Dan

Calabrese

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July 20, 2009

Democrats Want State-Run Health Care So Bad, Not Even Certain Disaster Will Stop Them

Democrats have wanted to put health care under the control of the federal government for a very long time. Now that they finally have the majorities they need to do it, there appears to be nothing that will stop them – not even the certainty that their plan will bankrupt the nation.

The nation is careening toward fiscal calamity as it is. The nation’s $10.8 trillion debt, which would double under President Obama’s 10-year budget projections, is chump change compared with $58 trillion in unfunded entitlement obligations for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. Federal spending is so completely out of control that this year, for the first time in our history, we are borrowing more than half of what we’re spending.

How we got here is surely a bipartisan story of recklessness and neglect. We could talk about that forever. But the facts are what they are, and the obligation to do something responsible about it lies with those we just elected.

What they are doing instead is so breathtakingly irresponsible, it can only be the result of a willful decision to ignore plain facts and press ahead in the pursuit of a Democratic Holy Grail that is close – oh so close! – that no reality check could possibly be enough to keep them from doing it.

Forget for a moment that this plan will devastate the quality of health care in America. There are plenty of other commentaries that explain this.

Let’s just focus in this space on the dollars. The current Senate bill carries an annual price tag of $615 billion. The current federal budget, which is surely going to balloon even without the government taking over health care, is $3.6 trillion – of which we’re borrowing $1.9 trillion. Add the cost of the Senate bill, and we’re spiraling toward national default so fast it’s almost pointless to try to stop it, which is apparently what the Democrats have already concluded.

When the Democrats tried to claim that the federal takeover of health care would bring costs under control, their own Congressional Budget Office director, Doug Elmendorf, slapped them down. Elmendorf’s analysis is that it would do quite the opposite, and would add $239 billion to the deficit between 2010 and 2019.

How did Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid respond to Elmendorf’s warning? He blasted Elmendorf’s assessment as partisan and huffed, “What he should do is run for Congress.”

No. What he should do is his job, and that’s exactly what he’s doing – laying out the real costs to the dunderheads who did run for Congress and are now entirely unconcerned with the national fiscal consequences of their recklessness. What Harry Reid should do is listen to him, as should House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Obama.

But they’re not. I doubt that Obama, Pelosi or Reid would use a personal credit card to purchase a car whose price was well beyond their means, but they have no compunction whatsoever about dragging the nation into such a predicament with this health care boondoggle. Why?

Many of my colleagues and peers believe it is because they are, deep down, totalitarians who want to control every aspect of our lives. They already control General Motors. The ridiculous cap-and-trade bill will allow them to control much of the rest of American manufacturing. Now they’ll control health care too.

If this were a totalitarian plot, you’d have to at least respect how shrewdly they’re going about it. But I think it’s a bit more pedestrian than that, which in a way makes it even more pathetic.

Politics in the Democratic Party has long been about interest-group pandering. Democrats stay in office by steering favors to this group or that group, on the basis of who can turn out votes, who can generate campaign contributions and who can help them prevail in propaganda efforts. Democrats are frustrated by free-market economics because it’s hard to dole out favors when the market functions without your benevolent manipulation.

In the world of the Democrats, every problem in America is solved by people petitioning the government, and the government stepping in to make everything fair. The more people have to come to them, the easier it is for them to peddle influence and buy votes. That doesn’t sound like Josef Stalin to me. It sounds like Huey Long or Richard Daley – old-line machine politicians who bought the goodwill of the people in exchange for the freedom to engage in all the graft and corruption they wanted.

Democrats ache for this. It has been their dream forever, and now that they’re in a position to make it happen, nothing will stop them from turning their dream into America’s fiscal nightmare.

© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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