googledad
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Real Americans redistribute: The payroll tax debate’s dirty secret
By Matt Miller, Wednesday, December 14, 9:44 AM
Can we talk for a minute about redistribution of income? Just between us?
Republicans were aghast when President Obama’s original proposal to extend and deepen payroll tax cuts for 160 million workers would have been paid for by a surtax on America’s 350,000 top earners.
Egad! cried the GOP. Redistribution is robbery!
But the real taboo in American politics isn’t redistribution; it’s talking honestly about redistribution. Because as a matter of tradition and public policy we quietly redistribute massive sums each year.
We take billions from struggling young families earning $35,000 who can barely make ends meet, let alone save for college or retirement, and use the money to pay for Social Security and Medicare benefits for seniors who earn more than $100,000. We do this even though those seniors are getting back far more than they ever paid into the system.
We take billions from high-income blue states like New York and California, and ship them via federal benefits and subsidies for farming and oil to poor red states like Alabama and Oklahoma. We do this even though the recipient states mostly vote Republican and moan endlessly about getting Uncle Sam off their backs.
We give a hefty housing subsidy via the mortgage-interest deduction to Bill Gates — while Gates’s maid, assuming she rents, gets no housing subsidy at all.
Then there’s Medicare’s secret. Few people realize that Medicare spends wildly different amounts per senior depending on where the senior happens to live. The most famous example, from research by John Wennberg, found that Medicare spends 2.5 times more per senior in Miami than in Minneapolis (even after adjusting for regional differences in input costs, such as for office rents). Yet there’s no difference in quality or health outcomes associated with this extra spending.
In other words, Medicare redistributes billions from regions where doctors practice cost effectively to regions where the local Medical Industrial Complex pads its income with excess services and procedures.
(This, by the way, is the hidden reason that calls for Medicare vouchers are so tricky and potentially explosive — because setting sums for the vouchers would expose the redistribution that now takes place within the program. Do you honor past practice and give a Minneapolis senior a voucher worth one-third of what his cousin in Miami gets? You see the difficulty — not to mention the Medicare riots — that lies down this path).
There’s more, but you get the point. It’s a little late in the day to say we can’t redistribute income in the United States. It’d be more accurate to say that redistribution is the American way. Real Americans redistribute!
Still, Republicans are determined not to admit this. Admitting that redistribution is a proud American tradition, after all, might encourage more of it. And when the 99 percent is already angrily eyeing the 1 percent, that’s a scary thought.
Which is why Obama’s gauche proposal had to be ushered off the stage at once (and replaced with the bill the House passed Tuesday night, which freezes federal pay to help fund the tax cut instead). If I have the math right, Obama’s plan — which Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid may yet bring back — would have top-earning Americans picking up the tab for, on average, 457 workers’ tax break for a year.
Adopt a struggling fellow American, the White House was effectively saying. Or 457 of them, while you’re at it.
Now, I’m sure Republicans would have had no problem with this idea if it had been a voluntary initiative. If, for example, top bankers had come together in the holiday spirit to say they would each cut a $1,500 check to 457 everyday Americans, Republicans would have toasted the virtue of private charity.
Funny, though, no one on Wall Street thought to come forward with this kind of plan. Guess they’ve been pretty busy.
When Paul O’Neill was Treasury secretary under George W. Bush I asked him about all this. “If we want to have a conversation about equities, then we ought to have a complete conversation,” O’Neill told me. “It should not be about health care. It shouldn’t be about education. It should be a broader conversation about how much resources should be provided from those who have something to those who have less or nothing.
“That’s the clean conversation,” he added. “It’s about purchasing power for the things one needs to lead a decent and civil life. That’s the question.”
That’s my kind of Republican. But I’d bet a million bucks that today’s GOP wouldn’t agree to a Lincoln-Douglas debate on this question. The president ought to challenge them to one and see.
Matt Miller, a co-host of public radio’s “Left, Right & Center,” writes a weekly online column for The Post. His e-mail address is mattino2@gmail.com.
>>>>>>>> End the Red State welfare !
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Careful. We don't want to learn from this.
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gr8Dad
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"We take billions from struggling young families earning $35,000 who can barely make ends meet, let alone save for college or retirement, and use the money to pay for Social Security and Medicare benefits for seniors who earn more than $100,000. We do this even though those seniors are getting back far more than they ever paid into the system."
SO lets revamp the system...oh, wait, the Dems won't TOUCH Social Security.
"Then there’s Medicare’s secret. Few people realize that Medicare spends wildly different amounts per senior depending on where the senior happens to live. The most famous example, from research by John Wennberg, found that Medicare spends 2.5 times more per senior in Miami than in Minneapolis (even after adjusting for regional differences in input costs, such as for office rents). Yet there’s no difference in quality or health outcomes associated with this extra spending.
In other words, Medicare redistributes billions from regions where doctors practice cost effectively to regions where the local Medical Industrial Complex pads its income with excess services and procedures."
SO lets revamp the system...oh, wait, Medicare is, per the Dems, UNTOUCHABLE.
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Why give a "senior" discount, they have had plenty of time to raise the money...
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googledad
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SO lets revamp the system...oh, wait, the Dems won't TOUCH Social Security.
>>>>>>>> Incorrect . BTW , which party wants to privatize both ? Who comapigned on saving Medicare from cuts except now they want to cut MORE ? Are we saving Social Security or Rick Perry's " Ponzi scheme " ?
SO lets revamp the system...oh, wait, Medicare is, per the Dems, UNTOUCHABLE.
>>>>>>>> Actually the Repubes made it so last year . After all , they had to save the private option that cost more .
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gr8Dad
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Lie all you want, it is the Dems in the SENATE that made it CLEAR to their reps on the super committee that SS and Medicare was NOT to be touched.
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Why give a "senior" discount, they have had plenty of time to raise the money...
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LeAnne
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Well they touched SS last year when they had less taken out of payroll checks that the employee pays in. Stupid move.
But they really didn't give the SS money back...the government just changed the federal rate to absorb the money, so they could lay their hands on it.
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Empty Nesting
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googledad
Carpal \'Tunnel
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Lie all you want, it is the Dems in the SENATE that made it CLEAR to their reps on the super committee that SS and Medicare was NOT to be touched.
>>>>>>>>>> So your proof is something that didn't happen ? Were you there ?
BTW , who campaigned against $500 billion in Medicare " cuts " before the 2010 elections then voted in their budget to " cut " Medicare by $500 billion ? Who refuses any raise in taxes ? Which parties candidates for Prez are furiously offering to cut INCOME taxes even MORE ?
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gr8Dad
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">>>>>>>>>> So your proof is something that didn't happen ? Were you there ?"
Pelosi and Reid ADMITTED to it. But, of course, you will defend it.
"BTW , who campaigned against $500 billion in Medicare " cuts " before the 2010 elections then voted in their budget to " cut " Medicare by $500 billion ?"
Well, we KNOW it wasn't the Senate, as they haven't passed a budget in over 800 days.
"Who refuses any raise in taxes ?"
The same people who are DEMANDING cuts. So how about CUTTING something?
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Why give a "senior" discount, they have had plenty of time to raise the money...
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googledad
Carpal \'Tunnel
Reged: 12/31/05
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Pelosi and Reid ADMITTED to it. But, of course, you will defend it.
>>>>>>>> Where's the proof ?
Well, we KNOW it wasn't the Senate, as they haven't passed a budget in over 800 days.
>>>>>>>>> You will really tie yourself into knots to defend them ? Could you for once admit they were lying ? BTW , a budget passed by ther House that has NO CHANCE in the Senate or faces a presidential veto is USELESS . Can the Senate pass anything ? Nope , got the GOP FILIBUSTERING everything in sight . Great move , congratulate the GOP for FUTILITY .
The same people who are DEMANDING cuts. So how about CUTTING something?
>>>>>>>>>>>> Like cutting things they don't agree with while DEFENDING their pet programs ? Consistant , very consistant . Banning earmarks then using them ? I remember Boehner and McConnel were very interested in cuts back in 2001 , oops , NEVER HAPPENED .
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Careful. We don't want to learn from this.
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gr8Dad
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You are such a partisan stooge. The republicans control the house, so it doing something wrong is their fault. The send control the senate, so them doing something wrong is...the republicans fault.
They are ALL at fault.
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Why give a "senior" discount, they have had plenty of time to raise the money...
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googledad
Carpal \'Tunnel
Reged: 12/31/05
Posts: 10207
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You are such a partisan stooge. The republicans control the house, so it doing something wrong is their fault.
>>>>>>>> When they masturbate via legislation that's DOA , yeah .
The send control the senate, so them doing something wrong is...the republicans fault.
>>>>>>>>> When you set a record for filibusters then top it , yeah , it's their fault .
They are ALL at fault.
>>>>>>>>> You just said it was Pelosi & Reid .
Funny how Repubs become deficit hawks when there's a Dem in the White House otherwise DEFICITS DON'T MATTER . Ask Paul Ryan , he thought deficits under GW were TOO LOW .
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Careful. We don't want to learn from this.
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