The WaPo has a moment of sanity on health care reform
Is this WaPo editorial a portent of things to come? Let’s hope so.
The paper has turned on Congress and to a lesser extent the President, criticizing their proposal to further tax the rich to fund universal health care:
The traditional argument against sharp increases in the marginal tax rates of a very narrow band of Americans is that it could distort their economic behavior — most likely by encouraging them to put more of their money into tax shelters as opposed to productive investments. This effect could be greatest in certain states, such as New York, where a higher federal rate would add to already substantial state income taxes. The deeper issue, though, is whether it is wise to pay for a far-reaching new federal social program by tapping a revenue source that would surely need to be tapped if and when Congress and the Obama administration get serious about the long-term federal deficit…Pretending that “the rich” alone can fund government, let alone the kind of activist government that the president and Congress envision, is bad policy any way you look at it.
It’s not that the WaPo doesn’t think the rich should see their taxes increased. It’s not even that the paper is criticizing the “activist” government of this Congress and this President. It’s just that the editors think there’s a limit to how much even the filthy rich (some of whom might just be the editors of the WaPo?) can be asked to put out. According to the piece, the rich can only be tapped so many times, and reducing the deficit is a higher priority than universal health care right now.
The WaPo comes down in favor of the proposal Obama criticized so vigorously when it belonged to his opponent John McCain: ending tax breaks on employer-provided health benefits. The paper fails to note that one possible reason Obama won’t try this might be because it would make him out to be a fool and a hypocrite for being so hard on McCain.
But then again, since when has the threat of being called a hypocrite ever stopped Obama? No, the real reason he’s wedded to the tax increases on the rich may be tied to his goal of income redistribution: sticking it to the rich is so very satisfying and so fair, even when you’re one of them.
All I can say is….. Well, it’s ABOUT TIME!
That’s the WAPO saying “Why tax a little now when you can tax more later?”
My bet is….. both.
And of course there’s the WAPOs signature ignoring of the concept of “How about making those millions who pay nothing pay a little something?”
Check out this graph that Richard Fernandez was kind enough to post, and ponder what this means over the next three and half years.
Did gov’t revenue increase or decrease with the tax cuts of the Reagan era? We know the answer to that. If you place capitalism in Jeopardy, what will money do? Despite the visions the anointed have for the wonderful future under their control, people just keep exhibiting human nature, and doing what is their enlightened self-interest.
It’s really hard to get something permanent going that has to fight that tendency each and every day. We are beginning to see signs of the fatigue the planners of the future are feeling. It’s really hard to get water to run uphill.
The rich can always leave. The rest of us are stuck here.
Obonga is not “one of” the rich. Emphatically not. He is in a different economic class altogether and will remain immune to the onerous taxation imposed on the now-rich.
Hi Neo,
I’m still convinced that Obama’s most important idea came from his work on the south side of Chicago. Or more accurately, was reinforced by that experience.
He found a vast array of poor people without hope. He thinks those people live like that because capitalism (and capitalists) makes it so. He believes that if he uses the proper power against the capitalists, the life of those poor people will improve.
If I’m wrong about all that, then its pure ego on his part.
He either believes in non-sense, or he believes in himself and the exercise of his power. Which is preferable?
James
oops, try this link instead. (Neo, I sent you an email about deleting the above link if possible.)
http://www.climatedepot.com/a/1893/Gore-US-Climate-Bill-Will-Help-Bring-About-Global-Governance
Gracias Neo!
Good grief! Doesn’t anybody remember the Carter era? High taxes, high capital gains taxes, inflation high enough that you lost money by leaving in the bank? The rich were trying to LOSE money. One of the cool investments of the era was to bankroll a sunken-treasure expedition. That creates lots of jobs and wealth.
Not to mention the worst plague suffered by any society since the seventeenth century. Does anybody at least remember when everything that occupied space, wasn’t alive, and had mass was
I saw the poster couple for this type of thinking tonight on the way back from work.
The back of their vehicle was covered in stickers – some nude women outlines but most were leftist political causes. They had named their vehicle “The Revolution” (at least according to the graphics on the window) and the next big sticker that was easily readable said “Poor, young, and angry” and was obviously linked to the “revolution” tag.
They were in their early twenties and in a new Jeep Cherokee that was obviously upgraded to be an off road machine (you could see the beefed up suspension, axle/wheels, and roll cage). Both were talking on their cell phone and were wearing clothes with the designer names emblazoned in large letters.
I mean they can hardly afford their organic only diet and they only now have enough credit to get a 50 inch TV – the inhumanity of it all! Young, poor, and ANGRY!
Here he comes to save the day – Obama!!!
I love it. I hope all of Obama’s plans go up in smoke. I guess the Democrats would call me a traiter.
You know, Charles Krauthammer has written a series of articles recently where he basically says that Obama never wanted to deal with things like GM, AIG, etc., but was forced to because of the circumstances. Krauthammer thinks all of that was a mistake that will ultimately hinder Obama’s real goals: Cap/Trade and Health Care Reform.
I sure hope Krauthammer is right on this.
A comment at the link: “Freedom is not free. Pay your fair share of taxes.”
Bizarre. I don’t think people are talking about paying taxes when they say freedom is not free. “Pay, you SOBs, cause I hate you”, is what I get out of that statement. Typical totalitarian leftist.
This one is scary: “WE SHOULD PAY HIGHER TAXES. A WORKING, WELL-FUNDED GOVT BENEFITS US ALL.”
Yikes. It is even typed all in caps.
Yes, Krauthammer (a true voice of reason) has been saying all along that Obama is only interested in advancing his sweeping domestic agenda. And if Obama gets his way on health care in particular, then it’s an inevitable march toward rationing health care, with those worn out and expensive old people sure to be among the most expendable.
This is what Krauthammer had to say yesterday on Fox (can it be that the sleeping giant is beginning to stir? We can only hope!)
Krauthammer:
“I think Obama is misreading the mood of the country. Look, he was a genius last year at reading the mood of the country. That’s how he got elected–hope and change and newness and novelty, and all that. And he understood that the American people are willing to spend trillions as a way to undo a recession or to get out of unemployment.
But they are not willing to risk the budget and future high interest rates and perhaps a collapse of the currency on radical social experiments like health care or cap-and-trade and energy.
So he got it [deficit spending] on stimulus. He got everything he wanted on stimulus. He got almost $1 trillion dollars, and the problem is it has had no results.
So it has hurt him in two ways: (a) it has increased the deficit to the point where he would be adding on to it with health care and cap-and-trade. And secondly, it proves he is not infallible, which, to a lot of Democrats, has come as a shock. And they are now in quiet recovery.
And I think that’s really going to hurt him. It’s going to make the health care agenda and the energy agenda extremely hard to pass…”
MikeLL Says:
“A comment at the link: “Freedom is not free. Pay your fair share of taxes.””
It’s all pov I guess. I pay my fair share (as middle-middle class). Lets make the lower middle class on down pay theirs.
I just came from a forum on health care reform. It was a real eye opener!
The panel of experts who presented us with the reasons for and benefits of health care reform were seven people who want either single payer or Obama care. Only one person was from the health insurance industry. Except for the insurance man, these people are all expert at mouthing the slogans about our failing healthcare system. They also painted a utopian picture of how much better it will be if we can just get some change. The crowd was overwhelmingly favorable to their message.
We were allowed to submit written questions. Mine was: The CBO estimates it will cost $600 billion to implement this reform. If the goal is to cut healthcare costs, where are the savings? My question was not accepted by the moderator because it was too “confrontational.”
These people are true believers. They KNOW single payer or Obama care will be a huge improvement. They do not want to confront what the cost may be. I heard no discussion of costs except one person admitted, “Oh yeah, there’ll be startup costs, but then the savings will come from eliminating the insurance company profits.” That remark was met with big applause.
If this is the future, I’m really quite worried about what may happen. These people have stars in their eyes. Our only hope is to keep calling and writing our Congress Critters. Otherwise we may wake up and find ourselves in a Canadian health care system.
Thomass,
I agree with what you said. I just think that when people say “freedom is not free” they are talking about military sacrifice for freedom. That is how I have interpreted it anyway.
That person twisted it into a comment on taxes that seemed very much like, “Do it or you are a bad person.” Reminds me of Jar Jar Biden’s comment about how paying taxes is “patriotic.”
“Meesa thinks you should pay taxes. Meesa thinks you no patriotic unless you PAY.”
By the way, I understand the need for government. I think it was Madison that said, “If men were angels, we wouldn’t need government.” I am willing to “pay my fair share.” But these people never define what “fair” is. I don’t think they even know. They just hide behind words like “fair” and “equality” and “social justice” in order to increase government.
I think that is courting disaster.
Hmmm. . . that last comment appears somewhat accusatory. Sorry, Thomass, if that comes across wrong. Not my intent.
James,
I think you are right about Obama being influenced by his South Side experience. Unfortunately, because of his academic, theoretical programming and, I think, his own narcissistic personality, he is unable to see the fallacy in all the grand schemes. He just doesn’t understand how people work and what makes a good life. He also caught on to the idea that if you feed people’s grievances, you can gain power and acclaim. He justifies his own feelings of superiority by creating an imaginary “just” world, yet he is too damned lazy to deal with the nitty gritty details. He wants to create a force of health care workers, but he wouldn’t touch a bed pan himself. Nor will he acknowledge that the health care workers and all the bureaucrats who boss them around will be paid by people he wouldn’t sit down to dinner with. He and his will continue with $100/lb beef and congratulate themselves on their discriminating palate.
We don’t have an either/or situation with Obama. We have a self-reinforcing both.
One of the (many) things that bothers me about this attempt at health care reform is the impression I’m getting that Obama and his administration are attempting to pass this NOW!
They did this with the stimulus-the bulk of which (conveniently) won’t even be paid out until 2010. They said the country was in dire straits and there was no time to lose. Now they are quoting the same lines in regards to health care.
Let’s not forget that the “experts” in D.C. who are so eager to raise our taxes are the same people who DON’T PAY their own taxes (i.e., Geithner, Daschle, and so on). They are living proof of Leona Helmsley’s observation that “taxes are for the little people”.
For an interesting undercover look at Canada’s awful health care system, here’s a link to a video at Big Hollywood:
http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/scrowder/2009/07/13/must-see-undercover-expose-of-socialized-healthcare/
look up how a trust fund operates.
basically they roll everything they own into a living trust, and a living trust is not a person. is it? 🙂
Being blinded by socialistic causes, the democrats believe that tax revenues are limitless. The concept of cause and effect never enters their mind because there is always the opportunity to raise taxes again to fund a floundering and unsuccessful program.
Obama admitted this when he discussed limiting the charitable tax deduction for high earners; he said that if they really wanted to make a charitable deduction, they would continue to do so anyway. No recognition that many charitable donations would not exist if there were no tax incentive.
In a democrat’s mind, taxes are their birthright (take as en example, Barney Frank’s discussion of a bill to begin spending the return payments of stimulus money before they can be returned to the taxpayer).
With insurance another 1/6 of our economy becomes part of the state.
Imagine that, suddenly 1/6 is no longer taxable…
anyone but me realize that the state does not tax itself, so each sector (not business, but sector) it grabs takes billions of revenue away from the tax base?
He[Obama] either believes in non-sense, or he believes in himself and the exercise of his power.
Sadly, frighteningly, it seems to be both. One does not exclude the other. The “non-sense” is the received word of Progressivism. It determines their views of history, economics, foreign policy, domestic issues and current events. The underlying, all-encompassing theme is: America is evil, has always been evil and will continue to be evil until we, the Progressives, change America into our vision of what it should be.
You know, Charles Krauthammer has written a series of articles recently where he basically says that Obama never wanted to deal with things like GM, AIG, etc., but was forced to because of the circumstances. Krauthammer thinks all of that was a mistake that will ultimately hinder Obama’s real goals: Cap/Trade and Health Care Reform.
I sure hope Krauthammer is right on this.
I think the magnificent Kraut’s hammer is missing the nail head by a smidgen. Obama’s strategy is to pass, pass, pass and take, take, take before the nation has a chance to wake up from its utopian fantasies. Obama has hit the national consciousness like a whirlwind. It looks to me like he intends to do everything possible in this period of chaos and flux before reality sets in and regret hinders his path. Speed is of the essence.
There must be priorities, to be sure. Nationalized healthcare, once enacted, would be difficult to erase. New constituencies are created, new bureaucracies built and it can be added to over time, program by program, without much opposition. Just get a bill, any bill, passed, could be what he’s thinking. Moral credit can be taken, as in, “We brought healthcare to all our people.” The MSM would be full of tales of poor folks saved by Obama’s national healthcare program.
Cap and Trade is a tax and taxes are never easily rescinded. Politicians crave money for pork and stubbornly cling to the source: taxes. To avoid and mitigate the tax, corporations will curry favor from Obama. More power will be his and the power, unlike the relatively limited trio of banks, insurance companies and the auto industry, will cut across the spectrum of our economy. At a certain point, which has already been reached by Wal-Mart, corporations will begin to try to “game” the new dynamic and they will be in his pocket.