Our Economic Future
Reported by Eleanor - August 27, 2004 -
Special Report with Chris Wallace (Aug. 27, 6:00 p.m.) spent about 4 minutes on the smear boat story, that's all. The panel had a substantive discussion, for a change, on real issues.
On Bush's plan for the next four years:
Fred Barnes: Bush gives hints of an ownership society. (Code for getting government out of social programs) Social Security investment accounts, health savings accounts. He'll give an idea of where he's headed in the world - not a laundry list.
Mort Kondracke: He must be bold. There's the problem of $45 million uninsured. That's a national scandal. Bush's plan will cover 6 - 10 million people, and Kerry's plan will cover 30 million. Bush is way behind.
Barnes: That's a phony number. It includes the young, and those temporarily out of a job. The chronically uninsured are under 20 million.
Juan Williams: What the president must do on Thursday is show strength. Why he must have four more years.
Barnes: He'll get 5-6-7 points from the convention, and never lose the lead.
Williams: Not much of a bump and protestors.
Wallace: 36 million are below the poverty line. The census bureau says this is the 3rd year poverty and people with no health insurance have increased.
Williams: It's a real crisis. 1.3 million more in poverty and health care are issues that resonate.
Kondracke: Health care, poverty, the economy not growing, and health care cost rising 14% .... discourages employers from providing benefits.
Wallace: How is the Kerry plan different?
Kondracke: Tax credits, expanding Federal coverage for kids....very expensive $600 billion...catastrophic policy...and making coverage mandatory for young people.
Barnes: Third party payers for insurance will never bring it down. With government, it will rise and rise and lead to price controls.
The rest of this is more sketchy, but Wallace said that the Bush plan is for private coverage; Barnes talked about a refundable tax credit; Williams said that repeal of the tax cut on incomes over $200,000 will more than cover Kerry's plan; Kondracke complained of no cost controls, but some kind of combination; Williams wanted to make sure the poor are covered.
Comment: The republican and democratic views were really evident in this discussion. We need a comprehensive discussion of how unemployed people, sick, old, disabled people who don't work, or who work for very low wages, will contribute to a plan based strictly on tax credits. If everything is privatized, based on tax credits, that leaves out people living in poverty, the working class, and much of the lower middle class, since you get back what you pay in. So who benefits? 20% of the population? This is Bush's ownership plan - take some of your taxes, if you pay them, and use that money to pay for your own Social Security, health care, and private education - a health, education, and pension 401K type plan that would take so much money from government revenues, we would be left with no public funding for any social programs. Grover Norquist 's plan for drowning the government in a bathtub will have succeeded, and combining our resources for the common good will be only a memory.
The pitiful part of this is that people who will be hurt the most by it will vote based on gays, abortion, God, guns, Viet Nam, false patriotism, and other culture issues that have NOTHING to do with their economic future.
