Reid Ribble Has Joined the War on Seniors. Send Him Packing in 2014!

Ribble Voted for the Ryan Budget’s Assault on Seniors

On March 21, Rep. Reid Ribble voted for the Ryan Budget with its assault on senior citizens. The Ribble-Ryan plan hurts seniors in several ways.

The Ribble-Ryan Plan Increases the Cost of Health Insurance to Seniors

First, it converts Medicare to a voucher plan. A senior can use the voucher to buy private health insurance or to buy Medicare. The amount of the voucher is pretty stingy and – more important – it will not grow as much as the expected cost of health care. So, each senior citizen will have to bear an ever-increasing share of the cost. According to the Center for American Progress, the plan would “force seniors to pay $1,200 more each year by 2030—and as much as $5,900 more each year by 2050.”

The Ribble-Ryan Plan Increases Prescription Drug Costs for Seniors

The Ribble-Ryan plan will increase the cost of prescription drugs for seniors considerably. It does this by repealing the Affordable Care Act, which gives a discount on the cost of drugs under Medicare Part D. Part D has a “donut hole,” a gap in coverage at a certain total cost per year. The Affordable Care Act gives a discount on drug costs for seniors in the “donut hole.” The Center for American Progress tells us that, “The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services estimates that Medicare beneficiaries will save an average of $5,000 each through 2022. Medicare beneficiaries reaching the “donut hole” would save about $13,000 on average between 2014 and 2022. These savings would be lost entirely under the Ryan budget.”

The Ribble-Ryan Plan Increases the Cost of Long-Term Care for Seniors

The Ribble-Ryan plan will increase the cost of long-term care for seniors who depend on Medicaid. Long-term care is very expensive, and the Ribble-Ryan plan, by converting Medicaid to a block-grant program, will shift its costs to the states or to individuals. The size of the block grants will not increase as fast as the cost of long-term care, and the states are already strapped for money. So, who will pay the cost? The individual senior citizens, of course.

Defeat Reid Ribble in 2014!

All of this means that Rep. Ribble has signed on as a soldier in a War on Seniors.  He wants them to be worse off than they are now in order to fund the tax cuts for corporations and wealthy individuals that are part of the Ribble-Ryan plan. So, if you are a senior, or if you have parents who are seniors, or if you expect to live to become a senior, you should be working to defeat Rep. Ribble in 2014.

Do you want to be driven to bankruptcy by the cost of health care or long-term care for yourself or your parents? Do you want to be destitute in your old-age?  If your answer to these questions is, “No,” you should get busy and start working to send Reid Ribble packing in 2014!

Increasing Inequality Damages the Stability of Our Political System

We Live in a Time of Increasing Inequality

Yesterday, the Huffington Post reported a speech by Elizabeth Warren in which she said that if workers’ incomes had kept pace with the increases in their productivity since 1960, the minimum wage would be $22 an hour. I do not know whether her number is exactly correct, but no one disputes her central point, which is that during the last 50 years, businesses, their owners and their allies, the upper middle class professionals have received a growing share of the wealth that has been created and that middle class people have received a decreasing share.

The Increasing Inequality Undermines our Political System

This is a troublesome trend because it undermines the political and social stability of our country. We can expect that if the trend is not reversed, we will see more and more extremist politics on both the left and the right. Karl Marx predicted that capitalism would ultimately be undone by its “contradictions.” What he meant was that even as the wealth created by the system increased, the workers would become poorer and their situation ever more desperate.

Are We Becoming Trapped by the “Contradictions of Capitalism?”

For more than a century, his prediction has appeared to be wrong because rising productivity allowed American workers’ incomes to rise. There were other factors as well. The colonial systems of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries protected American workers’ incomes from competition from workers in poorer parts of the world. The expansiveness of our economy and the availability of good, public education allowed our workers to feel that they or their children could rise.  They did not feel trapped in low positions with low incomes. 

As a result of all these factors, we were able to avoid the politics of class conflict. We had a political system based on compromise and shared goals and values. Our ruling class was not oppressive, and our working classes were not militant. There was a kind of compact that the system we had provided so many benefits to everyone that its stability should not be threatened.

That compact is threatened by the trend that Ms. Warren refers to.  If our workers become poorer, while our upper classes become richer, we can expect those who are hurt to become more desperate and more militant. At the same time, we can expect those who have benefited to become more and more concerned to protect the benefits they have received.

The Dominant Classes Have Acted to Preserve Their Gains

The latter group, being better educated and fewer in number than the workers, have organized first and acted first.  They have acted to minimize the taxes they have to pay.  They have worked to cripple the system of public education that has provided opportunities to so many people. They have worked to limit or eliminate the power of labor unions. They have gerrymandered electoral districts and worked to depress voter turnout to keep themselves in power.

Class Warfare Calls Forth Class Warfare and Leads to Stalemate In Government

This kind of class warfare will of course lead to increased militancy on the part of those who are injured by the political programs of those who dominate our government. Class warfare from above will call forth answering class warfare from below. We can expect that just as the Republican Party has moved to the right, the Democratic Party will move to the left. We can expect our political system to include more marches, more demonstrations, more extremist talk radio and fewer pragmatic and useful decisions. We can expect that at a time when we need our government to act effectively, it will be unable to do so.