David

Karki

Read David's bio and previous columns here

August 26, 2009

ObamaCare and the Bigger Picture

In the heat of the fight over “ObamaCare,” let us not lose sight of the bigger picture.

A trillion-dollar tax increase is inevitably coming next year with the expiration of the Bush tax cuts. This will strangle any nascent economic “recovery” in the cradle, as well as further bloat the already obscene record-level deficit and debt figures run up by President Obama, as tax revenues dwindle through people feverishly sheltering and hiding all they can from the punishing higher rates.

The estate tax, which had steadily been decreasing down to nothing, will come roaring back at its full 55 percent monstrousness. As if seniors didn't think they were in the crosshairs enough with Obama's “death panels,” now they'll have the majority of all they've worked for in their lives seized by government. And any who are unfortunate enough to be in poor condition will be faced with their caretakers having a perverse incentive to pull the plug sooner, so that their estate can still be inherited in full by their progeny. 

The ponzi schemes that are Social Security and Medicare will reach their inverted-pyramid worst, as the Baby Boomers retire and become recipients rather than contributors. Given the sheer number of this cohort and how long they will live and draw on these programs, their mutual collapse is a demographic certainty. Mathematically, there are simply too many elderly and not nearly enough young people to keep transferring wealth from the latter to the former by the current formula. And it's doubtful that even measures like raising the retirement age, reducing benefits, means-testing them and such will save them, so large is the liability involved (about $70 trillion).

In fact, these two entitlements will consume the entire federal budget by the end of the next decade. Lest you think that sounds like a long way off, that would only be the middle of the first term of President Obama's successor, were he to serve two terms. If you have a first-grader, it would be around the time he or she graduates high school. It isn't that far down the road at all.

Furthermore, we'll start feeling the impact much before then, much like a hurricane is felt in the form of strong winds and heavy surf while its core is still several hundred miles out to sea. All the government programs that currently depend on looted monies from the trust funds for their operating budgets will have to be cut in order to pay entitlement benefits. Then, the worthless IOUs that Congress has left behind as they've looted and spent the trust fund over the decades have to start being redeemed. That will force the rest of the federal budget to be cut and cut again, or taxes to be massively raised, or both, so the revenues can be directed to benefits.

To put it simply, that light at the end of the tunnel is an oncoming freight train. And there isn't any room inside the tunnel to avoid the inevitable collision.

Every last bit of the above is a demographic, mathematical or political certainty. These things will happen, and soon. We can't stop them any more than we can stop the sun rising in the east and setting in the west (the enviro-wackos' delusions of climate-control grandeur notwithstanding). There will be a trillion-dollar tax increase next year. There will be a 55 percent estate tax. Entitlement spending is about to devour everything else.

In this context, the passing of a trillion-dollar Porkulus bill, followed by attempts to ram “cap and trade” and “ObamaCare” down America's throat have to be seen for what they are – nothing short of total fiscal lunacy. And the idea that this will in any way “save cost” is utter absurdity.

No, the real purpose of these two bills is simply Democrats trying to prop up the vote-buying power base that entitlements have long functioned as for them. Beyond being an unconscionable grab for total power and control by government over every aspect of your daily life, they are also an attempt to un-invert the pyramid and perpetuate the ponzi scheme for a while longer. And not just for vote-buying, but because the collapse of these entitlements would be a veritable death-blow to liberalism itself, exposing the inescapable fact of its unsustainability for everyone to see, once and for all.

Which is why “cap and tax” and ObamaCare have to be seen by the American people as a modern-day political Lexington and Concord. The Democrats, as the Redcoats before them, are on the march and intent on taking away the means by which we'd preserve our liberty. If anything, they are much more determined and ruthless, as everything they've built up and believe in rides upon this. This is far more than a simple policy fight to them.

For our part, this is also much more than a political fight. As the freight train metaphor indicates, it's nothing less than our country's life or death as a constitutional republic. Whether it's by the imposition of government diktat on the most personal decisions of private lives or the inevitable financial destruction caused by vastly overspending our means, our nation as we've known it is just as gone.

Will we rise to the occasion and be modern-day Minutemen?

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

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