Casey: Real legislation vs. political hokum
Two members of Virginia’s congressional delegation made headlines last week for legislation they introduced in the 114th Congress. They were U.S. Sen. Tim Kaine and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte.
Their initiatives paint a stark contrast between meaningful legislation and utter political hokum. That’s something we all should keep our eyes on, because there’s too little of the former and way too much of the latter.
We shall deal with Kaine’s proposal first.
He’s a Democrat who’s one of five co-sponsors of the Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act. This relates to Medicare Part D, prescription coverage Congress created for senior citizens, which launched in 2006.
One odd feature of Medicare Part D is that it explicitly prohibits Medicare from negotiating lower prices for prescription drugs. On the other hand, the Department of Veterans Affairs, Medicaid and Department of Defense have been doing this for years. The result is that drug costs under Medicare Part D are substantially higher.
A 2009 report by the National Committee to Preserve Social Security & Medicare illustrated those price disparities for a 30-day supply of some frequently prescribed generic medicines.
• Furosemide 40 mg tablets — the VA paid 65 cents; one popular Part D plan paid $2.66.
• Lisinopril 10 mg tablets — the VA paid 79 cents; the Part D plan paid $8.27.
• Atenolol 50 mg — the VA paid 25 cents; the Part D plan paid $4.19.
It cited many more examples, and many other Part D plans as well. “Our analysis finds that the VA attains drug prices that on average are 48 percent lower than Part D plan prices for the top 10 drugs covered by the program,” the report said.
It estimated that if Medicare could negotiate prices, the potential savings would total $24 billion annually. A separate analysis by the National Center for Biotechnology Information (an arm of the National Institutes for Health) pegged the annual savings in the same ballpark at $22 billion.
The Medicare Prescription Drug Price Negotiation Act would fix that. It would allow the biggest insurance program in this country to negotiate prescription discounts with pharmaceutical companies, on behalf of taxpayers and 37 million seniors.
And that’s what makes Kaine’s effort substantial and meaningful, even though its passage in an ultra-partisan, GOP-dominated Congress is probably doomed.
Now let’s turn to the other proposal, which Goodlatte, R-Roanoke County, has been pushing for years with little success.
It’s the Balanced Budget Amendment. It would change the U.S. Constitution, and it’s been an eye roller for decades. Underlying it is a deceptive tidbit of rhetoric that goes something like this:
“States balance their budgets. And you balance your household budget. Obviously the federal government should have to balance its budget, too.” Such an argument appeals to the jeering masses who don’t bother to think.
Most state constitutions require balanced budgets, but states easily slide around the mandates. The result is a lot of accounting gimmickry. They routinely borrow long-term money that’s eventually repaid — that’s called bond issues. Lawmakers of the Old Dominion have gone to the bond market numerous times, precisely because they cannot live within state revenues.
They play other games, such as cutting state-pension system contributions. According to Standard & Poor’s, only six of 50 states have fully funded their pension systems, and Virginia is not one of them. As of April, the Virginia Retirement System was underfunded to the tune of $28 billion. That’s money the General Assembly should have put into it, but didn’t because of budget considerations.
Do you have a mortgage? Then you have long-term debt that you’re unable to satisfy with the snap of your fingers. The Federal Reserve issued a report last week that noted total consumer borrowing by the end of the third-quarter 2014 stood at $11.7 trillion. That’s because people do not have balanced household budgets.
There are some numbskulls on Fox News who support the proposal. But liberals are far from its only critics.
The Balanced Budget Amendment has been scorned on the uber-conservative op-ed pages of the Wall Street Journal, in the iconic magazine of American conservatism, The National Review, on the right-wing websiteHotAir.com and even (believe it or not) by The Roanoke Tea Party.
Intelligent conservatives fear it will transfer to unelected judges power over government spending, and lead to massive tax increases. Meanwhile, there’s no shortage of economists who predict the proposal has enormous potential to make the Great Depression look like an economic blip.
Anyway, if Goodlatte truly believed in a strictly balanced budget, he would not have voted (as he did in 2001) for massive tax cuts that unbalanced this nation’s last balanced budget.
You can tell what’s real and meaningful here, and what’s fake. Respectively, that’s Kaine’s proposal followed by Goodlatte’s.
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