Sen Hatch: Six years ago, SOP was not paying.

[SirNitram]

Link

Republican senators attacking the cost of a Democratic health care bill showed far different concerns six years ago, when they approved a major Medicare expansion that has added tens of billions of dollars to federal deficits.

The inconsistency — or hypocrisy, as some call it — has irked Democrats, who claim that their plan will pay for itself with higher taxes and spending cuts and cite the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office for support.

By contrast, when Republicans controlled the House, Senate and White House in 2003, they overcame Democratic opposition to add a deficit-financed prescription drug benefit to Medicare. The program will cost a half-trillion dollars over 10 years, or more by some estimates.

With no new taxes or spending offsets accompanying the Medicare drug program, the cost has been added to the federal debt.

All current GOP senators, including the 24 who voted for the 2003 Medicare expansion, oppose the health care bill that's backed by President Barack Obama and most congressional Democrats. Some Republicans say they don't believe the CBO's projections that the health care overhaul will pay for itself. As for their newfound worries about big government health expansions, they essentially say: That was then, this is now.

Six years ago, "it was standard practice not to pay for things," said Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah. "We were concerned about it, because it certainly added to the deficit, no question." His 2003 vote has been vindicated, Hatch said, because the prescription drug benefit "has done a lot of good."

Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, said those who see hypocrisy "can legitimately raise that issue." But he defended his positions in 2003 and now, saying the economy is in worse shape and Americans are more anxious.

Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said simply: "Dredging up history is not the way to move forward." She noted that she fought unsuccessfully to offset some of President George W. Bush's deep tax cuts at the time.

But for now, she said, "it's a question of what's in this package," which the Senate passed Thursday in a party-line vote. The Senate bill still must be reconciled with a House version.

The political situation is different now, Snowe said, because "we're in a tough climate and people are angry and frustrated."

Some conservatives have no patience for such explanations.

"As far as I am concerned, any Republican who voted for the Medicare drug benefit has no right to criticize anything the Democrats have done in terms of adding to the national debt," said Bruce Bartlett, an official in the administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush. He made his comments in a Forbes article titled "Republican Deficit Hypocrisy."

Bartlett said the 2003 Medicare expansion was "a pure giveaway" that cost more than this year's Senate or House health bills will cost. More important, he said, "the drug benefit had no dedicated financing, no offsets and no revenue-raisers. One hundred percent of the cost simply added to the federal budget deficit."

The pending health care bills in Congress, he noted, are projected to add nothing to the deficit over 10 years.

Other lawmakers who voted for the 2003 Medicare expansion include the Senate's top three Republican leaders, all sharp critics of the Obama-backed health care plans: Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Jon Kyl of Arizona and Lamar Alexander of Tennessee. Eleven Democratic senators voted with them back then.

The 2003 vote in the House was even more divisive. It resulted in a nearly three-hour roll call in which GOP leaders put extraordinary pressure on colleagues to back the prescription drug addition to Medicare. In the end, 204 Republicans and 16 Democrats voted for the bill.

Democrats certainly have indulged in deficit spending over the years. They say they have been more responsible over the last two decades, however. Bill Clinton's administration was largely constrained by a pay-as-you-go law, requiring most tax cuts or program expansions to be offset elsewhere with tax increases and/or spending cuts.

Clinton ended his presidency with a budget surplus. But it soon was wiped out by a sagging economy, the Iraq war, GOP tax cuts and the lapsing of the pay-as-you-go restrictions.

Obama and many Democrats in Congress have vowed to restore those restrictions. But they waived them this year for programs, including heavy stimulus spending meant to pull the economy from the severe recession of 2008-09.

The 2010 deficit is expected to reach $1.5 trillion, and the accumulated federal debt now exceeds $12 trillion. When the Republican-led Congress passed the Medicare expansion in 2003, the deficit was $374 billion, and was projected to hit $525 billion the following year, in part because of the new prescription drug benefit for seniors.

Some GOP lawmakers cite these numbers in arguing that their current worries about heavy government spending are legitimate, even if they voted for the deficit-financed Medicare bill in 2003.

But Judy Feder, an analyst with the Democratic-leaning Center for American Progress, said these Republicans had their chance and blew it. In the second Bush administration, she said, "there was a total elimination of any kind of pay-for responsibility."

Those responsible should now show some humility, she said.

But remember, massive debt and deficit is OBAMA'S fault, not the party who's Standard Operating Protocol was not to bother paying for things they passed.

[Crossroads Inc.]

This is yet another story that lets me know the oh so "liberal" medial is anything but. If the popular media really cared about throwing stuff in the face of Conservatives they would be parroting this story 24/7. It is also another one of those things most of us "know" but may not have the facts for. Where there are some facts.

During the 8-years of G-Dubya, the GOP Spent like a drunken sailor with no regard to the economy or to a balanced budget. 8 seconds after Obama is in office, suddenly they become Spending hawks and begin to scream "Oh what horrible people the Dems are for spending so much!"
Once again this is something most of us 'know' but dammit it's still 'News' the media really should be hammering home the fact that the far right should have ZERO legitimacy when it comes to talking about 'spending responsibly' They had 8 years to try 'responsible' spending and they did fck all to try and cut back.

It's just one of those things that everyone should be mentioning, instead of letting right wing yahoos constantly get away with being smary bastards and saying "Well 'WE' we be more responsible!"

[wolveraptor]

Clinton ended his presidency with a budget surplus. But it soon was wiped out by a sagging economy, the Iraq war, GOP tax cuts and the lapsing of the pay-as-you-go restrictions.

I had read that this was a myth, and that is was simply of a matter of the public debt being reduced by borrowing from Soc Sec. The numbers supporting this come straight from the US Treasury, so I'm confused as to why this whole "Clinton surplus" idea still survives.

[Patrick Degan]

Clinton ended his presidency with a budget surplus. But it soon was wiped out by a sagging economy, the Iraq war, GOP tax cuts and the lapsing of the pay-as-you-go restrictions.

I had read that this was a myth, and that is was simply of a matter of the public debt being reduced by borrowing from Soc Sec. The numbers supporting this come straight from the US Treasury, so I'm confused as to why this whole "Clinton surplus" idea still survives.

Unfortunately, Craig Steiner's piece turns on a fundamental misunderstanding between the national debt and the annual budget —for which the surplus claim is valid. The National Debt did go up during the Clinton years but it has been steadily going up more or less since the foundation of the republic. In any case, the National Debt is not what the measure of surplus or deficit spending for any given budgetary year is based upon.