Bruce Bartlett posts a must-read column at Capital Gains and Games targeting all of those Republicans who today oppose health care reform but in 2003 voted for the Medicare prescription drug benefit as unbelievable deficit hypocrites. As Bartlett explains:
Just to be clear, the Medicare drug benefit was a pure giveaway with a gross cost greater than either the House or Senate health reform bills how being considered. Together the new bills would cost roughly $900 billion over the next 10 years, while Medicare Part D will cost $1 trillion.
Moreover, there is a critical distinction--the drug benefit had no dedicated financing, no offsets and no revenue-raisers; 100% of the cost simply added to the federal budget deficit, whereas the health reform measures now being debated will be paid for with a combination of spending cuts and tax increases, adding nothing to the deficit over the next 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office. (See here for the Senate bill estimate and here for the House bill.)
Maybe Franks isn't the worst hypocrite I've ever come across in Washington, but he's got to be in the top 10 because he apparently thinks the unfunded drug benefit, which added $15.5 trillion (in present value terms) to our nation's indebtedness, according to Medicare's trustees, was worth sacrificing his integrity to enact into law. But legislation expanding health coverage to the uninsured--which is deficit-neutral--somehow or other adds an unacceptable debt burden to future generations. We truly live in a world only George Orwell could comprehend when our elected representatives so easily conflate one with the other.
Where were all the tea partiers when the Republicans were holding open votes for three hours to pass the deficit-financed Medicare prescription drug benefit? Where were they when Republicans took large projected surpluses and turned them into debt (and a near depression) during the Bush Administration?
I'm sorry, but the Republican Party long ago lost any right to discuss fiscal responsibility. As Bartlett notes, real conservative objections to the expansion of government influence in health care exist: but cries of fiscal recklessness are not among them.
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