On Meet the Press today...
WASHINGTON -- Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich distanced himself on Sunday from a House GOP plan to make cuts to Medicare, calling it “too big a jump" for the American people.
“What you want to have is a system where people voluntarily migrate to better outcomes, better solutions, better options, not one where you suddenly impose it,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “I am against Obamacare imposing radical change, and I would be against a conservative imposing radical change.”
That's not exactly a bit of good news for Ryan who continued to claim "no one" seriously opposes his budget. Not that I think Gingrich's counter suggestion has any validity or weight. Why exactly would private care provider voluntarily take on seniors who are by definition high cost and low profit?
Besides we already have Medicare Advantage which is a private option for seniors that just happens to be 28% more expensive than regular Medicare.
The House GOP budget plan, proposed by Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), would effectively turn Medicare into a voucher system in which seniors were given money by the federal government to purchase private insurance, creating a radically different system than the current guaranteed benefit plan for seniors.
Gingrich said he would prefer a system that preserved the current Medicare program and also created a private alternative/
“I don’t think right-wing social engineering is any more desirable than left-wing social engineering,” he said. “I think we need a national conversation to get to a better Medicare solution for seniors."
Oh, and news-flash, he also supports the Individual Mandate
Gingrich was asked about his own record on health care -- Gregory played a clip of the then-Congressman on the show in 1993 calling for an individual mandate, the same policy that has put Mitt Romney's candidacy in jeopardy. Like Romney, Gingrich did not disavow his support for a requirement that people maintain insurance, defending it as an effective approach.
"I've said consistently we ought to have some requirement you either have health insurance or you post a bond or in some way you indicate you're going to be held accountable," he said
Ruh Roh, isn't that exactly the thing that has the Nut-Baggers screaming "UNCONSTITUTIONAL"?
Point of disclosure, it was the rise of the Gingrich Congress and his "Contract for America" that got me politically active, vigilant, and more than a little alarmed as I watched what was unfolding. I paid attention to the Gingrich era very closely.
Now, I find if flatly ridiculous that Gingrich wants to take any credit for balancing the budget during the 90's. What helped bring the budget into balance began specifically with the first Clinton budget which raised the top marginal tax rate to 39%. What Gingrich tried to do was implement massive tax cuts that would have driven the deficit upward while also dramatically cutting the Medicare COLA far below that actually cost of the care.
It was over this contrast that the government was shutdown twice, and where Gingrich ultimately backed down removing the tax cuts and removed the modification of Medicare in exchange for a few program cuts that really didn't change the budget outlook very much.
This chart shows the deficit going all the way back to 1990 -it's clear that it first begins to come down 2 years before Gingrich became speaker in 1995 and continues on the exact same slope all the way until 2001 when the Bush Tax Cuts were implemented. There is NO SUDDEN CHANGE in 1996 when Gingrich tried to push his budget ideas through. The big spike in 2009 is mostly from the Economic Downturn, the second spike in 2011 is from extending the Bush Cuts in the Lame Duck Budget Deal. If not for that deal, the deficit would have already been cut in half by now, and we'd be back on the downward glide scope that we previously had under Clinton.
Gingrich, with his then House Budget Chairman John Kasich, demanded that any budget coming through the House had to reach balance by 2002 - well, by rejecting Gingrich's demands and allowing the economy to continue to grow producing 22 Million jobs we reached balance 4 years earlier than that. If we'd done things Gingrich's way, implementing the Bush Era Tax Cuts 6 years earlier we would have Never reached balance.
Also Gingrich left congress in disgrace because of ethical violations and having an affair with a staffer, at the same time that he was trying to have Bill Clinton Impeached for having an affair with a staffer while Clinton long ended that affair and at the time was trying to Get Osama Bin Laden.
Remember how Clinton was a accused of "Wagging the Dog" back then when he ordered a Cruise Missile Strike on Bin Laden's Afghanistan Compound?
But if you want to find some real bashing of Gingrich, you don't have to go any further than Fox News.
Gingrich is Brilliant, but Undisciplined.
He carries a lot of baggage.
He's been married three times, and that's a problem
The truth is that Gingrich is a chameleon, he doesn't have principled policy positions he just likes say outrageous crap and try an use his reputation as a "deep thinker" to make them seem palatable. But they aren't.
A quick sampling via Media Matters:
Outrageous Statements
Gingrich Has Labeled Obama "Most Radical President" And Claimed He Engaged In "Kenyan, Anti-Colonial Behavior" And "Racist Dialogue"
GINGRICH: The president of the United States, the most radical president in American history, has now thrown down the gauntlet to the American people. He has said, "I run a machine, I own Washington, and there's nothing you can do about it." Now, that's where we are. [C-SPAN, 4/8/10]
GINGRICH: The goal that the Obama team has is to fundamentally replace the historic America of self-reliance, independence, the work ethic, the people who go out and achieve because they spend their lifetime doing the right things. And they want to replace it with a politician-dominated redistributionist bureaucracy. Which in the essence would mean the end of America as it has been for the last 400 years.The Glenn Beck Program, 5/17/10]
Citing a recent Forbes article by Dinesh D'Souza, former House speaker Newt Gingrich tells National Review Online that President Obama may follow a "Kenyan, anti-colonial" worldview.
Gingrich says that D'Souza has made a "stunning insight" into Obama's behavior -- the "most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama."
"What if [Obama] is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together [his actions]?" Gingrich asks. "That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior."
Gingrich Warns Of "A Gay And Secular Fascism In This Country," Says We Must "Break The Back Of The Secular-Socialist Machine"
GINGRICH: Look, I think there is a gay and secular fascism in this country that wants to impose its will on the rest of us, is prepared to use violence, to use harassment. I think it is prepared to use the government if it can get control of it. I think that it is a very dangerous threat to anybody who believes in traditional religion.
Gingrich Invokes Nazis, Communist Dictators In Attacking His Opponents
GINGRICH: So, so you want a politician to become the arbiter of your dreams? A politician gets to say, "We're gonna raise -- we're gonna have a tax" -- and they proposed this at one point -- "we're going to have a punitive tax on those we don't like. We're going to decide that you have too much money, so we're going to take it from you."
WALLACE: So -- but you compare that to the Nazis and the communists?
GINGRICH: I compare that as a threat. Not in terms of the moral -- look, there is no comparison to Nazi Germany as a moral force. Or, by the way, to Mao's China or the Soviet Union, all three of which were evil. But as a threat to our way of life, the degree to which the secular-socialist left represents a fundamental replacement of America, a very different worldview, a very different outcome, I think this is a very serious threat to our way of life. [Fox Broadcasting Co., Fox News Sunday, 5/16/10]
Gingrich's History Of Racially Incendiary Comments Includes Smearing Sotomayor As "Racist"
@NewtGingrich Imagine a Judicial Nominee said "My experience as a white man makes me better than a latina woman". New racism not better than old racism
Misinformation
Gingrich Falsely Accused Sotomayor Of Having "Supported Racial Quotas"
GINGRICH: Well, I don't, look, I think you have to raise the question, because she repeated the same quote five or six different speeches. Does she really believe that one group has superiority over another? She's going to have to answer that question, I think, in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. And then with what she's -- there's a pretty big gap between what she's done as a judge, which has been relatively reasonable and with the exception of the Ricci case, where she clearly supported racial quotas. The O'Reilly Factor, 6/8/09]
Gingrich Perpetuated "Death Panel" Myths With Fearmongering About "Euthanasia" And "Ration[ing]"
GINGRICH: I think people are very concerned when you start talking about cost controls, that a bureaucracy -- we don't -- you're asking us to trust the government. Now, I'm not talking about the Obama administration. I'm talking about the government. You're asking us to decide that we believe that the government is to be trusted.
We know people who have said routinely, well, you're going to have to make decisions. You're going to have to decide. Communal standards, historically, is a very dangerous concept.
STEPHANOPOULOS: It's not in the bill.
GINGRICH: But the bill's -- the bill's 1,000 pages of setting up mechanisms. It sets up 45 different agencies. It has all sorts of panels. You're asking us to trust turning power over to the government, when there clearly are people in America who believe in -- in establishing euthanasia, including selective standards. [ABC, This Week, 8/9/09]
Gingrich Has Misinformed On Environmental Issues
Gingrich Has Misled On A Variety Of Labor, Civil Liberties, And Economic Issues
Ethical Issues
Gingrich Receives Funding From Health Care, Energy Special Interests
Gingrich Fights Against The Public Option And For Subsidies For CHT's Members
GINGRICH: I don't want the government to be the primary operator of the health system. I don't want the government to try to run things. I don't think the government runs things very well. It rapidly becomes politicized.[ABC, Good Morning America, 7/1/09, via Nexis]
Gingrich Attacks Energy Policies That Hurt His Corporate Donors
GINGRICH: The fact that [the Obama administration is] talking about 10 trillion dollars of additional deficit over the next decade. Must have of it will be owned by the Chinese and the Saudi Arabians. So you have to ask yourself to what extent at an economic level are we going to face a national security crisis.
The fact they are determined to cripple our industry at a time when virtually every American realizes that having national security and energy, keeping the money here at home, creating less expensive energy here is vital to our economic future.
And then you combined with unilateral disarmament mindset. I think -- I think that the term dangerous is a very legitimate term to raise about the policies and the lack of understanding of reality in this administration. [Fox News, Hannity, 4/6/10, via Nexis]
O'REILLY: You apparently believe-
GINGRICH: Look-
O'REILLY: --that the guy really embraces the government running the economy, therefore, knocking out free economy, free market economy, and even regulating private property, where you live.
GINGRICH: Well, of course, he does. I mean, of course, he does. I mean, they want the Environmental Protection Agency to run the economy in terms of energy. They've announced that publicly at Copenhagen. He has appointed all these extra constitutional czars. He has a pay czar. You don't think reaching in and deciding that the government will decide what your pay ought to be. I mean, go through step-by-step all the different interventionist things in this administration. And it is by a big margin the most Socialist, the most left wing, the most big bureaucracy in American history. I mean, vastly more so than any other president we've ever had. [Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor, 2/22/10, via Nexis]
In the long run Gingrich has made dozens of radical ridiculous statements that could be used to rip him apart either in a GOP debate and certainly a Presidential debate. All you have to do is ask him - with Obama standing right there - if he truly believes Obama has "Mau Mau Anti-Colonialist Views that drive his Death Panel, Rationing, Racialism" and he's blown out of the water. It's all just so wrong-headed and over the top and fact challenged. Heck, I'd almost like to see this Radical Secularist Collectivist Obama Administration because it would be a HOOT, except it simply doesn't exist. Obama is only slightly less of a corporatist than most of the GOP, but he's OUR weak Corporatist, not Gingrich's Radical Collectivist. I truly wish he would go after Wall Street and Corporate Malfeasance like a Machete wielding Mau Mau but alas Obama just wants to bring back the Clinton Tax Rates, which brought us to a budget surplus and booming economy - an idea that is not radical in the slightest.
Still it is fun to watch him take Paul Ryan's budget down with him as the first move in his doomed Presidential run. Almost make me want to root or him just to see how much damage he can do to Ryan before the eventual fall.
Vyan