Kevin Drum continues the discussion of senior citizens, Medicare, and health care reform--and makes the following observation:
...moderate conservatives give Democrats way too little credit for their relatively honest funding of ACA. Were there some optimistic assumptions there? Sure. Are some of the cost control measures not going to work as well as they hope? Sure. To about the 80% level, though, Democrats really did insist that ACA be fully funded. By ordinary political standards that's pretty impressive, and by recent Republican standards it's just a plain miracle. And it was a pretty costly piece of fiscal honesty too. A big part of how ACA was funded comes from that $500 billion Medicare cut, and that's just a flat out electoral disaster. It may have been necessary, but there's no question that Democrats are going to pay for that at the polls. They really deserve a little more credit for that.
They sure do. And I'd apply this not just to moderate Democrats but to all of the self-proclaimed fiscal conservatives that occupy places of influence in the media.
Yes, Robert Samuelson, I'm looking at you.