By: John ShafferTuesday December 22, 2009
What is the hardest thing for a politician to do? Some say "vote to raise taxes," but that is nonsense - politicians in Washington and Harrisburg raise taxes all the time - and most of them would raise them even more (and more often) if they could get away with it.
No, the hardest thing for a politician to do is "to do nothing." A wonderful case in point is the so-called health care reform now before Congress. Whether we are talking about ObamaCare, PelosiCare or HarryCare), it will be an enormously expensive, intrusive bill. Any one of the three "Cares" absorbs roughly a trillion dollars, money we don't have in a time of massive budget deficits and runaway spending.
O, that the so-called "moderate" and allegedly "conservative" Blue Dogs had the courage to peer over this abyss and say, "We cannot afford this reform." Note that we didn't ask them to say "we can't afford any reform" - just this one. The basic issues of tort reform and insurance portability could be addressed inexpensively. Health Savings Accounts could be expanded. Free market solutions could be encouraged. But the bills under consideration do none of those things.
The bill's supporters (who have run up the government's huge debt while never discovering anything outside the Pentagon budget that was "too expensive" or "unaffordable") maintain the laughable fiction that the bills have been "scored" by the Congressional Budget Office to show savings of over $121 billion - for the first ten years - thanks to ten years of taxes and only four or five years of expenses - and $621 billion in the second ten years. Let's be honest. The President set two goals that the CBO scoring had to demonstrate: that the bill be under $900 billion, and it conveniently came in at just under that figure; and that it not add to the deficit, and again, it has those ostensible savings. Thank you, CBO. But, can we realistically believe that expanding the federal system will result in $121 billion in savings? Also note that the $210 billion "doctor fix" is missing from the bill. Over $170 billion of the "savings" comes from cutting the Medicare advantage program; and the bill does contain over $300 billion in new taxes. Also, what is left out of the scoring is significant, because while the CBO analysis pretends that the federal deficit will be trimmed, the bill shifts many costs onto the states and onto consumers. Insurance premiums will go up, state taxes will rise, and there is a slim likelihood that expanding the federal system will result in savings. There is little effort in these bills to control costs.
The Democrats in Congress and the President have staked everything on the final bill - and are willing to do anything to win Senate votes, from threatening to close an Air Force base in Ben Nelson's Nebraska to giving Mary Landrieu of Louisiana several hundred million dollars in "aid" to her state. In hopes of attracting votes, the Senate came up with a "buy in to Medicare" provision for those shy of retirement age. It upset more people than it attracted, so President demanded that the "buy in " provision be abandoned - and it was, to the outrage of the Democratic left. Several prominent Democrats have declared that they cannot support the "public option," so it is dropped - again, raising the hackles of the left. Some of them are so angry that they declare that without the public option, the bill is not worth having, and they will oppose it.
And then there is the Stupak amendment, which prohibits spending for abortion. Pro-life Democrats have promised to oppose the bill unless it bans tax dollars for abortion, while pro-abortion Democrats have promised to oppose it if it does ban such funding. And how about coverage for illegal immigrants? Again, folks on both sides of the issue say that they will oppose it unless they get their way. These are irreconcilable differences.
Many Democrats in Congress believe that it is "now or never" for this reform - we don't know if that is true or not, but is that itself not a strong argument not to do it? For if something so important and supposedly, so necessary cannot be accomplished at any other time, is it really that important or necessary? Practically every major independent poll shows a significant majority of the US population opposes this specific health care reform, even if they support reform in general.
No reform is better than a bad reform, and there are so many uncertainties and such large costs that this should be one of those times when the politicians should say "no" and abandon these bills.
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