Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Policy Affects Political Debate Only In The Slightest

Jonathan Berenstein is certainly right about this. In any given election, both sides will accuse the other of some combination of raising taxes, cutting Social Security and Medicare spending, being soft on defense, and perhaps cutting important discretionary spending in places where people care about it, such as education. Whether or not the debt ceiling bill includes some hypothetical future cuts to hospital payments is unlikely to affect the content of campaign advertising; if Medicare looks like a salient issue in September 2012, Republicans will find some other way to accuse Democrats of cutting it.

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