Seems about right

In a blog post seethingly directed at every Erskine Bowles, every Alan Simpson, every David Brooks and indeed every Very Serious Person, Paul Krugman notes that President Obama's "laughable" deficit-reduction proposal "would reduce the deficit 14 times as much" as would hiking Medicare's eligibility age, which of course is that which so enchants the wonkishly "serious" herd.

Concludes Krugman--and not in any sarcastic way: 

I guess we have to understand the definition of serious: a proposal is only serious if it punishes the poor and the middle class.

Naturally. For that's compromise, you see. Through the elimination of a minor exemption here and an insignificant deduction there, reduce some after-tax income from $100 million to $99.5 million, and then similarly burden some arthritic waitress with another two-year wait for this country's most efficient, least costly healthcare available: socialized medicine.

Comments

[samcdc]

Just take the money from Sheldon Addleson. He can afford it and he got it by taking to from people who can't afford it.

[japa21]

The irony regarding raising the age limit for Medicare is that the early years of a person's enrollment in Medicare are the lowest cost years and the costs will continue to go down as Obamacare becomes more prelevant and more people have adequate healthcare prior to their Medicare years.

One of the favorite arguements the right likes to use against not giving the top 2% the tax cut that the 98% are offered is that it would only pay for a few days worth of the government. Yet the cuts they propose are miniscule in comparison.

[AnneJ]

It is simply maddening to hear a bunch of rich pundits on tv glibly talk of raising the eligibility age of programs like SS and medicare because to them it is just and abstraction they wouldn't dare lower themselves to give the time of day to people who this would adversely effect. We're just not good enough for them.

[Robert Lipscomb]

This is what Krugman is talkng about.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/02/1165975/-What-Simpson-Bowles-has-to
-say-about-health-care-spending-reform-it-s-not-what-you-think

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-archer/deficit-health-care-costs_b_22284
93.html

[Robert Lipscomb]

Sorry, I hope this try works better.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/12/02/1165975/-What-Simpson-Bowles-has-to-say-about-health-care-spending-reform-it-s-not-what-you-think

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/diane-archer/deficit-health-care-costs_b_2228493.html