Alan Simpson offers a novel reason why Ryan voted against Simpson-Bowles

Alan Simpson offers a novel reason why Ryan voted against Simpson-Bowles

by digby

Hmmm. Can this be for real? I was watching Ali Velshi on CNN fulminating about the alleged debt crisis and he asked Alan Simpson about Paul Ryan’s odd description of the Simpson-Bowles outcome in his speech the other night. Simpson said something I hadn’t heard before:

Simpson: We went to Ryan and Hensarling and Camp. I said to them look, if you vote against this because you were scared of Grover Norquist that he would beat you over the head while he’s wandering the earth in his white robes and they said, “No. We voted against it because if you get rid of the employer deduction of employee health care premiums, the employers are going to be stunned. They’re going to look around and say, ‘what do we do now?’ And they’re gonna bloat Obamacare further. They’re going to take their people into the new health care plan.” That was their response.

And that’s good enough for me. He can explain himself. He had his reasons.

Look at Durbin. Gutsy guy. He’s the assistant leader of the Democrats in the senate. Think of what harry Reid must have done to him …

Velshi: But we need gutsy!

Simpson: … “Good God Durbin, you’re messing with precious Medicare!”

Velshi: We need that leadership!

Simpson: Sure, but you’re not going to get any guts out of anybody.

So they told Simpson that the real hold up on the GOP side of the commission was the employer health care tax deduction because then all the employers would put their employees into Obamacare? I wouldn’t be surprised if they told him that. He’s not exactly what you’d call “well-informed.” But the fact is that the whole country is now under “Obamacare” in one way or another and that includes employers. If companies that employ over 50 people don’t cover their employees, they’ll get hit with a substantial fine.

Now, I’m sure that the idea of ending the employee health insurance deduction is something that businesses don’t want to happen, for obvious reasons. But to hang it on the fact that it would put more workers into the private insurance market which would “bloat Obamacare” is just bizarre. But it was good enough for Simpson.

Later he said that there wasn’t even one politician running in this campaign who would be willing to cuts programs and raise taxes. Man, President Obama just can’t get any respect.

*I should note that this little exchange illustrates just how absurd this promise that we can raise revenue by lowering all tax rates but “closing loopholes” and “ending tax expenditures” is.