Plunging Towards Gomorrah
Posts tagged Entitlements
Charlie Crist’s Problem with Reality
Apr 12th
I don’t like Governor Charlie Crist. He represents the worst thing about Republicans. Crist is not interested in taking a principled stand on any issue. He would rather do whatever it takes to remain popular to advance his political career. Unless there’s some kind of political upheaval in the next few weeks Crist’s political career is over.
It should also be noted that Crist helped McCain get the GOP nomination. In the 2008 Florida Primary, Crist’s endorsement helped push McCain past Romney. At the time that was Crist’s high water mark for political relevence. Now he’s being bashed by everyone, even George Will. Will has an op-ed in The Washington Post discussing how rare it is to find a politician who is honest about our entitlement crisis. Governor Crist is cited as an example.
A recent debate on “Fox News Sunday” illustrated the differences between the few politicians who are, and the many who are not, willing to face facts. Marco Rubio, the former speaker of Florida’s House of Representatives who is challenging Gov. Charles Crist for the Republican U.S. Senate nomination, made news by stating the obvious.
Asked how the nation might address the projected $17.5 trillion in unfunded Social Security liabilities, Rubio said that we should consider two changes for people 10 or more years from retirement. One would raise the retirement age. The other would alter the calculation of benefits: Indexing them to inflation rather than wage increases would substantially reduce the system’s unfunded liabilities.
Neither idea startles any serious person. But Crist, with the reflex of the unreflective, rejected both and said that he would fix Social Security by eliminating “waste” and “fraud,” of which there is little. The system’s problems are the result not of incompetent administration but of improvident promises made by Congress.
Synthetic indignation being the first refuge of political featherweights, Crist’s campaign announced that he believes Rubio’s suggestions are “cruel, unusual and unfair to seniors living on a fixed income.” They are indeed unusual, because flinching from the facts of the coming entitlements crisis is the default position of all but a responsible few, such as Wisconsin’s Rep. Paul Ryan, who has endorsed Rubio. What is ultimately cruel is Crist’s unserious pretense that America faces only palatable choices and that improvident promises can be fully funded with money currently lost to waste and fraud.
There’s not much to add to Will’s point. Crist’s rhetoric and other politicians who mimic it are a disgrace. The nation has no hope of tackling difficult issues as long as there are politicians like Crist around. I’m not sure Rubio will be any better, but it’s difficult to believe he’s worse than Crist. I expect this stuff from all politicians (especially Democrats), but if the Republicans ever want to be considered a serious alternative this stuff has to end.
“Where Do We Get the Free ObamaCare?”
Apr 7th
What happens when you combine a new entitlement with an ignorant population desperate for handouts? Well, I think I have a pretty good idea after reading Margaret Talev’s article about the confusion surrounding ObamaCare. Hold onto your gag reflex it’s not pretty.
Questions reflecting confusion have flooded insurance companies, doctors’ offices, human resources departments and business groups.
“They’re saying, ‘Where do we get the free Obama care, and how do I sign up for that?’ ” said Carrie McLean, a licensed agent for eHealthInsurance.com. The California-based company sells coverage from 185 health insurance carriers in 50 states.
Just wait until some of these people realize they’ll face fines if they don’t get insurance. I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised when nearly half of U.S. households don’t even pay Federal income tax. It seems that no one realizes that life saving medical breakthroughs come at a cost. When the financial incentive is removed there will be less research and less breakthroughs. Unfortunately John Smith wants his unicorn and he wants it now. Progress be damned, the idea of “fair share” is much more important than saving lives.
The Young and the Uninformed
Mar 30th
One of the most vocal groups in favor of ObamaCare is the young voter bloc. It’s shocking because this bill hurts this group the most. Young people are already contributing to two programs that are going bankrupt and whose benefits they’ll never see. Thanks to ObamaCare young workers are forced to get health care by law or be fined, all in the name of subsidizing free health care for elderly Americans. Oh, by the way, if you’re a young person who already has health care your premium is going to go up at least 17%. Need I mention the fact that some major corporations estimate that the bill will raise their operating costs substantially? Even Steamboat Ski Resort is uneasy about the fines they’ll have to pay on behalf of its seasonal workers. I wonder who will end up paying for these extra costs? How about the uninformed youth of America!
Or, to put it in simpler terms, they’re getting f***ed by the same people who pushed the “F*** the Vote” campaign and the Democrats. Had the younger voters taken the time to learn something about risk pools, insurance, and the experience of Massachusetts and Maine using the same kind of mandates, they’d have told Rock the Vote to f*** off. They still have the opportunity to deliver that message to Democrats in November.
Shouldn’t young educated Americans know this issue better than anyone? That’s a rhetorical question because I already know the answer. Of course they don’t understand. Outside of the business college at the local university the higher education centers don’t teach things like balanced budgets. Instead, we get such practical programs as Queer Studies, Gender Studies and other pseudo-academic pursuits in the name of pursuing faux social justice instead of excellence. A recently graduated student may well understand the principles of smart growth, thinking green, and the concept of “fair share.” However, none of those things matter if everyone is going bankrupt.
The Young and the Uninformed
That’s the most puzzling thing. In 2000 the United States was headed toward bankruptcy. In 2002 we added the Department of Homeland Security. Shortly after that we added the colossal prescription drug bill. In 2009, TARP added a trillion more to our national debt. In 2010, we’re going bankrupt at an even faster pace and now Obama has passed another entitlement we can’t afford. The question I have for young voters is this: do you want to live in a banana republic in your lifetime?
How Are We Going to Pay for All of This?
Mar 23rd
Obama signs the Health Care bill and then hands the invoice to a little child who will have to pay for it.
Greg Mankiw always offers a level headed analysis on economic issues. It’s probably a prerequisite for every non-liberal who wants to work at Harvard. It seems the supporters of ObamaCare have put aside all the negative aspects of the bill and have a adopted the lies from the White House and Congress.
The other group is kind of like The Economist. The UK-based news magazine has really lost touch with logic lately. Their argument in favor of ObamaCare is as weak as it is logical. The basic argument is that any bill is better than no bill at all. This is a news magazine that calls itself The Economist?
What’s odd is that when President Bush tried to tackle reforming Social Security no one adopted the “let’s pass something” approach. The Republicans abandoned reform because they feared political backlash. The Democrats are philosophically opposed to fixing any entitlement. It’s in the DNA of the Democratic party to expand and break as many entitlement programs as possible.
Notice that no Republican advocates a serious reform of Medicare. The Democrats are the welfare party, and the Republicans are simply the caretakers of the welfare state. While the left longingly gazes at their Obama posters the President has never said how he’s going to pay for all these goodies. That’s Greg Mankiw’s point.
The Obama administration’s political philosophy is more egalitarian and more communitarian than mine. Their spending programs require much higher taxes than we have now and, indeed, much higher taxes than they have had the temerity to propose. Here is the question I have been wondering about: How long can the President wait before he comes clean with the American people and explains how high taxes needs to rise to pay for his vision of government?
I’ll go one step further because the Republicans aren’t prepared for the serious challenges ahead. The taxes needed to pay for all these programs will have to be enormous. The GOP doesn’t have the guts to tackle the problem. Taxing the rich isn’t going to pay for it all. If people are concerned about the economy right now, just wait until the VAT tax starts.
I’m not sure Obama even cares. Perhaps he just wants to be the guy who gave the U.S. health care. Obama will let some other administration clean up the wreckage. Hey, Lyndon Johnson is still considered a great president and he only got us mired in Vietnam, started the welfare state, and gave us Medicare.
It seems liberals are determined to turn the U.S. into one big giant pyramid scheme. This might last five, fifteen, or twenty-five years, but eventually the whole house of card falls. Progressives love to tell sob stories about the disadvantaged. What about the working man whose paycheck is being siphoned away? Who is helping the forgotten man and how are we going to afford this when he’s out of job?
The Danger of Endless Entitlements
Mar 22nd
This is what happens when the state finally goes bankrupt.
There’s a fundamental difference between conservatives and liberals. It was on full display this past week as the pillars of the liberal establishment rallied behind ObamaCare. Liberals who opposed the Senate bill for not being bigger decided something was better than nothing. The mainstream press (Washington Post, New York Times, etc.) endorsed the bill. It’s odd that anyone can be in favor of a bill that’s so bad. I won’t go into the details because I’ve written about it extensively over the past six months. Besides, I find myself looking at cardboard boxes wondering if I should start saving materials for when we’re living under a bridge if I think about it too much.
ObamaCare is bad from beginning to end. It’s the greatest gift ever given to the insurance companies in the short term, but signals the end of their business in the long term. Meanwhile, the President and his deranged followers act like everything is rosy. Liberals have fallen in love with the “idea” of heath care. I wrote about this a few days ago. Health care isn’t a logical issue to these robots; it’s a purely emotional issue.
The most common argument for universal health care is that Europe and Canada have it. This is a shallow and uninformed argument. When did the United States start looking at Europe for ideas? This is the continent we have bailed out of two horrendous world wars and who we defended during the Cold War. The only reason these States have been able to afford their massive entitlements is because the American taxpayer has paid for Europe’s defense. Furthermore, these European states are going bankrupt (see Greece, etc., etc.). They’ve reduced their defense budgets to shambles and they still can’t afford the entitlements, the pensions, the health care, and all the stuff the leftist crazies in our government would have us do.
If the left is committed to the idea of health care it will cripple the United States and the world will be a more dangerous place. The cancer of entitlements means the only place to carve out a temporary future is to cut defense. As the U.S. military weakens the world will become more unstable. Eventually, the economies of Europe and the rest of the West will cave under the weight of entitlements. It might be this generation, it might be the next, but unless there’s a change the inevitable outcome of the ignorance of the left is economic Armageddon.
Unfunded Liabilities
Mar 20th
The U.S. entitlement problem was grim before Obama was in the White House. Instead of fixing it Obama has doubled down on entitlements. Mark Steyn has an article out today titled “Welcome to Deemocracy.” As usual Steyn sums it all up.
Look around you, and take it all in. From now on, it gets worse. If you have kids, they’ll live in smaller homes, drive smaller cars, live smaller lives. If you don’t have kids, you better hope your neighbors do, because someone needs to spawn a working population large enough to pay for the unsustainable entitlements the Obama party has suckered you into thinking you’re entitled to. The unfunded liabilities of current entitlements are $100 trillion. Try typing that onto your pocket calculator. You can’t. There isn’t enough room for all the zeroes, and, even if they made a pocket calculator large enough, and a pocket large enough, you’d be walking with a limp. To these existing entitlements, Obama and his enforcers in Congress propose to add the grandest of all: health care, on a scale no advanced democracy has ever attempted.
Steyn also points out that ObamaCare will be the biggest expansion of the IRS since World War II. Someone has to collect all those taxes.
Separation of Health Care and State
Mar 18th
Many generations ago many of our forefathers sought the New World to escape the heavy hand of the State. Eventually, those great pioneers (or perpetrators of environmental and cultural damage if you’re a Progressive) created the United States of America. The spirit of the United States was that the government wasn’t involved in every aspect of your life.
If President Obama and the leaders of Democratic Party get their way this week the State will make it law that everyone must get health care. It will be against the law to “choose” not to have health care. If you’re a healthy 28 year old the heavy hand of the government will force you to purchase health care you do not need to pay for someone else’s health care. So when President Obama says if you like your current health care plan, you can keep it, he’s not telling the truth. What if I like not having health care insurance? Can I keep that plan? No!
It is for this reason that I call on our inspirational ancestors and declare than I am firmly in favor of the separation of health care and State. It’s not the government’s responsibility to tell its citizens to get health care. Safety nets are already in place in this country. No one is dying in emergency rooms because they’re not insured. This entitlement mentality already grips most of the left. If this bill passes this cancer will spread.
Health Care = Statism
Mar 9th
Why are the Democrats willing to go to any measure to pass health care? It’s all about Statism. Nothing else can explain Obama’s obsession with this bill. The President sold this bill as a way to reduce our debt entitlement, lower health care costs and reduce premiums. The bill does none of these things. It doesn’t even come close and the President is still willing to do anything, even jamming it through the Senate via the partisan reconciliation process. Passing the bill is a certain calamity in the short term for Democrats. This is suicide voting at its finest. Democrats are willing to lose in the short term because once health care becomes an entitlement in the minds of the American people the Statists win. Mark Steyn wrote an article over the weekend that is essential in understanding what the liberal end game is on this issue.
It redefines the relationship between the citizen and the state in fundamental ways that make limited government all but impossible. In most of the rest of the Western world, there are still nominally “conservative” parties, and they even win elections occasionally, but not to any great effect. (Let’s not forget that Jacques Chirac was, in French terms, a “conservative.”) The result is a kind of two-party one-party state:
Right-of-center parties will once in a while be in office, but never in power, merely presiding over vast left-wing bureaucracies that cruise on regardless. Republicans seem to have difficulty grasping this basic dynamic.
This already exists. Think about entitlement programs such as Medicare and Social Security. Both of these programs are unsustainable. Reforming these programs is extremely difficult, and scrapping them all-together and starting over is an impossibility. The right has capitulated and the left has an entitlement that moves the nation further from limited government.
The Democrats’ answer for every problem is more government. If Obama said today: “Ask not what your country can do for you—ask what you can do for your country” it would be hilarious. The President certainly doesn’t believe it and neither does his party. Government dependency can be the only reason that the Democrats are so determined to pass a bill that a majority of Americans do not want. Either way the House votes on this bill is bad for the Democrats in the short term; however, if ObamaCare does pass the repeal movement may ultimately be more devastating to Democrats than Obama’s fragile ego if he fails to deliver.
Climbing Out of the Fiscal Hole
Nov 20th
The cover story for this week’s Economist deals with America’s fiscal hole. For the most part The Economist is dead right about this issue. Americans seem unwilling to pay higher taxes or cut down the size of government.
Cold arithmetic suggests that spending cuts alone cannot deliver enough. Changes to entitlements take effect only gradually. And the scope for slashing non-defence discretionary spending is limited, since it makes up merely one-sixth of total outlays. So Americans are stuck with a budgetary conundrum: they seem to be opting for more government, at least in health care, yet they do not seem prepared to pay for it. Their leaders have indulged this fantasy. Mr Obama has foolishly sworn off higher taxes on 95% of households, and Republicans will not countenance them for anybody. This newspaper strongly prefers small government and low taxes, but if Americans are to have bigger government and a sustainable budget, tax revenues will have to rise.
This is the defining issue of our time. Both parties seem unwilling to reduce entitlements. Democrats wish to raise taxes and Republicans are adamantly opposed. Republicans talk about reducing the size of government, but lack the willpower to actually do anything. Simply raising taxes on the rich won’t pay for everything. The Economist makes a great point about tax options. The United States taxes income too much and consumption too little. Everyone seems to agree there’s a savings problem in the United States. I’ve written before about the many inefficiencies of income taxes. A national sales tax is a much better solution. Unfortunately, we can’t trust the federal government not to abuse a sales tax while still levying an income tax. Plus, given America’s growing appetite for larger government taxes would continue to rise to pay for any new “rights” progressives dream up (the right to clothing, the right to food and shelter, the right to own a smart phone, and so on till we can’t get any of that stuff).
