[Vision2020] Alaska vote count

[Andreas Schou]

On Sat, Nov 13, 2010 at 4:47 PM, Gary Crabtree <jampot at roadrunner.com> wrote:
> Yes let's:
>
> The CBO doesn't (couldn't) take into account the sham that is the "doctors
> fix' and the "medicare spending reductions" that will either not be enacted
> due to the din of howling seniors or, if implanted, will shift costs to the
> states and in turn to the doctors and hospitals, decreasing supplies of both
> while increasing demand.

Oh, okay. So, the CBO should calculate whether future Congresses would
later repeal the provisions of the ACA?  How do you propose that they
do that?

The so-called "doc fix" is unfortunately likely to stay, considerably
reducing the cost savings in the bill. Most of the other provisions,
however, should be relatively resilient. The Medicare Advantage
reimbursement balancing, in particular, should last until a Republican
congress is successfully lobbied into setting higher reimbursement
rates for for-profit Medicare alternatives.

I do think you're right, to some degree, on the potential for
retaining the cost savings in the ACA: neither party has a serious
commitment to deficit control. I'm only saying that the cost-savings
baked into the ACA are things which the Republicans, reliant as they
are on old-people votes, would try to repeal even absent ACA's
regulatory provisions.

> Granted since the midterm elections, cap and tax is as dead as Pelosi's
> speakership but, that was not the case at the time of the tea parties
> conception. There is still talk of enacting some of its more
> costly provisions through regulatory channels. Please detail for me the
> senate plan for rebates for loses due to jobs sent over seas or eliminated
> entirely.

Our energy needs can't be outsourced, and won't go away.  The
McCaskill plan, in the Senate, was to shave carbon costs off the top
of energy producers and rebate the money to energy consumers. This
would essentially force energy producers to deal with the negative
externalities of CO2 production themselves, while effectively
preventing producers from dropping the costs on consumers. It's
precisely the same plan that George H.W. proposed, and a Democratic
legislature passed, in 1990.

I'm not going to dither with you on oceanic acidification or global
warming, because we both know that you're  immune to reason on that
point.

> What a joke! Of course the money had an effect on payrolls. The only way it
> would not have would have been to simply light it on fire. (something I do
> not put past the Obama whitehouse) The administration has spent 110 Billion
> of the 787 Billion appropriated. Would you like to show me how that has
> positively impacted jobless numbers and housing starts? Preventing
> the incineration of the remaining 675 Billion and change is a legitimate
> concern for tea party members.

$318b has been spent. $146b is money to be spent on services already
rendered. $243b are tax cuts issued in fiscal 2009. $45b are tax cuts
to be issued in fiscal 2010. Only $47b is left to spend. I suppose
that you could conceivably default on the $146b, claw back the $45b in
tax cuts and fail to spend the remaining $47b, but -- frankly -- all
but the tax cuts are likely to be finished off by the time the
legislature is next in session.

> As to the government payroll, the number of federal employees making
> 150,000.00 or more a year has doubled since Obama took office.

This has an entirely mundane explanation. 2010 is the first year where
GS-15, step 8 is above $150,000 in Washington DC. Before Obama took
office, only GS-15, step 10 was above $150,000 in DC. In other words,
2009's 2% pay raise tipped a whole bunch of federal employees being
paid at the GS-9 level from $148,000 to above $150,000.

>  In addition, the president plans to give to give a 1.4% across-the-board
> pay raise to 2.1 million federal workers.

That's correct. That 1.4% pay raise is the inflation index that's
baked into most federal contracts. By comparison, Bush's 2006 federal
pay raise was 3.1; in 2007, it was 2.2%; in 2008, it was 3.0%.

> Workers who, for the most part, are being compensated at a level that is
> considerably greater then that of their private sector counterparts.

This statistic is true but dishonest. Comparing job-to-job, government
salaries are 24% lower than private salaries. However, the government
employs a larger number of people with specialized training; the feds
are America's largest employer of people with masters degrees and
Ph.Ds. For that reason, the federal government pays its median
employee more than the median (though not the mean) private employee.