Op-Ed: The Trump budget is just telling the truth—and you can’t handle the truth!

trouble13 · May 29, 2017

Rogue Valley said:
President Trump has long promised not to cut Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security. But in his budget released on Tuesday, he proposes making massive cuts to Medicaid. Mr. Trump is proposing to cut $610 billion from Medicaid benefits. This could come on top of more than $800 billion in cuts to Medicaid sought in the health care overhaul bill passed by the House on May 4. The Medicaid program provides health insurance to 1 in 5 Americans, including children, women, disabled people and the elderly. If you include the CHIP program that Trumps budget will gut, 1 of every 3 American children will lose major portions of their healthcare coverage.

You better check your numbers we only spent $550 billion on medicade in 2016. How is he going to cut more than we spend?

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JasperL · May 31, 2017

chuckiechan said:
It's time to face the economic realities of truth is spending. We can't afford the welfare state as it is constructed today. We need economic growth beyond what is statistically possible. Our "good" growth is 3%. At this rate we can't keep doing what we are doing. No one likes to hear the truth especially a politician or a bureaucrat.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/op-ed-trump-budget-just-160449563.html

America finally has something it's needed for decades: A budget that starts to tell the truth. And some people don't seem to be able to handle the truth. But they need to start.

Note:A few sentences have been clipped out for brevity and character count.

I have a problem labeling a budget as 'truth telling' when it addresses huge structural deficits by......cutting taxes by $trillions, then making an at least $trillion accounting error (really a likely $5 or $6 trillion error), and assumes growth rates that are unreasonable, and so in effect addresses "hard" questions about an allegedly unsustainable budget by making the rich richer and imposing all the pain of fixing a supposedly unsustainable budget on the backs of the poor and middle class.

Sacrifice for thee, but not for me - me and mine (the already $billionaire class) get RAISES! Courageous! :roll:

JasperL · May 31, 2017

trouble13 said:
You better check your numbers we only spent $550 billion on medicade in 2016. How is he going to cut more than we spend?

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The stated numbers are over the 10 year period of the budget projections, so up to roughly $140 billion per year off that $550 billion.

JasperL · May 31, 2017

trouble13 said:
I think your math is way off. If im not mistaken last year the gov collected aprox 2T and spent 4T.

Someone has probably already corrected you, but it's closer to 3.4T revenue, 4T spending.

chuckiechan · May 31, 2017

In most cases Trump is cutting the increase in spending. We can't have 50% of the population in the wagon.

MTAtech · Jun 1, 2017

chuckiechan said:
In most cases Trump is cutting the increase in spending. We can't have 50% of the population in the wagon.

Actually, that's baloney. Let me explain... On second thought, I'll let Steve Ratner explain:

Trump’s Budget Cuts? More Like Radical Surgery

First, no budget in my 40 years of following fiscal policy has attempted to reallocate outlays as radically as this budget does. Most of the commentary has focused on the cumulative spending changes over the next decade; look instead at the proposed outlays for 2027 to understand the full extent of the proposed shifts.

As the chart below shows, defense receives an increase, Medicare and Social Security retirement are left almost entirely unchanged and pretty much everything else is massively trimmed. (All projected changes are in relation to current law, and these figures are not adjusted for inflation, making the effective cuts from today’s spending levels that much greater.)

Not all of the reductions are immediately evident in the document released by the Office of Management and Budget.

In particular, much has been made of the $616 billion of Medicaid cuts. What the press has sometimes missed (because the Trump administration hid the numbers) is that the $616 billion is on top of $834 billion of Medicaid reductions in the Republican health care legislation.
That means that President Trump, who vowed during the campaign not to touch Medicaid, now wants to cut it in half by 2027. He must really, really not like the poor.

chuckiechan · Jun 1, 2017

MTAtech said:
Actually, that's baloney. Let me explain... On second thought, I'll let Steve Ratner explain:

You are referring to your attachment that says:

In particular, much has been made of the $616 billion of Medicaid cuts. What the press has sometimes missed (because the Trump administration hid the numbers) is that the $616 billion is on top of $834 billion of Medicaid reductions in the Republican health care legislation.
That means that President Trump, who vowed during the campaign not to touch Medicaid, now wants to cut it in half by 2027. He must really, really not like the poor.

So you are accusing Trump of cutting 616 billion in Medicaid, plus another 834 billion cut in Medicade, for a total cut of 1.4 trillion on a 1.8 trillion budget? So you are saying Medicade is mostly gone and the Republicans stole it? That's some cut. I doubt it will happen. And it goes to show what a load of crap is passed off without so much as a "Maybe I'd better check the figures before I publicize it", and leave out the part about "block grants" to states.

It's it worth noting that we are spending almost a trillion in Medicaid with Obamacare. Medicaid is welfare. Trump wants to change Medicaid financing into block grants to the states. This is the difference in political outlook. What Medicaid recipient cares who pays for it? Medicaid in California is already doing that as Medi-cal, with a formula of various matching state and federal funds, depending who is getting what. Judging from the growth of the program it's successful if you measure success by the number of people on welfare. The state itself is spending 19 billion on 13.5 million recipients.

As recall, Obamacare was suppose to solve this problem, and now we have two problems instead of one. Big government doesn't work well for entitlements. Too much bureaucracy, duplication, waste, and fraud. "Charity begins at home... or at least in the same state". The feds have enough to do. Like create jobs for people on Meci-cal to work at if they are able bodied.

MTAtech · Jun 1, 2017

chuckiechan said:
You are referring to your attachment that says:

In particular, much has been made of the $616 billion of Medicaid cuts. What the press has sometimes missed (because the Trump administration hid the numbers) is that the $616 billion is on top of $834 billion of Medicaid reductions in the Republican health care legislation.
That means that President Trump, who vowed during the campaign not to touch Medicaid, now wants to cut it in half by 2027. He must really, really not like the poor.

Click to expand...

So you are accusing Trump of cutting 616 billion in Medicaid, plus another 834 billion cut in Medicade, for a total cut of 1.4 trillion on a 1.8 trillion budget? So you are saying Medicade is mostly gone and the Republicans stole it?

I am not saying it. The GOP's own budget says it. The ACHA bill says it. It's there for all to see.

chuckiechan said:
That's some cut. I doubt it will happen.

Whether it happens or not, this is what the GOP wants to pass. If it doesn't happen, it's because the Dems and enough Republicans get threatened by the public to stop it.

chuckiechan said:
It's it worth noting that we are spending almost a trillion in Medicaid with Obamacare. Medicaid is welfare. Trump wants to change Medicaid financing into block grants to the states. This is the difference in political outlook. What Medicaid recipient cares who pays for it? Medicaid in California is already doing that as Medi-cal, with a formula of various matching state and federal funds, depending who is getting what. Judging from the growth of the program it's successful if you measure success by the number of people on welfare. The state itself is spending 19 billion on 13.5 million recipients.

As recall, Obamacare was suppose to solve this problem, and now we have two problems instead of one. Big government doesn't work well for entitlements. Too much bureaucracy, duplication, waste, and fraud. "Charity begins at home... or at least in the same state". The feds have enough to do. Like create jobs for people on Meci-cal to work at if they are able bodied.

Expanded Medicaid in the ACA is paid for by higher taxes on the wealthy. The GOP decided that they wanted to give the rich a tax-break by eliminating these taxes.

Health care doesn't come free. Trump and the GOP want to shove that cost to the states, the poor states can't afford it. This will lead to reduced benefits if states don’t have the ability to pick up costs for new treatments or an influx of eligible patients during bad economic times that trigger job loss. Hospitals, insurers, doctors and – AARP, came out against Medicaid block grants.

Basically, if you want private insurers involved in health coverage, it works like this: If you want preexisting conditions covered, you need community ratings so that the cost is spread out among the community. But if you stop there, the poor and low income workers don't get coverage. So, you subsidize the cost of insurance and expand Medicaid for the very poor or unemployed. That all cost money, so the ACA had dedicated taxes on the rich to pay for it.

Of course, Chuck and the GOP don't want the rich to pay the taxes, so their choice is to pull the rug from under the working poor and tell them rough luck, you lose your coverage so the rich can get a tax break.

fmw · Jun 1, 2017

"Op-Ed: The Trump budget is just telling the truth—and you can’t handle the truth!"

Perhaps so but the congress doesn't have the guts to pass anything even close to it. They will simply throw us into deeper debt. Perhaps Trump will veto the budget bill. That would be entertaining.

chuckiechan · Jun 1, 2017

MTAtech said:
I am not saying it. The GOP's own budget says it. The ACHA bill says it. It's there for all to see. Whether it happens or not, this is what the GOP wants to pass. If it doesn't happen, it's because the Dems and enough Republicans get threatened by the public to stop it. Expanded Medicaid in the ACA is paid for by higher taxes on the wealthy. The GOP decided that they wanted to give the rich a tax-break by eliminating these taxes.

Health care doesn't come free. Trump and the GOP want to shove that cost to the states, the poor states can't afford it. This will lead to reduced benefits if states don’t have the ability to pick up costs for new treatments or an influx of eligible patients during bad economic times that trigger job loss. Hospitals, insurers, doctors and – AARP, came out against Medicaid block grants.

Basically, if you want private insurers involved in health coverage, it works like this: If you want preexisting conditions covered, you need community ratings so that the cost is spread out among the community. But if you stop there, the poor and low income workers don't get coverage. So, you subsidize the cost of insurance and expand Medicaid for the very poor or unemployed. That all cost money, so the ACA had dedicated taxes on the rich to pay for it.

Of course, Chuck and the GOP don't want the rich to pay the taxes, so their choice is to pull the rug from under the working poor and tell them rough luck, you lose your coverage so the rich can get a tax break.

Obamacare is nothing more than a tax on the middle class redistributed "to others". Many middle class are unable to afford to use medical care at all, yet the "poor" can come and go at will for free or close to it. There are too many people content to sit back and let society take care of them. Take care of the needy. But don't give them a "Cadillac Plan" the middle class can't afford.

MTAtech · Jun 1, 2017

chuckiechan said:
Obamacare is nothing more than a tax on the middle class redistributed "to others". Many middle class are unable to afford to use medical care at all, yet the "poor" can come and go at will for free or close to it. There are too many people content to sit back and let society take care of them. Take care of the needy. But don't give them a "Cadillac Plan" the middle class can't afford.

You have a distorted definition of "middle class."

There are several taxes that Obamacare imposes:

Net Investment Income Tax (NIIT): This is a 3.8% surtax added to various earnings on investments above $250,000. Since it is wealthier taxpayers that have those investments above $250,000, it does not impact what I think are the middle class.
Medicare Tax: This is an increase in the Medicare tax on higher-income taxpayers who earn $250,000 with married filing jointly status that took effect in 2013. (Limits are $125,000 if married filing separately or $200,000 if filing single). For those with incomes beyond that mark, a 0.9% tax was added to the employee component of your tax contribution (the employer’s portion does not change).

Is Obamacare re-distributive? Absolutely. According to the Tax Foundation, there are significant benefits to the bottom half of the income distribution, paid for largely by taxes on the top few percent (the Medicare surcharge and the extra tax on investment income). According to the Tax Policy Center, the ACA reduces the after-tax income of the top 1 percent by 1.8 percent, the top 0.1 percent by 2.5 percent.

It also allows users of the healthcare exchange to receive subsidies for insurance if their income is within 400% of the poverty line. If you are complaining that "[m]any middle class are unable to afford to use medical care at all," with those subsidies, they surely weren't able to afford insurance under the old system that gave no subsidies. The remedy is to increase, not decrease, the subsidies, so more people benefit. We could also have a universal single-payer system.

To you this is a bad thing and to me it is good, it helps lower inequality while funding health insurance for Americans.

MTAtech · Jun 1, 2017

More on redistribution from the previous post.

Providing health care to those previously denied it is, necessarily, a matter of redistributing from the lucky to the unlucky. And, of course, reversing a policy that expanded health care is redistribution in reverse. You can’t make this reality go away.

Left to its own devices, a market economy won’t care for the sick unless they can pay for it; insurance can help up to a point, but insurance companies have no interest in covering people they suspect will get sick. So unfettered markets mean that health care goes only to those who are wealthy and/or healthy enough that they won’t need it often, and hence can get insurance.