Seriously? Bill Clinton is feeding the “timing of the SEC suit against Goldman was suspect” conspiracy theory?

Seriously.

Multiple outlets are reporting a deal on moving the Wall Street reform bill to the floor.

Tomorrow we will discover Charlie Crist’s decision on whether to leave the Republican Party and run for the US Senate as an independent. And apparently, he’s taken a look at the idea in a poll, and saw numbers he liked.

Now, given that torture is laid out all nice and tidy like that in the military commission manual, you’d think that the discussion of whether evidence collected through the use of torture is admissible might also include some comment about what happens to the people who did the torture if evidence is deemed inadmissible because it was collected using torture. But it doesn’t.

Think back to 2004. The Bushies tried to do something about immigration reform, and unwittingly pitted their corporate overlords against their crazy, nativist, xenophobic base. Wingnuts like the Anchor Baby screamed NO SHAMNESTY! while the GOP bosses looked on in horror. It’s happening again with Arizona’s Show Me Your Papers Act.

Think about what would be happening if a sweater, or even a diamond ring, had been left in a bar by someone who had too much to drink. If “Person X” found it and tried to return it to the original owner, who said it wasn’t theirs, and then sold it to a pawn shop, what would have happened? Would a SWAT team be sweeping down on the pawn shop and seizing all of its computers, even AFTER the item had already been returned to its original owner? I seriously doubt it.

George Will comments on the new Arizona immigration law and proves he is past his “use by” date and needs to be put out to pasture with the other jackasses.

As a power broker on energy, immigration, or closing Guantanamo, Graham was a miserable failure. He did not move one member of his own party to his side at all, including himself, apparently. Furthermore, on the climate and energy bill he created a Frankenstein’s monster that only an oil company could support. Why am I supposed to shed a tear that his feelings are hurt?

In addition to the bombshell that Omar Khadr’s military commission will start Wednesday, less than a day after lawyers in the case will have received the thick manual laying out the rules for the newfangled military commissions, Gitmo released one more thing today: the protective order covering “intelligence identities” that applied to Khadr’s old-fangled military commission.

Pete G. Peterson will be bringing together a whole flock of like-minded so called deficit hawks to attend a “national fiscal summit.” Don’t be surprised when it turns into a push by a group of millionaires to cut Social Security and Medicare in the name of fiscal responsibility. But if as a nation we really want to get a grip on our deficit the best solution is to expand Medicare, not cut it. Switching to a Medicare for all system, or even just providing everyone with an open Medicare buy-in option would reduce the deficit by hundreds of billions of dollars over the next decade.

Private health insurance is incredibly wasteful and simply not a cost effective way to provide people with health insurance. Not only as a nation do we spend almost twice as much per capita on health care, but within this country, we pay way more to private health insurance companies to serve a function that Medicare can do for less.

Based on information from a wide range of sources, including, the CBO, the CMS , and even the UnitedHealth Group-owned Lewin Group, Medicare is roughly 15-30% cheaper than private insurance for providing the same level of coverage. Given that health care costs are roughly 16% of our GDP, and the tax exemption for employer-provided health insurance is the largest tax exemption in the system, really bringing down health care costs would dramatically reduce our deficit.

According to the Joint Committee On Taxation, the exemption for employer-provided health insurance cost the government $246.1 billion in 2007. For the four year time span, FY2009-FY2012, the exemption was projected to cost $1.228 trillion.

From the debate over the excise tax, we learned that the CBO and JCT believe any reduction in the cost of health care from an employer would result in an equal value increase in taxable income for the employees. While I may despise the logic of the finding, we know that is how the CBO officially projects the affect of changes in the cost of health care.

So, based on this, what would happen if we passed a law forcing all employers buy health roughly the same level of insurance from a cheaper Medicare-like public program instead of private insurance companies?

Insurance costs would go down 15-30%, and the CBO would project the government to net roughly $45-90 billion a year in increased tax revenue from higher wages. Since the cost of Medicare has grown at a slower rate than private insurance, those savings should increase moving forward. Of course, some employers, because they are getting cheaper insurance, might choose to offer better coverage, so that might slightly reduce the increased tax revenue. Also, if the new health care law were changed so that people had to buy into Medicare instead of being forced to buy private health insurance on the new exchanges, the amount of tax credits we would need to provide to make health insurance equally as affordable would be reduced by over $150 billion between now and 2019.

Overall, forcing all employers to buy insurance through a Medicare-for-all system and replacing the new health care exchanges with a Medicare buy-in would probably be projected by the CBO to reduce the deficit by close to $1 trillion over the next decade based on some simplified calculations. Improving Medicare cost effectiveness by allowing direct drug price negotiation and drug re-importation would further help reduce the federal deficit by billions more.

Fully open buy-in for a Medicare-like program

If people though forcing people under 65 to switch to Medicare is too dramatic a step to take toward solving our deficit issues, simply providing every individual and business with the option of buying into Medicare would easily reduce the deficit by hundreds of billions over the next decade. I suspect probably no more than a 40% of employers would switch to Medicare, but that would probably be the 40% of employers who were most overpaying private insurance companies and would save the most. Combine that with the over $115 billion a Medicare buy-in-like public option would reduce the cost of the new health care law. A Medicare buy-in open to everyone would probably be projected to reduce the deficit by half-a-trillion or more over the next ten years.

I bet the progressive deficit-reducing solutions–drug re-importation, direct Medicare drug price negotiation, Medicare for all, and/or a fully open Medicare buy-in–would be projected by the CBO to reduce the federal debt more than any set of proposals to cut benefits to senior citizens put forward by Pete Peterson’s gang of “deficit hawks.”

What progressives should do is put forward a better deficit reduction plan

The President’s deficit commission will probably offer some package of regressive tax increases (think VAT) and cuts to Medicare and Social Security that will make the millionaire deficit hawks in Peterson’s gang happy. Progressives should put forward their own (and probably much larger) deficit reduction plan based on Medicare buy-in and reforming Medicare Part D. They should then demand that the progressive solution of Medicare buy-in be part of any deficit reduction plan as prerequisite before even considering cutting any standard senior citizens benefits. Also throw in demanding an end to two incredibly expensive foreign occupations, and cuts to unneeded defense spending programs for good measure.

If millionaires want to go around complaining about deficits, they should first cut the fat off of massively wasteful private health insurance and PhRMA corporate welfare programs before they start trying to take cash out of the pockets of old people on fixed incomes.