Congratulations Democrats, You Now Own It

Congratulations Democrats! On Sunday night, by a vote of 219-212, you voted to take control of the health care industry. You will now mandate what type of insurance that people can buy and how much they will pay for it. You have also exempted yourselves, other members of Congress, the President, the VP, and of course, the staff members who wrote the bill. How egalitarian of you. Are you familiar with the words of the Declaration of Independence that proclaim that all men are created equal? Probably not.

Guess what? You now own the health care system and all the broken promises that will go with it. You have added another $2 trillion dollar entitlement to our federal budget. May I remind you that we already have a $14 trillion federal debt that is bankrupting the country? How on God's green Earth are you going to pay for this? Oh, and how are you going to pay for the looming insolvency of Social Security and Medicare? Wait, I can see your idea now - cut defense spending and raise taxes. Oh, and by raise taxes, I'm not talking about letting the Bush tax cuts expire. I'm talking about President Obama having to go on TV and talking about raising the top bracket to 70%. How do you think that will go over?

The people reminded you again and again that the top issue on their agenda was the economy, jobs, and the deficit. And you ignored them. You have decided to impose your will on the people despite the fact that they didn't want it. I suppose you're betting that in November, the people will have forgotten about it. I suppose you think in November your Democratic party operatives will get people out to the polls by proclaiming that if the Republicans take over, they will take away their health care.

Well, I'm going to take that bet and lay odds that the people won't forget and that you will lose at least 80 seats in the House.

You're also betting that even when the Republicans take over, they won't have the spine to repeal it. I'm going to bet you're wrong on that too. When 59% of the people want something done, it usually gets done.

You have also changed the political rules. When the Republicans have a supermajority, and they will have a supermajority at some point in the future, do not complain when they do something you don't like by a party line vote. You have set the new rules. Don't be surprised when they use them.

I still believe that America is a great country and the people will not roll over and let you take it away from them. You ignored the 59% of the American people who didn't want this bill. Clearly, you don't think those 59% will do anything about it. But I bet they will.

And if they don't, then this is not the America I know.

Health Care Thoughts

My quick thought on the pending health care legislation and why it's bad. No, I'm not going to get into all the myriad of arguments that people offer against it nor am I going to spend time refuting every last argument for it.

Instead, I'm going to point out one little thing that makes this the wrong time to do anything about overhauling and putting the government in charge of health care.

The government is running a huge deficit and it is a deficit that we must eventually pay down. Now, like it or not, that means there is probably going to be some kind of tax increase when the economy gets rolling again.

However, if you raise taxes to pay for the health care bill, you then can't tap those people for more money in order to pay down the deficit. Except judging from the Obama Administration's behavior, they think that they can tap those people again and again with no consequences.

In fact, I think we need to look at the Clinton years to see the best case scenario for this. Health care legislation was defeated. By 1994, the Republicans took over the House. During the subsequent years, we had a combination of income taxes increases (but a decrease on capital gains taxes) and spending cuts. In the last two years of the Clinton presidency, we ran a surplus each year and not a deficit. Now, technically, we were still running a deficit because thanks to a change in the budget accounting rules during the LBJ administration, the government counts social security money as revenue and not as expenditures.

But overall, the deficit was reduced.

If health care legislation had passed, there is no way that the tax increases could have paid down the debt as they would have been paying for a new national health care plan.

And if this health care bill passes now, with $1 trillion in new spending, we will get the worst of all worlds: tax increases, increased spending, and higher deficits.

Not really the hope and change I'm looking for.