It should be no surprise that I'm not happy with today's signing of the new health care legislation. Let's hear from two people I respect a lot more than I do the president.
Milton Friedman:
Ronald Reagan:
I've seen and heard entirely too many liberals who taunt with glee those of us who don't want more government. Great, you won, we all lost.
Update, 3/24/10: View this chart (on this web site) to see the unsustainability of federal health expenditures.
The problem with overreach is that you don't know when you've gone too far. This bill goes too far. I read of a medical device company in Pennsylvania that estimates their taxes will be twice their profits. For some reason the left still sees profit (unless it is an officially cultured socially correct area) to be evil. They do not see it as the grease that allows companies to function or the fuel that grows jobs. I've made some pretty solid predictions about this. I hope I am wrong, but I fear I am not.
ReplyDeletePS> Uttering ironic, the CEO of GE (parent company of NBC/MSNBC) is suddenly worried that it will cost them a whole bunch of money. Who knew? Maybe they can cut Olberman and Maddow's pay.
The government has been heavily involved in health care funding for nearly fifty years. And the dire warnings about socialism and the demise of America have been around for seventy-five.
ReplyDeleteAnd the day of reckoning gets closer. What date is it now when social security will pay out more than it takes in, 2016? How about Medicare?
ReplyDeleteWe can't afford the government we have, and now we've gotten more.
And the unsustainable increases in the cost of health care have been due to that government involvement.
ReplyDeleteJust read David Walker's "Comeback America" or Bruce Bartlett's "New American Economy" and you'll realize that the date is not an absolute.
ReplyDeleteA snip here and a tuck there from politicians actually committed to reform, and the deficit goes down, the debt gets paid off, and a basic simplified version of Social Security and Medicare survive.
It's basic math, and a matter of will, and there's is no reason to given in to irrational Glenn Beck-like hysteria.
Glenn Beck-like hysteria? No. The CBO has been telling us for years these programs will take in less than they pay out some time this decade. I choose to believe them without having to resort to hyperbole.
ReplyDeleteAnd if "a snip here and a tuck there" were all it took to restore solvency, it would have been done years ago.
BTW, if anyone needs a laugh, and I know I do, there's a very amusing film clip on my blog about how bills become laws in the World of Obama.
ReplyDeleteThe trouble with your bland "snip here, tuck there" formulation is that the recipients of the largess of politicians, along with the politicians themselves, get hysterical when the programs don't expand.
ReplyDeleteI remember the hysteria that attended welfare reform and if I heard the formulation "Republicans want to starve a million, poor children" any less then five times a day watching TV or listening to the radio I'd be surprised.
Like anything that's funded via the political process success comes to be measured by increases in funding rather then in the meeting of the need that's originally advanced as the reason for the funding public education being a prime example.