 by Robert Reich |
COMMENTARY
TO: VPOTUS
FROM: Robert Reich
RE: Debate
Beware: Paul Ryan will appear affable. He’s less polished and aggressive than Romney, even soft-spoken. And he acts as if he’s saying reasonable things.
But under the surface he’s a right-wing zealot. And nothing he says or believes is reasonable – neither logical nor reflecting the values of the great majority of Americans.
Your job is to smoke Ryan out, exposing his fanaticism. The best way to do this is to force him to take responsibility for the regressive budget he created as chairman of the House Budget Committee.
Ryan won’t be able to pull a Romney — pretending he’s a moderate — because the Ryan budget is out there, with specific numbers.
It’s an astounding document that Romney fully supports. And it fills in the details Romney has left out of his proposals. Mitt Romney is a robot who will say and do whatever he’s programmed to do. Ryan is the robot’s brain. The robot has no heart. It’s your job to enable America to see this.
I suggest you hold up a copy of the Ryan budget in front of the cameras. You might even read selected passages.
Emphasize these points: Ryan’s budget turns Medicare into vouchers. It includes the same $716 billion of savings Romney last week accused the president of cutting out of Medicare – but instead of getting it from providers he gets it from the elderly.
It turns Medicaid over to cash-starved states, with even less federal contribution. This will hurt the poor as well as middle-class elderly in nursing homes.
Over 60 percent of its savings come out of programs for lower-income Americans – like Pell grants and food stamps.
Yet it gives huge tax cuts to the top 1 percent – some $4.7 trillion over the next decade. (This is the same top 1 percent, you might add, who have reaped 93 percent of the gains from the recovery, whose stock portfolios have regained everything they lost and more, and who are now taking home a larger share of total income than at any time in the last eighty years and paying the lowest taxes than at any time since before World War II.)
As a result it doesn’t reduce the federal debt at all. In fact, it worsens it.
On top of all this, Ryan is on record – as is Romney – for wanting to repeal both Obamacare (taking coverage away from 30 million Americans) and the Dodd-Frank law (thereby giving cover to Wall Street).
Your challenge will be to get this across firmly and clearly, with an appropriate degree of indignation – on a medium that rewards style over substance, glibness over detail, and optimistic happy talk over grim reality.
My suggestion: Be cheerfully aggressive. Take Ryan on directly and sharply but do so with a smile. Force him to take responsibility for the regressiveness of his budget and the radicalism of his ideology.
Prepare your closing carefully (unlike the president seemed to have done last week), and tell America the unvarnished truth: Romney and Ryan plan to do a reverse Robin Hood at a time in our nation’s history when the rich have never had it so good while the rest haven’t been as economically insecure since the Great Depression.
Their agenda is all the more remarkable in that we have a growing budget deficit to deal with, along soaring healthcare costs and aging boomers without enough to retire on because their net worth went down the drain with their homes.
The fundamental question is whether we’re still all in it together – whether as American citizens we continue to have obligations to one another to assure equal opportunity and help for those who need it – or we’re on our own, without a common bond or a common good. Romney and Ryan represent the latter view, a view utterly at odds with what we have accomplished as a nation.
Robert B. Reich, Chancellor’s Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, was Secretary of Labor in the Clinton administration. Time Magazine named him one of the ten most effective cabinet secretaries of the last century. He has written thirteen books, including the best sellers “Aftershock" and “The Work of Nations." His latest is an e-book, “Beyond Outrage.” He is also a founding editor of the American Prospect magazine and chairman of Common Cause.
This post originally appeared on robertreich.org.
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Chancellor Reich, Leave your Study, pull your right hand from inside the front of your coat. So how is Elba this time of year?
Please answer this...Why do those with whom you agree continue to cutoff America despite it's citizens? The old tactics of class warfare, race bating, tax the rich will not work. Ryan doesn't need smoke Biden out. By his comments I think Biden has smoked enough.
Here is just one item Ryan need mention:
One of many examples for repeal of Obama Care
What is the Medical Device Excise Tax?
The Medical Device Excise Tax is a tax imposed by the United States on manufacturers, producers or importers on the sale or use of any ‘taxable medical device’—defined as devices, systems or services registered with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Many of business products will be subject to the tax. Anytime business sell or place a product in use fitting that definition, which broadly includes all Patient Monitoring, Imaging Systems, Home Health and some Consumer Life Style and Lighting products, business will pay a 2.3-percent tax to the U.S. Federal government. Unlike a sales tax, this is a manufacturing excise tax, which means that even products businesses never sell may be taxable. Registered demo equipment, samples, products used in business training centers and products business provide at no charge are also subject to the tax when they are issued out of inventory.
There is a ‘retail exemption,’ which exempts certain products classified as retail products from the tax. The business Tax organizations are working together to identify which products fall under this retail exemption.
All FDA-registered devices, including patient monitors, imaging systems, ultrasound and home health products, demo equipment, informatics software products, consumables, kits and certain services, such as Telehealth, are taxable under the Medical Device Excise Tax. Consumer Life Style and medical lighting products registered with the FDA are also subject to the tax. However, some of those products will fall under the retail exemption.
The tax is being implemented as part of the Affordable Care Act under U.S. Healthcare Reform legislation, a.k.a. Obama Care, to help offset some of the costs associated with the reform provisions. The government concluded that the Act brings many new patients into the U.S. health care system and thus allows for greater market penetration for medical device companies, justifying the tax on medical devices.
In fact, it will cost businesses hundreds of million dollars each year, which will decrease business gross margin and EBIT, or earnings before interest and taxes, which are both important measures of business profitability.
Additionally, if business fails to pay the necessary tax through error or negligence, Business will incur penalties, which can be as much as 25 percent or more of the tax due, depending on the infraction, plus interest, which is currently five percent per year.
Beyond direct financial impacts, implementation of the tax requires a variety of changes to business IT systems to ensure compliance. Businesses also need to implement process changes to classify medical devices, customers and vendors to ensure businesses accurately capture their taxability. The classification of customers and vendors is important in determining whether the tax has already been paid by the vendor or if the device is exempt from the tax because the customer meets certain criteria.
Remember, Remember the 6th of November
Fire the Marxist Administration and there-by, restore the United States of America.
SO IT IS WRITTEN, SO IT SHALL BE DONE!
Seeking 55%- 56% turnout, this time to America’s favor.
You present your scare side of the story provided by your corporate overlords.
For a different point of view see:
Excise Tax on Medical Devices Should Not Be Repealed
Industry Lobbyists Distort, Overstate Tax's Impact
Superb commentary, well worthy of the VPOTUS' consideration. This will all make for a very interesting evening. I just hope that Chris Mathews and Ed Schultz are smiling, after it is over. Seems that it will be another late night, if they aren't.
Hey! Its Robert Third Reich weighing in.
I only pray that Joe Biden pull it off for us. He is the star at this moment. This is his time to shine and make the American people proud of him. At first it was Michelle Obama, President Bill Clinton who brought the house down, and President Obama. Now, it is Joe Biden time and there is no one to follow him on that day. He must do his thing and he knows that we are expecting him to shine for us. The spot light is on him.
Obama/Biden 2012
Hope Joe Biden remembers to take a $1 calculator to hand to Lying Ryan when Ryan tries to weasel out of his budget figures