Aug ‘12
23
AFTER THE NATIONAL ELECTION COMES THE “FISCAL CLIFF”
The Republican Party of NO’s policy of using fiscal and economic crises to assure government deficit reduction, means Congress is forced to deal with spending and tax policy reform early in 2013 or face automatic cuts in both entitlement and national defense spending. Since Republicans oppose any reduction in the growth of defense spending, and Democrats oppose reduced growth in entitlement spending unless accompanied by tax increases on the very wealthy, we have a chance for bipartisanship regardless of who is president. Obama has already tried bipartisan and sees the election forcing the Republicans to join in the effort. Romney must do bipartisan since Republicans in Congress will be divided between Party of NO and Party of President No-Obama.
Just last week President Obama signed a rare bipartisan law requiring him by Sept. 1 to publicly disclose how he would implement $109 billion in federal spending cuts mandated by the sequester. Medicare Part B payment policy and doctor payment policy especially will be first over the fiscal cliff unless Congress (plus medical associations nationwide) get their collective acts together, quickly. On January 1, 2013, current law reduces Part B payments by 27%. This will save taxpayers (and cost any American doctors still willing to see Medicare patients) a total of $18.5 billion over ten years. If Congress can’t get a “fix” for Part B for two years, the savings/ costs will be $48 billion; if delayed three years it will be $72 billion.
Periodically, we send out email updates when new articles or collections of articles, are published. To sign up for these email updates, please provide the information below.