‘Affordability’ Costs a
Bundle'
Republicans need a
free-market answer to Democrats’ turn toward socialism.
"Today in Washington, we have
a new example. It comes in the form of Democrats who have spent years making
life more expensive for Americans—and who propose “fixes” that reflect the same
government-first thinking that made things unaffordable in the extreme."
Then subsequently barking:
"Where were the Democrats now hollering about affordability during the four years when President Biden was spending, regulating and otherwise expanding government in ways that priced the American dream out of range for millions."
Seriously? Maybe McGurn's fossilized memory needs a bit of jogging, or he just willingly dismissed that Biden's policies post-pandemic:
- Led to the lowest inflation among the G7 nations by August, 2023
- Led to the U.S. having the highest GDP growth among the G7 group
- Led to the lowest unemployment since 1969, by May, 2023. With the lowest income workers making the largest historic gains.
- Led to housing starts surging to the most in 3 decades by the summer of 2023.
McGurn's next step is to brag on Trump and the GOP's opportunity to make the case "for less government, lower taxes and lighter regulations to unleash the creative energies of the American people."
Nice fanciful patter, but again McGurn glosses over the irreparable damage Trump and his GOP have already done. Like the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office noting (back in June) that the broad Republican bill to cut taxes and slash some federal programs would add $2.4 trillion to the already soaring national debt over the next decade.
If McGurn's capitalism is so terrific and superior to the Democrats' "wrong answer of socialism" then riddle me this: "Why is it necessary to crater the economy for future generations and take away the health care of tens of millions to achieve it?" (Including not only gutting Medicaid but kneecapping Obamacare and even Medicare.)
Well, because what he's advocating is a form of predatory capitalism that must subvert the general welfare in order to implement prosperity for the wealthiest minority. Thus McGurn's remedy deforms the living capacity of the 90% to enhance the predatory capacity of the 10 percent. The comment of the Canadian citizen at the top of this post says it all: how just the moderate socialism of Canada - in terms of providing national healthcare- is something he and his family can enjoy. But we in this country can't. Because of the rapacious greed McGurn proposes but hopes voters will be too gaslit to see through.
And yet he has the sheer chutzpah to brag how Dotard Trump last year - in his campaign - "showed the way' by working at a McDonald's drive through". Which is now "part of his affordability message". Well duh! No wonder so many opted for a socialist mayor in NYC. And even McGurn is at least honest enough - midway through his tract- to admit Trump himself has resorted to socialist interference in the economy, i.e.
"Mr. Trump has had incredible achievements in his push to get America back to work, but he hasn't hesitated to intervene in the economy, notably by imposing tariffs."
Yeppers, which are a tax on citizens. But also by enabling his govt to partake of profits, e.g. from the sales of Nvidia's chips. Can we say hypocrites? But the real outrage is the standard Reepo move of creating massive debt and expenditure by cutting revenue, i.e. tax cutting.
Doing this to the point the American people's lives are put at risk because their security and health care now become fodder to benefit the richest 1 percent - for whom the bulk of those tax cuts were delivered. As it is, according to the most recent data, the saving rate has cratered for those in the $15k-50k income category. (It's increased for those > $150,000/yr.) and barely 1 in 12 Americans have enough stashed for an emergency fund of $2,000.
A bit later McGurn also takes aim at Obamacare for "overspending" despite the fact it helps so many middle income earners stay above water. Consider just a family of 4 that earns $64,000 a year. If the ACA tax subsidy is allowed to expire next month the family will see its premiums rise by more than $2,500/month next year. This would mean a major financial lifeline evaporated because McGurn's GOP and Trump needs to feed the richest their tax cuts.
And yeah, 40 percent of those - mainly younger- in fully subsidized plans had zero claims in 2024. But the presence of these 'healthy' enrollees is actually the sign of a healthy market - not a "socialist" one in McGurn's parlance. Indeed, it is common across all insurance markets to find young adults who use less healthcare and hence have fewer claims. But their health helps support the fraction that need more support. Call it "socialism" if you want, but as my Canadian niece always says: "It's the sign of a civilized society as opposed to a barbaric one." Oh, and as Inge also often points out, Canada has that capital to support national healthcare because it doesn't spend the vast sums the U.S. des on military ('war') stuff - such as now being used to make a show of force in the Caribbean.
Again, maybe McGurn's selective memory - gushing about lower taxes and less government- needs an assist in his recollections.
On a Friday in May, Moody’s Analytics, for the first time in its history, downgraded U.S. government bonds from the gold star rating of “AAA” to “AA1,” the silver medal equivalent. This wasn’t a total surprise. S&P and Fitch had already lowered the U.S. rating, so this was Moody’s catching up to the crowd. But make no mistake: Moody’s didn’t just pick a random Friday in May to make this move.
Moody’s wanted to send a message to Republicans in Congress: Rethink the tax bill. Or, better yet, don’t do it. Moody’s cited concern over how big the U.S. debt already is (more than $36 trillion) and how Congress has taken almost no action to stop the annual deficits that keep adding to that tab. But then Moody’s specifically stated:
“If the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act is extended, which is our base case, it will add around $4 trillion to the federal fiscal primary (excluding interest payments) deficit over the next decade.” In other words, Republicans are about to make the situation far worse.
To help offset tax cuts primarily for the rich, the Republican legislation then cut Medicaid funding in numerous ways. It establishes a strict work requirement that is expected to push millions of poor Americans out of the program and reduces funding streams that have enabled states to make direct payments to hospitals.
At the core of the House bill were cockeyed “community engagement requirements” — that able-bodied Medicaid recipients without dependents engage in at least 80 hours a month of work, education or service. Under the proposed rules, states would also be allowed to ask recipients to document their eligibility every six months instead of annually and to remove people’s benefits if they do not comply.
But the reality is that requirements like these move people off programs not by requiring work but by requiring more reporting of work. Similar state-level policies have reduced the number of Medicaid recipients — but only by increasing the administrative burden on recipients, not by increasing the share who are employed.
Arkansas offers a case study in derelict capitalism for Mr. McGurn's benefit. In 2018 Arkansas implemented work reporting rules in 2018. Medicaid beneficiaries in their 30s and 40s were notified that they had to work 80 hours a month, participate in another qualifying activity such as job training or community service or meet criteria for exemption such as caregiving or disability — and that they would have to report their activities online each month. The outcome? 17,000 individuals who had previously qualified for Medicaid lost their benefits.
It turned out filing reports every month was confusing and challenging, especially for enrollees who didn’t have reliable internet access or who had chronic health conditions. So much for 'unleashing creative energies' - hardly possible for an unhealthy, poor population! The proposed changes in fact exploited and perpetuated harmful myths about Medicaid recipients and work — specifically, the idea that most people who qualify for Medicaid are unemployed. The opposite is true: About two-thirds of adults with Medicaid have jobs, while most of the rest aren’t working because of a disability, caregiving responsibilities or school.
Meanwhile, we learned in a piece in Tuesday's NY Times that in the coming years, steep cuts to the Medicaid program, enacted by Republicans in their signature policy bill this year, will destabilize the precarious balance between health and wellness for rural other urban safety-net hospitals across the country.
Yet at the end of his sorry screed McGurn actually writes with a seeming straight face: "Americans are better off now than they were under Joe Biden."
Keep telling yourself that, Sparky, even as food, energy, rent and other costs continue to soar - undermining Americans' creative energies even more. Then come back and repeat your twaddle after next year's mid-terms.
See Also:
It’s not just Trump. Billionaires dominate politics more than ever. - Washington Post
Excerpt:
In an era defined by major political divisions and massive
wealth accumulation for the richest Americans, billionaires are spending
unprecedented amounts on U.S. politics. Dozens have stepped up their political
giving in recent years, leading to a record-breaking surge of donations by the
ultrarich in 2024. Since 2000, political giving by the wealthiest 100 Americans
to federal elections has gone up almost 140 times, well outpacing the growing
costs of campaigns, a Washington Post analysis found.
In 2000, the country’s wealthiest 100 people donated about a
quarter of 1 percent of the total cost of federal elections, according to a
Post analysis of data from OpenSecrets. By 2024, they covered about 7.5
percent, even as the cost of such elections soared. In other words, roughly 1
in every 13 dollars spent in last year’s national elections was donated by a
handful of the country’s richest people.
Over the past quarter-century, political, legal and economic
changes have reshaped the relationship between wealth and political power in
America. Economists
say wealth is now more concentrated at the very top than at any time
since the Gilded Age. The tech and market revolutions of recent decades have
created riches on an unprecedented scale.
As a result, U.S. politicians are more dependent on the
largesse of the billionaire class than ever before, giving one-four-hundredth
of 1 percent of Americans extraordinary influence over which politicians and
policies succeed.
And:
by Heather Digby Parton | November 19, 2025 - 6:17am | permalink
One of the most dramatic moments in modern American political history came in the wee hours of July 28, 2017, when the country watched to see if the Senate would vote to repeal the Affordable Care Act — and send the country back to the days when premature death and bankruptcy were common due to lack of access to health insurance. Republicans had voted dozens of times to repeal the law they had hated, even calling it “Obamacare” as a kind of epithet, not realizing the program would become popular and forever be associated with the popular Democratic president who signed it.
That night, the vote on the floor was called the “skinny repeal,” a transparent gimmick intended to force GOP House members on the other side of the Capitol to come up with something better, even though their previous attempts had been failures. The Republican caucus was unified with three exceptions. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine were opposed. Only Arizona Sen. John McCain remained uncommitted. If he voted no, it would defeat the bill 51-49.
And:
by Lindsay Koshgarian | November 21, 2025 - 5:46am | permalink
The government shutdown ended with a failure to solve the problem of steeply rising health insurance premiums.
The GOP’s “Big Beautiful Bill,” which slashed programs like Medicaid and SNAP to fund tax cuts for the wealthy and a $1 trillion Pentagon, allows tax credits that reduce these health costs for ordinary people to expire at the end of this year.
As a result, millions of Americans who receive health insurance through the Affordable Care Act marketplace will see their health insurance premiums double (or worse). Democrats demanded a fix for the problem, but ultimately ended the shutdown without one.
But even in the midst of the shutdown, Senators were still busy. They approved a $32 billion increase for the Pentagon on a bipartisan basis, approving the increase by a vote of 77-20 as part of a larger bill, the National Defense Authorization Act.
And:
by Robert Reich | November 17, 2025 - 6:31am | permalink
And 10 things Democrats should pledge to do about it when they’re back in power
Friends,
Trump claimed last week on social media that “Our economy is BOOMING, and Costs are coming way down,” and that “grocery prices are way down.
Rubbish.
How do I know he’s lying? Official government statistics haven’t been issued during the shutdown — presumably to Trump’s relief (the White House said Wednesday that the October jobs and Consumer Price Index reports may never come out).
But we can get good estimates of where the economy is now, based on where the economy was heading before the shutdown and recent reports by private data firms.
First, I want to tell you what we know about Trump’s truly sh*tty economy. Then I’ll suggest 10 things that Democrats should pledge to do about it.
And:
by Amanda Marcotte | November 18, 2025 - 6:20am | permalink
Is Sam Altman trying to get men addicted to erotic chatbots in order to make money off them? That’s the strong implication of a recent New York Times op-ed by artificial intelligence researcher Steven Adler. In it, Adler accused the OpenAI CEO of ignoring “clear warning signs of users’ intense emotional attachment” to chatbots that claim to offer romantic intimacy. Instead, Altman’s main product, ChatGPT, is forging ahead with a plan to let the software pretend to be a user’s romantic interest, despite strong evidence that doing so will send “users down mental health spirals.”
Altman claims the company knows how to “mitigate” the risks, but Adler noted they have not shown any data to prove it. This leaves the unfortunate possibility that Altman simply doesn’t care if ChatGPT is addictive. I can’t read Altman’s mind, but he has a strong financial incentive to go down this path. OpenAI continues to burn money without much promise that they’ll find legitimate pathways to profitability any time soon. But there is one way to get people, especially men, to pay for expensive subscriptions to ChatGPT: Get them so addicted to their imaginary girlfriends that they’re willing to dish out thousands to keep the experience going.
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