This is the third in a series of recycled posts about David Brooks (mostly) and Bret Stephens (once), house “conservatives” at The New York Times. The original posts were published from 2009 through 2019. But I have detected no change in the dynamic duo’s faux conservatism since I stopped wasting pixels on them.
Back in 2011, during an impasse in Congress about government spending on health care, the useful idiot known as David Brooks — The New York Times‘s idea of a conservative — wrote this:
Imagine you’re a member of Congress. You have your own preferred way to reduce debt. If you’re a Democrat, it probably involves protecting Medicare and raising taxes. If you’re a Republican, it probably involves cutting spending, reforming Medicare and keeping taxes low.
Your plan is going nowhere. There just aren’t the votes. Meanwhile, the debt ceiling is fast approaching and a national catastrophe could be just weeks away.
At the last minute, two bipartisan approaches heave into view. In the Senate, the “Gang of Six” produces one Grand Bargain. Meanwhile, President Obama and John Boehner, the House speaker, have been quietly working on another. They suddenly seem close to a deal.
There’s a lot you don’t know about these two Grand Bargains….
You are being asked to support a foggy approach, not a specific plan. You are being asked to do this even though you have no faith in the other party and limited faith in the leadership of your own. You are being asked to risk your political life for an approach that bears little resemblance to what you would ideally prefer.
Do you do this? I think you do….
You do it because while the Grand Bargains won’t solve most of our fiscal problems. They will produce some incremental progress. We won’t fundamentally address the debt until we control health care inflation….
Both Grand Bargains produce real fiscal progress. They aim for $3 trillion or $4 trillion in debt reduction. Boehner and Obama have talked about raising the Medicare eligibility age and reducing Social Security benefit increases. The White House is offering big cuts in exchange for some revenue increases, or small cuts in exchange for few or none. The Gang of Six has a less-compelling blend of cuts, but it would repeal the Class Act, a health care Ponzi scheme. It would force committees across Congress to cut spending, and it would introduce an enforcement mechanism if they don’t. Sure there’s chicanery, but compared with any recent real-life budget, from Republican or Democratic administrations, these approaches are models of fiscal rectitude.
You do it because both bargains would boost growth. The tax code really is a travesty and a drag on the country’s economic dynamism. Any serious effort to simplify the code, strip out tax expenditures and reduce rates would have significant positive effects — even if it raised some tax revenues along the way….
Miss Brooks, as usual, was full of hot air.
First, no “grand bargain” in Congress ever leads to an actual spending reduction, as opposed to cutting the rate of growth in government spending.
Second, with respect to “health care inflation”, government is the problem, not the solution. There are two key reasons for rising health-care prices, aside from research and innovation that yields expensive but effective drugs, procedures, and equipment. They are (a) the tax break that enables employers to subsidize employees’ health plans and (b) the subsidization of old folks’ health care via Medicare, Medicaid, and (indirectly) Social Security. Those two interventions result in the overuse of health-care products and services. (There’s a 25-year old but still valid RAND study on the subject.) A far better system — if one insists on government involvement — would be to provide means-tested vouchers that can be redeemed for a limited menu of vital medical products and services (e.g., critical surgeries, cardiovascular medications, chemotherapy). That’s it — no more Medicare, Medicaid, or their expansion via Obamacare.
Second, with respect to “tax expenditures” — there ain’t no such thing. Any action that results in higher taxes is a tax increase, no matter what Miss Brooks and his fellow Democrats choose to call it. And tax increases are growth inhibitors, not growth stimulators.
So much for the wisdom of The New York Times‘s pet “conservative”.
Other posts in this series: