Pounding The Podium

First and foremost, I am not a David Broder fan.  David is a left wing journalist (many have called him a centralist – but I disagree) who has been around since 1966.  Now I can’t pretend that I have followed politics since then, but it is hard to hate someone who has famously said things like “He came in here and he trashed the place, and it’s not his place.” when speaking of Bill Clinton.

So I was somewhat taken back when Harry Reid went ballistic on Broder calling him  “”a man who has been retired for many years and writes a column once in a while?  Which apparently is the official “Get under the bus old man!!!”cry of this administration and it’s cronies.  This was born out by an article in the Huffington Post which paid tribute to this giant of journalism with the article entitled “David Broder causes confusion with his incomprehensible health care column” Hmmm, maybe it wasn’t paying tribute after all.

But in Huffington Post’s defense, it did give the job of lambasting Broder to an equally eminent journalist Jason Linkins.  Now while Linkins unlike Broder has not appeared 400 times on Meet the Press he has appeared at least…ummm…well, it seems like he has never been on the show.  But in terms of awards, Linkins may have won the Pultizer like Border but hey he did win the,,,ummmm….well, I’m sure he won some really cool awards in high school.

In fairness however, awards and book authorship and TV appearances are not necessarily the mark of a great journalist.  I’ve never won anything of any significance either, and look at me!!  No, the mark of a true journalist is the quality of their work.  So let’s not look at Linkins in terms of awards or achievements, lets look at the article itself.

“This week, Broder has taken a look at the state of the Senate health care plan. His column, which is damn near inscrutable, seems to say the following:

1. The CBO has determined that the Senate health care bill will reduce the deficit.

2. BUT! Some obscure poll says that a majority of Americans don’t believe that whatever health care bill we end up with will do what the CBO says it will!

3. There are people who David Broder knows whose stock in trade is concern trolling about deficits who say that the health care bill will not reduce the deficit.

4. OH NO!”

I’m not that smart, so I would appreciate it if someone would explain to me what the hell point Linkins is trying to make in #3 or better yet, just what the hell Linkins is saying.  “whose stock in trade is concern trolling about deficits who say” What?????

Now as I mentioned, Linkins never quotes from Broder’s article – which is quite a trick when you are writing a critic of said article.  He does post one small paragraph from a previous article by Broder on Afghanistan, but no where does the “inscrutable” article appear at all.  Can it possibly be MORE inscrutable than Jason Linkins article that we have discussed here?  Let’s take a look.  If Linkins is correct, we probably won’t be able to make out much of the article, but we will try.

The article is entitled “A budget-buster in the making”  Sure makes sense so far, but I digress.

“The day after the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) gave its qualified blessing to the version of health reform produced by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, a Quinnipiac University poll of a national cross section of voters reported its latest results.

This poll may not be as famous as some others, but I know the care and professionalism of the people who run it, and one question was particularly interesting to me.

It read: “President Obama has pledged that health insurance reform will not add to our federal budget deficit over the next decade. Do you think that President Obama will be able to keep his promise or do you think that any health care plan that Congress passes and President Obama signs will add to the federal budget deficit?”

The answer: Less than one-fifth of the voters — 19 percent of the sample — think he will keep his word. Nine of 10 Republicans and eight of 10 independents said that whatever passes will add to the torrent of red ink. By a margin of four to three, even Democrats agreed this is likely.”  Hopefully none of you have been forced to give up reading due to the “inscrutable” nature of the article so far.  A brief sidebar may be necessary to educate readers about Quinnipiac Universities Polling Institute from their website:

Timely and accurate polls
Frequently cited by journalists, public officials and researchers, the independent Quinnipiac University Poll regularly surveys residents in Connecticut, Florida, New York, New Jersey, Ohio, Pennsylvania and nationwide about political races, state and national elections, and issues of public concern, such as schools, taxes, transportation, municipal services and the environment.

Known for its exactness and thoroughness, the Quinnipiac poll was selected a “winner” by the New York Post for the most accurate prediction on the Schumer-D’Amato Senate race in 1998, and results are featured regularly in The New York Times, The Washington Post, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal and on national network news broadcasts.

Student interviewers use a computer-assisted telephone interviewing system to collect data from statewide and national residents. For a typical public opinion survey, a randomly selected sample of about 1,000 registered voters age 18 and over is interviewed over five or six days. The polls are conducted at the Polling Institute on West Woods Road, close to the main campus.The Polling Institute can be contacted at 203-582-5201 or e-mailed at pollinginstitute@quinnipiac.edu.

Broder made clear that the poll was not as well known as others, but he also clearly stated his reasons for using it.  Continuing to sound very logical and not quite ready for pasture as Reid and his fan Linkins suggest, Broder continues “I have been writing for months that the acid test for this effort lies less in the publicized fight over the public option or the issue of abortion coverage than in the plausibility of its claim to be fiscally responsible.

This is obviously turning out to be the case. While the CBO said that both the House-passed bill and the one Reid has drafted meet Obama’s test by being budget-neutral, every expert I have talked to says that the public has it right. These bills, as they stand, are budget-busters.

Here, for example, is what Robert Bixby, the executive director of the Concord Coalition, a bipartisan group of budget watchdogs, told me: “The Senate bill is better than the House version, but there’s not much reform in this bill. As of now, it’s basically a big entitlement expansion, plus tax increases.”

Here’s another expert, Maya MacGuineas, the president of the bipartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget: “While this bill does a better job than the House version at reducing the deficit and controlling costs, it still doesn’t do enough. Given the political system’s aversion to tax increases and spending cuts, I worry about what the final bill will look like.”

These are nonpartisan sources, but Republican budget experts such as former CBO director Douglas Holtz-Eakin amplify the point with specific examples and biting language. Holtz-Eakin cites a long list of Democratic-sponsored “budget gimmicks” that made it possible for the CBO to estimate that Reid’s bill would reduce federal deficits by $130 billion by 2019.

Perhaps the biggest of those maneuvers was Reid’s decision to postpone the start of subsidies to help the uninsured buy policies from mid-2013 to January 2014 — long after taxes and fees levied by the bill would have begun.”

Okay, Linkins failure to quote the article in anyway is making more sense now.  I am going to let the end of Broders article also end mine, because it should be apparent by now that he is no more insane, inscrutable or suffering from Alzheimers than IG Gerald Walpin was.

Border concludes “Even with that change, there is plenty in the CBO report to suggest that the promised budget savings may not materialize. If you read deep enough, you will find that under the Senate bill, “federal outlays for health care would increase during the 2010-2019 period” — not decline. The gross increase would be almost $1 trillion — $848 billion, to be exact, mainly to subsidize the uninsured. The net increase would be $160 billion.

But this depends on two big gambles. Will future Congresses actually impose the assumed $420 billion in cuts to Medicare, Medicaid and other federal health programs? They never have.

And will this Congress enact the excise tax on high-premium insurance policies (the so-called Cadillac plans) in Reid’s bill? Obama has never endorsed them, and House Democrats — reacting to union pressure — turned them down in favor of a surtax on millionaires’ income.

The challenge to Congress — and to Obama — remains the same: Make the promised savings real, and don’t pass along unfunded programs to our children and grandchildren.”