The Cliff’s Notes for my post from yesterday subtitled “Does Romney’s Economic Plan Violate State Sovereignty?”*
The post garnered only one comment, from kharris, who complained that the post was incomprehensible and asked whether it was intended as facetious, and whether I could give a Cliff’s Notes version of it. I can and did. I wrote:
[The] post was not intended as facetious, although I’m sure it will be taken that way by the few people who read it.
Basically, the 26 state attorneys general are claiming in that lawsuit that the part of the ACA that relies on a significant increase in Medicaid, funded mostly by the federal government but partly by the states, violates the Tenth Amendment, which the political right claims gives states autonomy amounting to sovereignty not much different than the sovereignty of foreign countries vis-à-vis the U.S. government.
Their claim is that while the state governments are legally entitled to withdraw from the Medicaid program, politically that’s not a feasible option, because Medicaid is a popular program. This means that the ACA’s requirement that the states spend more in order to remain in the Medicaid program and receive the federal funds they currently receive, the states will have to spend more of their own money on Medicaid in order to meet the requirements of the ACA.
The states claim that this additional requirement is large enough to require states to have to substantially reduce the appropriations for other priorities, such as education, and that therefore the ACA’s Medicaid expansion basically controls the budget process of state legislatures, and in this way unconstitutionally infringes on state sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment.
Enter Romney, and the economic/budget plan he announced last Friday, in which he would cut taxes across the board by 20%, cut corporate taxes by even more (I think), eliminate the estate tax, increase defense spending, leave Medicare and Social Security untouched, and “return Medicaid to the states,” and “send” the other safety-net programs for the poor “to the states” as well. In other words, he plans to end federal funding for Medicaid and all the other programs.
Which according to the states’ argument in the ACA litigation, would violate the states’ sovereignty under the Tenth Amendment.
So, no, the original post was not intended as facetious. The post was hard to understand, in part at least because the legal argument of the 26 states is ridiculous. Yet the Supreme Court agreed to consider the states’ argument.
But a more important point is this: The economic/budget plan that Romney announced last Friday in an attempt to gain Tea Party support in Michigan would cut taxes by 20% across the board, eliminate the estate taxes, cut corporate taxes still further, and balance the budget, if it does, by entirely removing federal funding of all safety-net programs for the poor and telling the states that they should pick up the slack. More than half the states are claiming to the Supreme Court that this would violate the Tenth Amendment, because at least one of these programs, Medicaid, is too popular for it to be politically feasible to end it.
The Supreme Court almost certainly won’t buy the argument, but what matters is that the states have made the argument. And have made the point.
Also what matters, of course, is that someone who’s running for president on a claim to be exceptionally astute on business/economic/budget matters should have resisted the urge to put forward a budget proposal that bizarre and easily deconstructed by, well, almost anyone.
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*Ooops. Romney did discuss cutting Social Security benefits in that speech last Friday, by raising the retirement cap. Seems I was almost as distracted by the empty stadium as most of the news media was, and missed that. But Gail Collins noticed, and noticed that rest of the news media didn’t notice.
*Ooops. Romney did discuss cutting Social Security benefits in that speech last Friday, by raising the retirement cap. Seems I was almost as distracted by the empty stadium as most of the news media was, and missed that. But Gail Collins noticed, and noticed that rest of the news media didn’t notice.
Collins also discusses the payroll tax cap. And Seamus, of course.
I am suprised that no one has yet come up with the limit of this proposal. Abolish all federal aid to state and local governments (except perhaps immediate disaster aid). Essentially return to the status quo before 1927. After all states have full powers to tax. The argument would be that if people really want a service they can tax themselves at a state level. Thus no aid for development, no federal road aid nor transport funds (then abolish the gas tax), no sewer aid no community development aid, no aid to education… If people are not willing to tax themselves at a state level for the services then they don’t really want them. This is the limit of the policy suggested. The federal government would do what it did in the 1920s only. (i am not endorsing this but suggesting that its the logical limit of what Romney suggested
Being semi-literate in legalese, I understood yestersdays post as a summation of the court opinions as compared to Romney uninformed stance on the ACA amongst other things. In any case when Federal COA and Federal District Courts disagree, SCOTUS usually has to step into resolve the differences of rulings.
I am just not paying much attention to flip-flopping Romney. His own people are delivering the fatal blow to his candidacy. Maybe you are enjoying too much exposure here?
lyle:
The prblem is more states are equal than others. How do you compare a Mississippi or Lousiana with Pennsylvania or Illinois. You can’t and the tax revenue is not there. The US can create money and states can not.
You got my point, Lyle, which was less about the ridiculous legal claim by those 26 states in the ACA litigation than about the outlandish economic plan Romney announced in that speech on Friday. The plan got precious little attention from the press. I just updated my post to link to Gail Collins’s New York Times column that will be published in tomorrow’s paper discussing the media’s lack of attention to what Romney actually said in that speech, and discussing what he did say about Social Security. Hopefully, now the media will discuss the actual contents of the speech.
You got my point, Lyle, which was less about the ridiculous legal claim by those 26 states in the ACA litigation than about the outlandish economic plan Romney announced in that speech on Friday. The plan got precious little attention from the press. I just updated my post to link to Gail Collins’s New York Times column that will be published in tomorrow’s paper discussing the media’s lack of attention to what Romney actually said in that speech, and discussing what he did say about Social Security: He wants to raise the retirement age. Hopefully, now the media will discuss the actual contents of the speech.
Well, exactly, run. The states are cutting their basic funding in critical areas such as education, yet they’re gonna start funding Medicaid, food stamps and home heating assistance on their own? How dumb does Romney think the public is? What he’s talking about is ending those programs in order to cut taxes by 20% and end the “death tax,” as he and the other Repubs call it.
Collins points out something two things that are rarely mentioned in discussions about Social Security: that raising the retirement age will increase unemployment for people in their20s, and that the entire Social Security issue can be fixed by removing the payroll tax cap.
Well, exactly, run. The states are cutting their basic funding in critical areas such as education, yet they’re gonna start funding Medicaid, food stamps and home heating assistance on their own? How dumb does Romney think the public is? What he’s talking about is ending those programs in order to cut taxes by 20% and end the “death tax,” as he and the other Repubs call it.
Collins points out something two things that are rarely mentioned in discussions about Social Security: that raising the retirement age will increase unemployment for people in their20s, and that the entire Social Security issue can be fixed by removing the payroll tax cap.
Well, exactly, run. The states are cutting their basic funding in critical areas such as education, yet they’re gonna start funding Medicaid, food stamps and home heating assistance on their own? How dumb does Romney think the public is? What he’s talking about is ending those programs in order to cut taxes by 20% and end the “death tax,” as he and the other Repubs call it.
Collins points out two things that are rarely mentioned in discussions about Social Security: that raising the retirement age will increase unemployment for people in their20s, and that the entire Social Security issue can be fixed by removing the payroll tax cap.
And here is why I despair.
“removing the payroll tax cap” turns SS into welfare. exactly what FDR worked so hard to avoid.
on the other hand, raising the payroll tax forty cents per week each year on those who are going to get the money when they retire would allow you to keep saying “they paid for it themselves.”
but neither the right nor the left has the brains to understand that.
well, hell, i understood that point.
what i didn’t understand was the “states rights” claim you made for it.
No, coberly, I didn’t expect anyone who’s not an attorney general for one of those 26 states, or a lawyer for the, or a Supreme Court justice who voted to hear that issue after the lower appeals court rejected it. The claim is ridiculous. And I’m not it. I just discussing it.
(Sheepishly)…thanks.
You’re very welcome, k. I really didn’t expect anyone who’s not an attorney general for one of those 26 states, or a lawyer for them, or a Supreme Court justice who voted to hear that issue after the lower appeals court rejected it, to actually understand the legal claim of the 26 states. (And none of those people reads AB but hopefully Solicitor General Donald Verrilli and high-up person at Obama’s campaign do.) The claim is ridiculous. But I wanted to point out that the economic plan that Romney announced in his speech to the Detroit Economic Club last week absolutely conflicts with the Republican state attorneys general’s Tenth Amendment (states’ rights!) argument in the ACA litigation. At least I’m pretty darn sure it does.