I posted blog entry yesterday where I highlighted the out-of-touch nature of a GOP candidate in my Congressional district (MI-07) with regard to the new health insurance reform law. On my Facebook page, I got an earful from a guy who said this about it:
It uses 10 years of tax receipts to pay for 6 years of benefits – does that sound sustainable?
This GOP talking point is being propagated around the internets. I see it at rallies and in sound bites by GOPocrites around the country. It’s posted on forums and endlessly on SpaceMyBookFace sites here and there and everywhere.
And it’s a complete and total lie.
Ezra Klein did a fabulous job debunking this crap on April 12th. And he even included a purty pitcher to help people understand:
One of the odder arguments that Republicans made against the Affordable Care Act was what David Brooks termed “the 10-6 dodge.” As he put it, “one of the reasons the bill appears deficit-neutral in the first decade is that it begins collecting revenue right away but doesn’t have to pay for most benefits until 2014. That’s 10 years of revenues to pay for 6 years of benefits.”…[I]t’s not true…
As the graph shows and as Klein succinctly spells out, only in one year, 2013, does the new law raise a substantial amount of revenue without providing much in health insurance benefits. But this is dramatically eclipsed by the benefits it provides in subseqent years.
The common refrain that’s bouncing around the conservative echo chamber is that, as Douglas Holtz-Eakin said in his March 20th New York Times Op-Ed, “the bill front-loads revenues and backloads spending”. Klein debunks that, too:
…the bill saves much more money in the second decade than in the first. The cuts and revenue, in other words, aren’t front-loaded. If anything, they’re back-loaded.
I highly commend your attention to the CBO blog entry that Klein references. It dispels a variety of other arguments that would suggest the CBO’s estimate is faulty.
Bottom line: the entire “10 years of taxing for 6 years of spending” talking point is a complete and utter lie, a myth perpetrated by an incredulous GOP noise machine that can’t believe they got out-flanked by the Dems and handed a defeat in the shape of a health insurance reform bill that covers more people and lowers the deficit at the same time.
Oh, and one other thing. My Facebook correspondent claims that the CBO might have over-estimated how much waste can be trimmed from Medicare. This, after decades of GOP blather about how chock-full of waste that system is. Are you people serious???There’s only scads of waste to cut when Republicans are in charge? Teabagger, please…
I’ve tried being nice to these ill-informed people but, I have to tell you, after a year of fighting untruths and debating on a playing field riddled with intentional lies and misinformation, I’m tired of it. I’m pretty much to the point now where my only response to them is this:
ENOUGH! YOU LOST, WE WON. DEAL WITH IT!
I’m just sayin’…
