Smart Bombs: Chase away the political blues

In August, when the jobless rate was 6.1 percent, the polling outfit Ipsos-MORI asked, “Out of every 100 people of working age, how many do you think are unemployed and looking for work?” The average response was 32.

What in the name of Tom Joad were people thinking? I know times are tough, but at the depths of the Great Depression the jobless rate was 25 percent. Five years ago, at the bottom of the Great Recession, it was 10 percent. Today, it’s 5.8 percent.

Social scientist Jon Sides says this poll is surely an outlier, writing in the Washington Post that past surveys show Americans are more accurate. But just in case the public mood is in need of a happy lamp, here’s some other news that politics may have obscured:

• The U.S. budget deficit, which reached as high as $1.4 trillion in 2009, plummeted to $483 billion as of Sept. 30. That’s about where it was in 2008 before the housing bubble burst. As a percentage of the total economy, it’s at 2.8 percent, which is in line with the 40-year average. The decline is attributed to a recovering economy, spending cuts from the congressional sequester and the expiration of some Bush-era tax cuts.

• On March 9, 2009, the stock market reached the bottom of its decline, with the Dow Jones industrial average closing at 6,547. Americans watched in horror as their retirement savings and home values dwindled. On Friday, the Dow had climbed to a record 17,810. Home prices also have rebounded, albeit more slowly.

• Since the end of 2012 through September, health care inflation had fallen below the overall U.S. rate. That’s an abrupt change from a 30-year trend of health care inflation more than doubling the overall rate. This turnabout has prompted the Congressional Budget Office to lower its 2019 Medicare spending forecast by $95 billion from its estimate of four years ago. So far, the Affordable Care Act hasn’t caused spending to soar.

Politics as usual. I have a favorable opinion of Medicare, though it comes with concerns about cost containment and financing. But I don’t use Medicare. My support is philosophical. Seniors needed affordable health care coverage, and the private sector wasn’t supplying it.

About 90 percent of people who use Medicare Part D, the prescription drug program for seniors, like it. And why not? Before it was adopted, many seniors struggled mightily to pay for their medications, but now those costs are subsidized. I suspect many people who are against big government, the redistribution of wealth and deficit-financing would fight a repeal of this program, which hinges on all three.

Furthermore, the law was hatched in 2003 with some shady dealing. Two months after the bill squeaked by in the wee hours, the Bush administration announced this new entitlement would cost one-third more than the 10-year estimate Congress debated. It was during the debate that Medicare actuary Richard Foster was ordered to keep quiet about his cost projection, because it exceeded the amount some deficit hawks were willing to accept. So a phony estimate was fed to Congress and the public, and Foster’s estimate was accepted after passage.

So onward to the Affordable Care Act, where the financing (Medicare Part D has none) was obscured from the public, a fact that has erupted into “Grubergate.” I don’t use the ACA, but I support it. The government already was helping me and most other Americans with employer-based coverage, and the private sector wasn’t offering affordable comprehensive coverage to those in the individual market. A recent Gallup poll shows that 71 percent of people who have obtained ACA coverage like it.

Should we pretend the politics of Medicare Part D never happened? Or should a “-gate” be affixed to that event, too? I suspect the answer for many people depends on their political leanings, or whether they reap the benefits.