Hillary again wrong on Social Security

Hillary Clinton stubbornly refuses to admit reality on social security. At last nights Democratic debate she once again refused to give any indication of how she will respond to the growing entitlement crisis. She once again used faulty statistics to imply that everything was fine with social security when her husband left office only to be hampered by President Bush.

But this is simply not true as even moderator Tim Russert pointed out. She kept insisting that the magical term “fiscal responsibility” would somehow fix things. But the problem is demographics not the budget. The Baby Boomer’s are going to overwhelm the system and it won’t go away just because you balance the budget.

As I noted before, Ramesh Ponnuru has pointed out how Hillary is trying to spin this:

In recent weeks, she has claimed that when her husband left office, Social Security was projected to be solvent until 2055. She has added that the projection has been cut to 2041 because of President Bush’s fiscal mismanagement.

That’s not right. In 2000, Social Security’s trustees estimated that its trust fund would remain solvent until 2037. (As it happens, I don’t think this trust-fund solvency question is terribly important but for the sake of argument I’ll go with Hillary’s view that it does.) Now it is indeed estimated to be 2041. Under Bush, we’ve gained 4 years rather than lost 14.

Where did Clinton get the year 2055? In the last years of the Clinton administration, Clinton proposed to count the budget surplus toward Social Security and to have the government invest the Social Security funds in the stock market. It claimed that these moves would get us to 2055. Critics said the plan was based on accounting gimmicks that wouldn’t really make Social Security more secure. Whoever was right, the administration’s plan didn’t make it through Congress.

The other candidates flat out admitted that they would need to raise taxes if you take cost saving measures off the table. Having already pandered to the elderly and taken any cost cutting measures off the table now Hillary wants to pretend that she won’t have to raise taxes.

Trying to have it both ways, that is Hillary’s specialty.

Hillary and Social Security

Ramesh Ponnuru sheds some light on Hillary’s claims on Social Security and not surprisingly she is spinning:

Hillary Clinton has ruled out the same proposals that Obama has ruled out—private accounts, benefit cuts, or increases in the retirement age—but she has not floated the idea of a tax increase. In recent weeks, she has claimed that when her husband left office, Social Security was projected to be solvent until 2055. She has added that the projection has been cut to 2041 because of President Bush’s fiscal mismanagement.

That’s not right. In 2000, Social Security’s trustees estimated that its trust fund would remain solvent until 2037. (As it happens, I don’t think this trust-fund solvency question is terribly important but for the sake of argument I’ll go with Hillary’s view that it does.) Now it is indeed estimated to be 2041. Under Bush, we’ve gained 4 years rather than lost 14.

Where did Clinton get the year 2055? In the last years of the Clinton administration, Clinton proposed to count the budget surplus toward Social Security and to have the government invest the Social Security funds in the stock market. It claimed that these moves would get us to 2055. Critics said the plan was based on accounting gimmicks that wouldn’t really make Social Security more secure. Whoever was right, the administration’s plan didn’t make it through Congress.

The interesting question left open: Is Senator Clinton in favor of having the government invest Social Security funds in stocks?

Fred Thompson on Hillary Care

Fred Thompson, in his laid back southern drawl, makes a very important point: “Liberals Think That The Best Way To Help Somebody Is To Punish Them”

H/T RedState

Greenspan on Hillary

Alan Greenspan has some interesting things to say about Hillary Clinton in an interview with Newsweek the other day. The former chairman of the Federal Reserve – retained by Bill BTW – acknowledged her talents but pointed out important faults:

How about the next president? Hillary Clinton seems to be the front runner on the Democratic side. What’s your view on the junior senator from New York?
Very smart. She is probably everything that everybody says about her. She wouldn’t be a bad president, but she won’t attack the issues which really require coming to grips with during the campaign. The absolute blindness of candidates to the obvious issue of Medicare’s problems is just truly discouraging to me.

And this is the problem with so much of her policies: any pragmatic tendencies she might have too often get pushed aside by politics and her liberal idealism. Her unwillingness and inability to take on the leftist base of her own party prevents her from taking on the challenge of entitlements and other pressing issues. Her health care plan will exacerbate these problems and push the government toward control of a massive chunk of the economy.

If push comes to shove does anyone really think Hillary would choose spending reductions over taxes? Choose to let the market work versus government regulations? The political winds are blowing to the left and that is where Hillary will move. Unlike her husband, she is unlikely to have a GOP Congress to contain her – making her that much more dangerous.

Greenspan also had some interesting to say about Bill Clinton:

Reading your opinions of the various presidents you’ve worked with, it was surprising that you ranked Clinton near the top, given your personal political views, as well as Nixon, given his reputation.
Both were tops in IQ, not in character. Nixon, as I point out, I really misjudged. He was a Jekyll and Hyde. With Clinton, there’s a moral looseness about him. When I heard the rumors about Monica Lewinsky I thought, it’s not possible. I don’t care how corrupt the president of the United States is, they just don’t do that to themselves. The person who had true character was Gerald R. Ford. I felt more comfortable with him, and I trusted him more than anybody.

Think about that for awhile. Do we really want Bill Clinton, and his moral looseness, back in the White House? Remember that the Clinton’s are a package deal – always have been.

New boss, same as the old boss

Speaking of NRO, Peter Ferrara asks a good question: Who needs a private sector when we have a Clinton make our health-care choices? And in asking that question raises a number other highly relevant ones:

On the coming entitlement crisis:

But the Federal government’s own official projections show that over the next 30 years or so, federal spending will soar to 40-percent of GDP, requiring total federal taxes as a percent of GDP to double. This is due to the exploding costs of the entitlement programs we already have, primarily Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.

Hillary Clinton and other Democrats respond to this overwhelming crisis by proposing that we not reform any of the existing entitlements. Rather, they suggest that we endorse massive new entitlements, including for instance, National Health Insurance. Policy suggestions like this force one to wonder, are the democrats numerically illiterate?

On how mandating personal coverage leads to government control and rationing:

Don’t doubt it. This is exactly what happens with every other country that tries to mandate or provide coverage through government. They realize ultimately there must be some way to control costs. There is no market in these plans to control costs. So the government must do it through the only alternative – rationing. Indeed (we will see below), Hillary’s plan already includes the machinery for this rationing.

On the de facto end of private insurance:

Hillary’s plan will also impose guaranteed issue on all private health-insurance plans. This means that insurers cannot reject anyone for their insurance, even on the grounds that the patient is already woefully sick and costly. Moreover, insurers won’t be able to charge more costly patients higher premiums.

Effectively, this would necessarily end any real private insurance in America. Under these requirements, companies are no longer insuring health costs, they are simply financing health costs. Health insurers would be like fire insurers who are required to issue new policies at standard rates to those who show up to buy coverage after their homes have already caught fire. Clearly, this is unworkable.

Ferrara’s article outlines how a “far slyer, and far cleverer, far more well-packaged” plan is a Trojan horse for government intrusion and control. Don’t be fooled by the rhetoric.

The Deception at the heart of Hillary Care

I posed the question last week: Does Hillary Deserve a “Do Over?” At the Politico Mike Allen argues that is exactly what she is getting. The problem is that although she has certainly learned from the debacle last time around, she is still proposing government control rather real choice. Don’t be fooled.

Here is what Hillary had to say about her new health care proposal:

“This is not government-run. There will be no new bureaucracies. You can keep the doctors you know and trust. You keep the insurance you have if you like it,” Clinton said, though aides later conceded that administering the plan would require hiring more government workers. “This plan expands personal choices and increases competition to keep costs down.”

The problem with all this talk of choice, is that it ignores the fact that the government is dictating most of the choices. Hillary smartly designed the proposal to seem moderate and centrist but it is really just more of the same thing we have been seeing from Democrats for a decade. It is incrementally ratcheting up the governmental involvement. It means more spending, more programs, more mandates, more centralized regulations, etc. This in turn means less innovation and higher taxes.

This is nationalized health care by baby steps. Hillary wants to convince people that this plan is not a radical change and that is true as far as it goes. The problem it is a large step in the wrong direction rather than a true effort at fixing the problem. It is Washington who has warped the tax code and insurance markets and Hillary’s plan will only make this worse.

This is another attempt to mandate a universal good and ignore the underlying economic realities. It may come in a simpler package but it is still government controlled health care. And we all now have that is likely to turn out.

Hillary’s Health Care Plan Reacts

National Review Online has a symposium on Hillary’s Health Care Plan that has some good quotes. If you are looking for a quick idea of what is wrong with her approach this is a good place to start. Here are some examples:

Michael F. Cannon:

Clinton still equates reform with less freedom. The freedom to choose whether to purchase health insurance? Gone. The freedom to purchase the insurance you want? Gone. The freedom to run a competitive business? To hold on to your earnings? To make your own health care decisions? Gone, gone, gone.

John C. Goodman:

Think about every bad health-care idea that has been proposed over the last couple of decades: individual health-insurance mandates, employer health-insurance mandates, expansion of Medicaid, expansion of S-CHIP, creating Medicare for non-seniors, allowing outsiders access to the federal employees’ health system, creating new tax subsidies, imposing limits on old tax subsidies, forcing insurers to take all applicants, no matter how sick, etc. Now imagine all of these ideas wrapped into one proposal. That’s Hillary’s latest health care effort in a nutshell.

Sally C. Pipes:

A health-care plan based on individual and employer mandates, new regulation, increased taxes, and wishful thinking may be acceptable if Hillary were running for governor of Massachusetts or a member of the California legislature. It’s not acceptable for a leading presidential candidate.

Like the 1993 fiasco, Hillary’s current scheme would explode government spending, bolster bureaucratic regulation, and push people into government-run insurance. The promises of cost control are hollow. The tax hikes will be real. Individual mandates will only serve to create a political constituency to further regulate insurers, control prices, and ultimately shift costs in less observable ways through general taxation and massive enrollment in Medicare and Medicaid-like government plans.

Rudy the Hillary Slayer?

Philip Klein at the American Spectator thinks so. First he points out the good week Rudy had at Hillary’s expense:

The next morning, American liberals had to spit out their soy milk while reading their paper of record over breakfast. Within the front section of the newspaper was a full-page ad documenting Petraeus’s stellar military record as well as Clinton and MoveOn.org’s attacks. “Who should America listen to,” the ad asked, “A decorated soldier’s commitment to defending America, or Hillary Clinton’s commitment to defending MoveOn.org?” Even better, Giuliani’s public challenge to the New York Times forced them to give him the same discounted rate.

But Giuliani was just getting warmed up. After making the New York Times buckle under pressure, his campaign released a Web ad contrasting Clinton’s strong comments in support of the 2002 Iraq War Resolution with her attack on Gen. Petraeus last week. While none of her Democratic rivals have been able to lay a finger on Clinton for her opportunistic positions on the war, the Giuliani ad hammered the point home. The Clinton campaign was forced to twist itself into a pretzel by once again trying to assert that when she voted for the Iraq War resolution, she was actually voting to allow inspectors more time to work, and that despite telling Gen. Petraeus that his reports require a “willing suspension of disbelief” she was not accusing him of being untruthful.

As demoralized conservatives begin to fear that another Clinton presidency is inevitable, this episode demonstrates that Giuliani may represent the Republicans’ best shot at defeating Hillary in next year’s election.

Klein thinks Rudy’s unique experience and no nonsense style make him the best chance the GOP has to stop Hillary:

Right now, despite the low approval ratings of President Bush and strong opposition to the war in Iraq, Giuliani remains in a statistical dead heat with Clinton, not only nationally, but in blue states including Pennsylvania and New Jersey. While there are certainly many factors that conservatives will have to consider when choosing the Republican nominee, all they have to do is look at the reincarnated HillaryCare plan that is being unveiled today to recognize that the ability of a Republican candidate to defeat Hillary Clinton should be a major consideration.

This looks like a battle Giuliani was born to fight.

Hillary, health care, and the “bad guys”

It is worth remembering as Hillary rolls out her health care proposal: she will demonize the insurance companies and the drug companies and whoever else gets in her way. This is the way she operates. She decides her position and then decides who is the “bad guy” in this scenario and seeks to demonize them every chance she gets.

She will seek to make universal health care coverage an unmitigated good that only evil people oppose. She will not acknowledge the significant costs and the problems of government run health care but simply paint a picture of bad people stopping good work from being done.

She will not admit to any fault in the failure to pass so called health care reform last time around either. Again, it will be powerful interests who are opposing her efforts to help every American.

The Willing Suspension of Disbelief

That’s the phrase Hillary used to describe listening to Gen. Petraeus testify. It seems to me that it is a perfect phrase to capture listening to the former first lady. On issue after issue she simply refuses to admit her mistakes or share the blame. Isn’t this the very characteristic the left hates about President Bush?

Take the infamous Iraq war vote. Hillary continues to spin it in ways that stretch credibility. Recently, when Bill Maher asked why voters should trust her after having been “fooled by George Bush” she once again described the vote as something it wasn’t:

Well, Bill, it was a little more complicated than that. I sought out expert opinions from a wide variety of sources. People inside and outside the government, people in my husband’s administration. And I think it is fair to say that, at the time, I made it very clear I was against a pre-emptive war. And I believed that giving the president authority to go back to the United Nations and put in inspectors was an appropriate designation of authority. That is not what we have seen him do, and I’ve said that had I known then what I know now, obviously, I would never have voted to give him the authority.

Here answer seeks to imply that the vote was simply a way to get the President to go to the UN, but everybody knows this simply isn’t true. If that was the case it would have been a much easier vote as everybody supported more attempts to get the UN to act. Hillary was afraid if she voted against the resolution she would lose her hawkish and centrist credentials on the war; especially if things went well.

As is so typical of Hillary, she sort of admits that it was a mistake – “If I had known then what I know now . . .” – but conveniently blames Bush for the mistake rather than her own vote. It is a rhetorical spin designed to avoid the heart of the matter and avoid blame. The rest of the answer is another typical Clinton move, let’s talk about what’s really important: what we do now. In other words, let’s quit talking about my mistakes and focus on the future.

Hillary does the same thing when it comes health care. To my knowledge she has never admitted that it was manly her insistence on secrecy, her refusal to compromise, and her antagonizing of potential allies that sunk her attempt at health care reform in her husbands administration.

She crafted the plan that most people in the Clinton administration felt was to complicated and to ambitious to pass Congress. She was the one who insisted on secrecy and near paranoia in the task force and working group process which resulted in a lawsuit. She was the one who not only refused to work with Republicans but made enemies of key Democrats. At nearly every step of the process she made decisions and took actions that led to the plan’s failure.

So what does she say now? Special interests killed it. Here is what her web page says:

- “As First Lady, Hillary introduced a plan to provide full coverage for all Americans, which was defeated after aggressive opposition.”

- “America is ready for universal health care. Hillary has the vision and the experience to make it a reality.

This is a battle Hillary has fought before — and she has the scars to prove it. She knows better than anyone how to fight and build the political support to get the job done.”

Charlie Rose recently asked her why, in what should be her issue, she was only just getting around to releasing a plan:

Rose: Because of your long involvement, some are saying we should have expected you to be not sort of issuing your third part on Monday, but you should have been first out of the gate on health care especially.

Clinton: Well, I’ve been at the gate and out of it for 14 years, and you know when we weren’t successful with the overall reform, I moved ahead and was one of the people responsible for the children’s health-insurance program and trying to make sure drugs were safe for kids, and dealing with aftereffects the Gulf War veterans suffered. So, I’ve stayed consistently focused on health care and am engaged right now in this battle with the president over his threatened veto of the children’s health-insurance program. But I learned, among other things, that we’ve got to build a consensus. A plan is necessary but not sufficient. We’ve got to have a political consensus in order to withstand the enormous opposition from those interests that will have something to lose in a really reformed health-care system.

And here is the great irony of her response, she claims that you need to build a consensus in order to achieve something. Now obviously that is true for the most part. If you don’t have the votes you have to convince other people to join your side. But this is the skill that Hillary showed she absolutely lacked in her time as first lady. Oh sure, she has done a better job as Senator, but does anyone really believe that Hillary would be a unifying or consensus building figure as president? Does anyone think that on contentious and controversial issues she can lead a coalition of Republicans and Democrats? It simply strains belief to see Hillary as a unifying figure given her history and the likely political environment.

It is particularly hard to imagine this scenario because she has never admitted that she was wrong or that her actions caused the failure rather than simply aggressive opposition.

Democrats have been castigating President Bush for years for his inability to say he was wrong or to say he was sorry. Isn’t it about time we held Senator Clinton up to this same standard?