Baghdad in 2003.
Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer emerged from the rubble hours later to answer questions like: "Are you embarrassed?"
You better believe it. He also was livid. This was a major breach of protocol. Proper etiquette requires that mayoral combat be conducted by backstabbing in private.
This all began in December when the city made the big mistake of asking the county for $30 million to help cover a funding shortfall for the arts center.
Normally, the county would have put up token resistance before succumbing to political pressure and writing a check.
The days of normalcy are over.
Jacobs said no. And then she unleashed her advisers and staff on an arts-center cost-cutting mission. Needless to say, mission accomplished.
Normally this would have been handled behind the scenes.
But Jacobs and her people grew suspicious of the city's good intentions as the process dragged on.
She also believes that full public disclosure is in the best interest of the public. Judging by her landslide election victory last November, the public agrees.
And so Jacobs gave the public what it voted for. She publicly nuked Buddy.
Somewhere, former OrangeMayor Rich Crotty is either smiling or wincing. Jacobs used to nuke him all the time when she served on the commission.
But just to be clear, Jacobs does not launch unless the target presents itself.
There are bigger problems with this arts center than mismanagement of planning and construction.
The city's reserve fund to cover its bond debt is underfunded. The endowment fund that will be used to help cover center operations expenses is grossly underfunded.
The city's downtown taxing district is tapped out.
Construction of the acoustical hall — the venue most cherished by local arts groups — has been put off indefinitely. And each year of delay will add an estimated $16 million to the price tag.
And then there are the things not in the report.
Last year, Fitch Ratings downgraded the city's Magic arena bonds to junk status.
Orlando has borrowed $90 million, with the loan based on the value of Centroplex property that's not worth half that much. Dyer has thrown $10 million at sprucing up the FloridaCitrus Bowl and now is aiming money at the "Creative Village.
The city's tab for pension benefits exceeds $50 million a year.
And this was on our front page last April: "For the second year in a row, the city of Orlando faces a staggering deficit of tens of millions of dollars and will look to erase the red ink by paring city staff and cutting services."
Yet in December, Dyer said he could cough up an additional $31 million for the arts center.
Jacobs is rightly concerned that she is doing business with Greece.
And when Dyer can't pull any more money out of his magic hat, the county will be the deep pocket of last resort once construction of the arts center begins. Even more disturbing is that the city and arts supporters are in a mad dash to get construction going. Their theory is that everything will work itself out once the bulldozers arrive.
It's a faith-based initiative, whereas the county administration building is filled with fiscal atheists who don't believe in miracles.
So what happens next?
The prevailing theory is that Dyer and the board running the Dr. Phillips Center for the Performing Arts will tell Jacobs to butt out and try to get the project started without any more help from the county. That certainly should scare the bejabbers out of big-money donors and city taxpayers.
A better idea is for Dyer to go to Jacobs, get her terms of surrender for more financial backing, let her more-experienced staff help salvage this mess and worry about revenge some other day.
Fox News Channel video: Sen. Marco Rubio on 'Fox News Sunday' with host Chris Wallace - April 3, 2011.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZRDCHGMILs Speaking of being articulate and specific about what your own personal policy positions are regarding the looming federal budget battle and the national debt, so that there's no confusion or misunderstanding, as we were the other day with Marco Rubio, the opposite take on that approach causes me to ask aloud whether Sen. Bill Nelson is still among us.
The South Florida news media seems not to be too keen to actually ask Nelson where he stands on any of these things and what he wants to do or cut or anything. No, they almost seem to be going out of their way to ignore Nelson, which causes me to ask whether that's for his lack of a cogent plan, strategy or framework, or whether it's just that they know in advance that, after eleven years in the Senate, he'll say absolutely nothing noteworthy in his usual earnest, plodding style, and they don't want to waste their time doing that, knowing that it's an hour they'll never ever have again.
Which is one of the reasons that while today is April 3rd, you CAN'T find a single story in the Miami Herald this year where Bill Nelson actually talks about the federal budget and the debt ceiling, and what he thinks should be done or how he will vote. Go ahead, I dare you. It simply can't be found -there isn't one.
Yes, with every passing day, collectively, the Miami Herald and the rest of the South Florida news media just continue walking deeper-and-deeper into the black hole of utter irrelevancy...
Fox News Channel video: Rep. Paul Ryan, Chairman of U.S. House Budget Comm.: on Fox News Channel's 'Sean Hannity Show' - March 1, 2011 -"House GOP Will Lead Where the President Has Failed" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-bgVl7EhNI
Rubio is right to push for cuts to senior programs
Mike Thomas
COMMENTARY
9:49 PM EDT, April 2, 2011
Marco Rubio says he isn't interested in running for vice president in 2012. And to confirm that, he then said we have to scale back senior entitlement programs.
That got him lots of national attention, and a resounding round of silence from his Republican colleagues in Washington.
They didn't win the U.S. House this year, with an eye on the White House next year, only to risk it all by alienating the people who comprise the biggest voting bloc.
You will not see a Republican pointing to the retirees at a Tea Party gathering and saying, "You're the biggest part of the problem.''
Does anyone remember "A Roadmap for America's Future'' put out by Paul Ryan, the whiz-kid, budget-slashing congressman from Wisconsin who wanted to overhaul Medicare?
Or how about that report by the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform that recommended entitlement cuts?
Associate the word entitlement with the words cut or reform and off you go to the Bermuda Triangle.
I hope Marco fares better.
He says he would keep existing entitlements intact for those older than 55, an attempt to appease what former Sen. Alan Simpson calls the "greediest generation.''
This might work for Social Security, where there is time to fix it.
But Medicare is dragging us off the cliff now. It is so daunting and so complex that Washington is paralyzed.
Tackling Medicare not only means taking on the seniors, but the entire medical industrial complex that depends on Medicare's billions. Sending old folks for body scans is a huge part of the economy.
Taking money away is very hard for a political system designed to give it away.
Making matters worse, many seniors believe that since they have paid into Medicare their entire lives, they have earned their benefits. Reducing benefits equates to theft.
But the cost of medical care has risen so sharply that, on average, seniors now pay for less than half the benefits they receive.
This is what differentiates Medicare from Social Security, where workers indeed have paid for most of their benefits.
With Social Security, they get a single check each month for the same amount. That makes planning relatively easy.
But Medicare is an open checkbook that pays for an unlimited amount of services.
The medical industry has adapted by creating a system based on quantity. More specialists. More tests. More procedures. More medications.
Outcomes and cost-effectiveness do not matter.
This has driven up costs while at the same time we have an exploding population of seniors. Medicare is, by far, the biggest driver of our long-term national debt.
Medicaid, which provides care to the poor, would be right there with it but states share this burden. And a growing percent of the Medicaid budget is directed at nursing-home care.
Sure, we can cut fraud and waste, as the refrain goes. But any savings will be dwarfed by the sheer number of baby boomers entering the system.
During the next 20 years, we will add eight beneficiaries to the Medicare rolls for every new worker. And these seniors will be more obese and laden with more self-inflicted chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
Help, we need more immigrants!
I am 56. And as much as I'd like Marco Rubio to include me in the existing system, I don't want to make my kids my indentured servants by having to pay for it.
A worker making $20,000 a year should not have to subsidize health care for snow birds sitting in their Palm Beach condos. We need to adjust premiums, deductibles and co-pays according to income.
People are too disconnected from the cost of their health care. And that encourages abuse of the system.
We need more gatekeepers. We need fewer specialists, and they need to make less money. We need more general practitioners and they need to make more money. We need nurses to diagnose the flu instead of doctors.
We need longer wait times for non-emergency procedures.
We need more docs in Walmart and more Solantic clinics in strip malls.
We need more end-of-life planning to avoid the onslaught of machines that only delay the inevitable.
We need more plans and cheaper options.
We need what we can afford.
We have no choice. The Chinese are going to stop buying our debt.
The longer we put this off, the worse it will be.
It is why Marco Rubio is one of the most important people in Washington right now.
