Herman

Cain

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February 25, 2008

Hillary Clinton’s Economic Solution: The New F-Word

When you peel back the populist rhetoric during last Thursday’s Democratic presidential primary debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, you find the frightening reality of how they believe they can solve people’s health care and mortgage crisis problems. It’s the use of force.

They were not talking about force against Islamic fascism or some of our known enemies, they were both talking about force against the citizens of this country and against U.S. businesses.

“Sen. Clinton believes the only way to achieve universal health care is to force everybody to purchase it.” – Sen. Barack Obama

Sen. Clinton emphatically acknowledged her belief later in the debate by implying that’s the reason Social Security and Medicare have been so successful. Wow! So that’s why we have to use force, so we can create another model of government efficiency.

Sen. Obama believes that the government should only force parents to buy health insurance for their children, and not necessarily for themselves. Let’s call it “force lite” for comparison purposes.  

To solve the mortgage crisis that some people are experiencing, Hillary chose a variation of the f-word, because when government freezes prices, it forces businesses to reduce profit margins until the business can no longer sell the product or service. Maybe she did not think we would notice.

“I would put a moratorium for 90 days to give us time to work out a way for people to stay in their homes, and I would freeze interest rates for five years because these adjustable rate mortgages, if they keep going up, millions of Americans are going to be homeless.” – Sen. Hillary Clinton

I am really not trying to mock Sen. Clinton, but simply trying to highlight the absurdity of her thinking when I ask: Who is this “us” that’s going to work out a way for people to stay in their homes? That’s up to the homeowner and the lender. And if the government gets in the middle of it, history has shown that it would only produce a worse result.

Furthermore, if she were able to freeze interest rates for five years, that action would not prevent millions of Americans from going homeless. It would actually create millions of homeless people. Let’s try an analogy as to why this would happen, since her economic advisors don’t seem to get it.

If the government freezes the price of a loaf of bread, then the grocer will have to freeze what he pays the bakery for the bread. The bakery will eventually have to freeze what it pays for flour to the flour miller, who in turn will have to freeze what he pays the farmer for the wheat. 

The farmer will lose his already narrow profit margin over five years, and will decide to just stop growing wheat. Eventually, there would only be very expensive bread or no “store-bought” bread at all for millions of people.

If we are forced to buy health insurance just as we are forced to pay into a soon-to-be-broke Social Security system, we will eventually be forced to live with health care rationing. That’s the only logical consequence since we now are forced to live with the rationing of Social Security benefits, which will be rationed even more as each year passes.

Yes Hillary, as you also stated during the debate, actions do speak louder than words. But the words force and freeze are so loud, they are screaming economic earthquake.

Just imagine a “new” United States of America with forced health care, forced Medicare and forced Social Security, while forcing price freezes on businesses. It’s not freedom or friendly.

It’s just a frightening nightmare. 

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