Killing Medicare

That would be…roughly…$100.

If you figure the bottles cost $350, you get four glasses per bottle, Paul Ryan downed at least one.

The one major aspect of the story in dispute was the topic of conversation at Ryan’s dinner table.

Feinberg said all three men were “droning on loudly during the evening that liberals think that if you’re a millionaire, you have done something wrong.”

The really sick part? Paul Ryan then turned around and called the economists he ate with, the millionaires recall, stupid….

TPM: …she was saying, is it appropriate for you guys to be ordering that kind of wine $350 dollars-a-bottle?

Ryan: “A.) I didn’t order it. B.) I had no idea what it would cost, and C.) …I bought one of these bottles even though I drank a glass, and I always pull my own weight for my meals.”

TPM: That was very smart. … But do you think it’s appropriate now that you know how much the wine cost to be drinking [such expensive wine] when you’re advocating cuts for seniors?

Ryan: “I think it’s stupid to pick up that much for a bottle of wine under any circumstance.”

TPM: But you had to pay for it…

Ryan: “Yeah, I was like this is ridiculous. Who buys wine that expensive?*** It surprised me, and I think it’s stupid under any circumstance to pay anything close to 100 dollars for a bottle of wine.

TPM: So you wouldn’t do it again?

Ryan: “Well, of course not, because I think it’s too much money to pay for wine. Yeah, I don’t really know what exactly it cost. It was expensive. But um, 250 maybe it was 250, I don’t really remember.”

It was $350, you liar. How do you not remember paying $350 for a bottle of win of which you had one glass?

My guess it takes the same level of internal intellectual honesty where you can claim that you are killing Medicare to save it. Which is to say, it’s right at Paul Ryan’s level.

*** Hint: It ain’t people on Medicare or Medicaid. They don’t have that much money to waste as stupidly as you do.

NOTE: This is also a shining example of why we should never, ever, even think about raising taxes on the wealthy. Think how much that would impact the tips on orders like this. Just think about it!

Here’s the latest…

A Chinese ratings house has accused the United States of defaulting on its massive debt, state media said Friday, a day after Beijing urged Washington to put its fiscal house in order.

“In our opinion, the United States has already been defaulting,” Guan Jianzhong, president of Dagong Global Credit Rating Co. Ltd., the only Chinese agency that gives sovereign ratings, was quoted by the Global Times saying.

A couple things here…this is actually just another warning. Albeit one from someone we should listen to.

Washington had already defaulted on its loans by allowing the dollar to weaken against other currencies — eroding the wealth of creditors including China, Guan said.

[full story]

This is actually more of the same lament from China. They have their currency pegged to ours (mostly) so when we do some “quanitative easing” for our currency, so do they, whether they like it or not. China, of course, does have the option of letting the yuan appreciate on its own and quit hiding behind the dollar, but my guess is that they’ll wait until after the collapse to try and claim they already did that.

The article then continues with something that has become a political truth, but is a real-world fiction.

The US government will run out of room to spend more on August 2 unless Congress bumps up the borrowing limit beyond $14.29 trillion — but Republicans are refusing to support such a move until a deficit cutting deal is reached.

Ratings agency Fitch on Wednesday joined Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s to warn the United States could lose its first-class credit rating if it fails to raise its debt ceiling to avoid defaulting on loans.

That part I bolded in not technically accurate. The U.S. has already hit our debt limit. We did so over a month ago. What the Treasury Secretary did was make the mistake of telling folks he could keep things going until a drop-dead date, August 2nd. He’s doing this by shifitng money around. In the real world, this is the “Pawn Shop” step. Yes, it might work and keep you afloat, but it’s going to cost you quit a bit more just to stay even because of the nature of the transcations. This is what Treasury is doing now, by raiding pension funds to keep the lights on and the troops fed. We’ll have to pay more to pay that back.

Now, you may think it’s not a big deal that China is saying we are defaulting. You may think that, because you are not be aware of this…

China is by far the top holder of US debt and has in the past raised worries that the massive US stimulus effort launched to revive the economy would lead to mushrooming debt that erodes the value of the dollar and its Treasury holdings.

Beijing cut its holdings of US Treasury securities for the fifth month in a row to $1.145 trillion in March, down $9.2 billion from February and 2.6 percent less than October’s peak of $1.175 trillion, US data showed last month.

Now…think about it from the creditors perspective. You have some extra money. You give it to your buddy across the way. You notice he’s been going on hunting expeditions (wars), giving lavish bonuses to favored friends (tax cuts), had puts paying you back well down on the list. You can’t really *force* that guy to pay you back, after all, he goes on LOTS of hunting expeditions, but you can make it more difficult for him to borrow from other people.

This is what China just did.

The Republicans requiring Medicare to be sacrificed on the altar of debt before they sign off on the debt limit increase is having real and serious consequences to the U.S. (and world) economy. They think this is going to benefit them in the long run, but I’m afraid that’s not how it’s going to work, no matter how many Fox’s sell that version of history.