Ah naivete! If it is authentic, it can be charming. But if it is inauthentic, it is just annoying. Yesterday morning on Up with Chris Hayes, Kyrsten Sinema was on the panel.
She is a member of the “Gang of 32” — the bipartisan group of new House members who are getting together to solve those problems they can agree on.
That’s all fine. But at one point she said, “This may surprise you, but our Gang of 32 statement—the very first thing we talk about is protecting and strengthening Social Security and Medicare.”
After she says that, Sam Seder almost jumps out of his chair. Here’s the question: is she naive or just stupid?
Republicans Don’t Mean What You Think They Mean
Can Sinema really think that when Republicans say they want to “protect and strengthen” entitlement programs that they mean literally that they want to protect and strengthen entitlement programs? Because that is most definitely not what they mean.
Republicans have been very clear on this point. In fact, it was a big deal in the last presidential election. Republicans want to savagely cut entitlement programs so that the programs will be around in the coming years.
The theory is that we just can’t afford the entitlement programs so we must cut them. Then we will be able to have some shadow of the programs in the decades to come—with the same name!
Block Grants
The best example of this is the block-granting of Medicaid. The idea here is that the federal government will give each state a block of money to support healthcare for the poor. The states can do with this money as they please.
But the big aspect of it is that the money will not keep up with the increasing price of healthcare. Eventually, Medicaid will be so starved for funds that it will be irrelevant as a program. But it will still exist! And in its uselessness, it will be robust!
With Pros Like Sinema
Yesterday, Jonathan Bernstein asked why it was that the “neutral” press was so in favor of cutting the budget deficit. If professional Democratic politicians like Kyrsten Sinema don’t understand the subtext of Republican claims to “strengthen” entitlement programs, how can the mainstream press, much less the average voter?
I fear that Sinema is both naive and stupid.
Image cropped from Kyrsten Sinema by Gage Skidmore under CC BY-SA 2.0.