Paul Krugman: Think Of The Children

[Hissyspit]

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/05/18/think-of-the-children/?smid=tw-NytimesKrugman&seid=auto

May 18, 2011, 3:24 AM

One of the favorite lines of austerians is to claim that they’re concerned, above all, with the future prospects of our children. Paul Ryan says it all the time. So a couple of interesting points:

First, as Tim Egan says, the key political calculation behind the Ryan plan was the belief that seniors would be greedily concerned only with their own benefits:

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And their kids and grandkids? Sorry, they would have to take their little voucher and pay some private insurer nearly twice as much as a senior pays for basic government coverage today. In essence, Republicans would break up the population between an I’ve Got Mine segment and The Left Behinds.

And Egan doesn’t even mention the fact that while Medicare cuts would be postponed, Medicaid would face savage cuts right away. And while much of Medicaid’s spending is on nursing care, many of its beneficiaries are children. In fact, as Tim Geithner just pointed out, at this point 40% of children born in America are on Medicaid.

So the actual content of the Ryan plan is pro-geezer, anti-child. Because nothing serves the nation’s future more than making sure future citizens lack adequate health care and nutrition.