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Apparently the very expensive and unpaid for Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act may not have happened without New Gingrich’s aggressive advocacy. From Politico:
Newt Gingrich played the role of political godfather in pushing the Medicare prescription drug benefit into law, returning to Capitol Hill in November 2003 to deliver a pivotal speech that turned some conservative skeptics into believers.
Three days before the clock started on what would be an excruciating and historic three-hour floor vote, Republicans huddled in a House office building committee room to hear their former speaker’s vision of a modernized Medicare plan that would offer prescription drugs for seniors while subsidizing Medicare Advantage and introducing health savings accounts aimed at giving conservatives a reason — any reason — to expand the bastion of Lyndon B. Johnson’s Great Society.
Between the extra waste created by the subsidized Medicare Advantage program and the cost of Medicare Part D, the Republican bill Gingrich helped pass has added hundreds of billions to the debt over the years.
Newt Gingrich wants tax cuts for the rich (Tax Policy Center)
I think it is interesting that this story in Politico came out the same day that an analysis by the Tax Policy Center found that Gingrich’s tax plan would add roughly $1 trillion to the deficit in a single year mostly because it dramatically reduces the taxes on the super rich. From the Tax Policy Center:
GOP Presidential candidate Newt Gingrich is proposing a massive tax cut aimed at the highest earning American households. Gingrich’s plan would add about $1 trillion to the federal deficit in a single year. And while most of the nation’s lowest income families would get no benefit from these tax cuts, the top 0.1 percent (who make an average of more than $8 million) would get about a quarter of the windfall, according to new estimates by my colleagues at the Tax Policy Center.
These are the massive deficit increasing policies supported by the current front runner for the Republican party’s presidential nomination. They’re the positions of the candidate who currently leads the Republican field by 10 points.
Can everyone in the media please now stop pretending the Republican party actually cares at all about deficits?
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Didn’t they just score his tax policies as huge deficit creators too?
OT L.Randall Wray is reporting over on New Economic Perspectives that the real money loaned by the fed total, wait for it, not 7.7 trillion, not 16 trillion but 29 trillion. This based on a study by UKMC PHD students. Holy shit.
stay tuned for another episode in “simple answers to complex questions”
no
I don;t think we can indict the entire dastardly, despicable republican party for the “ideas” of just one insane moron.
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But, let’s do it anyway.
Can we please stop pretending the media is not a team player for the right wing PTB? Occupy successfully closed down ports yesterday, and the media made not a mention of it. Case closed, forever.
Once you begin lying about anything, it is hard to stop and easy to contradict yourself, because it is almost impossible to remember what you lied about last. But because you cannot remember what you lied about, you can easliy deny any contradictions because you cannot remember what it was that you contradicted when you lied most recently. This is a mental disorder, associated with congressman, candidates for any office and Newtie, in particular. Newt has already announced that he is the self-appointed savior of civilization and expects everyone to believe everything he says. Don’t leave him alone with your sister.
No, but we can indict the entire Republican party for following an insane meglo-maniac, and executing plans supposedly built on the “ideas” he pulls out of his ass, when everyone knows those “ideas” are actually supplied to him in writing by those who have paid him millions in bribe money.
And we can add to that indictment, that even when those “ideas” are discovered to be the product of his total, and utter corruption, and damaging to the nation’s economic health, and well-being, the entire Republican clings to them as if they were God’s holy plan.
Bob, can I call you Bob? I like the cut of your jib.
The only good thing I believe one can say about the “Newtster” is that those who pay him certainly get their money’s worth.
Uh-oh. Man-crush alert. Not that there’s anything wrong with that lol. (Just kidding, both of you are good guys that I really like and appreciate. Just watch that “jib” thing, ncg. People might misconstrue.)