Democrats and Healthcare and Money January 30, 2009

I guess it’s not just Democrats. The Republicans sure spent a lot of money the past few years too. I sure am glad they said no to the “Stimulus” Plan though. (And here I am reacting when I said just a few posts ago that I was only going to ACT which means philosophizing constructively). But anyway, I guess it feels more unwise to spend so much when so many people are losing their jobs because where does the money come from? The government gets money from us the citizens or from loans. If the citizens don’t have money they can’t pay taxes. And the government can’t keep on borrowing, can it? Doesn’t it have to stop somewhere? Observing this moment–the recession, the House Democrats passing a huge stimulus plan that is just so HUGE and by huge I mean ecclectic and not inuitive, gross even, people losing their jobs–makes me feel like something is eventually going to give. I don’t know when, but we have already paid a price as a country for spending beyond our means, for having a national average savings rate that is in the negative. That price has been an inflation. When we are going to learn the same lesson applies to our government? We can’t go on spending more than we have forever. And I say WE because we are essentially the government. WE are responsible; that’s the beauty of a republican democracy. What is the cost going to be? And when is the due date? I don’t know. We have expensive healthcare, but is it really necessary for the government to solve the problem? Is that really a solution? Why is the government enabling people who make over 65,000 dollars to use government health care? What else would those people be doing with their money? What is the government allowing them to do with the money they’ve “saved” by not buying into their own healthcare? And why is it an all or nothing deal? Why can’t people pay a part of the government healthcare? Are Democrats allowing people to pay for their mortgage that they shouldn’t have bought into in the first place? Are they allowing them to pay for those unlimited family cell phone plans or even for just one cell phone? Are they allowing them to go out to eat all of the time like they are used to doing? Are they allowing them to have nicer cars? I guess maybe they would say yes to all of those things, and then justify it by saying that doing all of those things help drive the economy. But maybe the economy shouldn’t be driven that much, it’s not tenable, and that’s how we came to where we are.

I’m including an article from today’s WSJ by Kimberley A. Strassel about the Democrats’ healthcare efforts: “Democratic Stealth Care”.

With the nation preoccupied by the financial crisis, Democrats have been quietly working to nationalize health care.

Tom Daschle is still waiting to be confirmed as secretary of health and human services, not that he’s in any rush. Democrats are already enacting his and Barack Obama’s agenda of government-run health care — entirely on the QT.

This was the real accomplishment of this week’s House vote for the $819 billion “stimulus,” and is the overriding theme of Congress’s first month. With the nation occupied with the financial crisis, and with that crisis providing cover, Democrats have been passing provision after provision to nationalize health care.

If Democrats learned anything from the HillaryCare defeat, it was the danger of admitting to their wish to federalize the health market. Since returning to power, they’ve pursued a new strategy: to stealthily and incrementally expand government control. “What no one is paying attention to in the [stimulus],” says Wisconsin Rep. Paul Ryan, “is that Democrats are making a big grab at the health-care sector.”

It began one week after the swearing-in, when Nancy Pelosi whipped through a big expansion of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program. The Schip bill was Democrats’ first stab at stealth expansion, unveiled in 2007, though vetoed by George W. Bush.

Initially designed for children of working-poor families, this new Super-Schip will be double in size, and even kids whose parents make $65,000 a year will be eligible. The program will also now cover pregnant women and automatically enroll their new arrivals. The Congressional Budget Office estimates 2.4 million individuals will drop their private coverage for the public program.

Still, it’s the “stimulus” that has proven the real gift horse — a behemoth that has allowed Democrats to speed up the takeover of health care under cover of an economic crisis. They initially claimed, for instance, the “stimulus” would provide Medicaid money to states struggling to pay existing bills. What in fact it does is dramatically expand the number of Americans who qualify for Medicaid.

Under “stimulus,” Medicaid is now on offer not to just poor Americans, but Americans who have lost their jobs. And not just Americans who have lost their jobs, but their spouses and their children. And not Americans who recently lost their jobs, but those who lost jobs, say, early last year. And not just Americans who already lost their jobs, but those who will lose their jobs up to 2011. The federal government is graciously footing the whole bill. The legislation also forbids states to apply income tests in most cases.

House Democrat Henry Waxman was so thrilled by this blowout, it was left to Republicans to remind him that the very banking millionaires he dragged to the Hill last year for a grilling would now qualify for government aid. His response? A GOP proposal to limit subsidies to Americans with incomes under $1 million was accepted during markup, but had disappeared by final passage. In this new health-care nirvana, even the rich are welcome. CBO estimates? An additional 1.2 million on the federal Medicaid dime in 2009.

The “stimulus” also hijacks Cobra, a program that lets the unemployed retain access to their former company health benefits — usually for about 18 months. The new stimulus permits any former employee over the age of 55 to keep using Cobra right up until they qualify for Medicare at age 65. And here’s the kicker: Whereas employees were previously responsible for paying their health premiums while on Cobra, now the feds will pay 65%. CBO estimates? Seven million Americans will have the feds mostly pay their insurance bills in 2009.

The bill even takes a whack at the private market. Under the guise of money for “health technology,” the legislation makes the government the national coordinator for electronic health records, able to certify what platforms are acceptable. This is an attempt to squelch a growing private market that is competing to improve transparency and let consumers compare providers and costs. In liberal-world, only government should be publishing (and setting) health-care prices.

Add it up, and Democrats may move 10 million more Americans under the federal health umbrella — in just four weeks! Good luck ever cutting off that money. Meanwhile, the Democratic majority is gearing up for a Medicare fight, where it may broach plans to lower the eligibility age to 55. Whatever costs accrue, they’ll pay for by slashing the private Medicare Advantage option.

Mr. Obama will, of course, offer his health-care reform at some point. But he’s clearly happy to get what he can, when he can. Despite talk of entitlement reform, he’s voiced no disapproval of this vast new health-care grab. And don’t forget he chose Mr. Daschle, who appreciates stealth himself. In his 2008 book outlining his health-care reform, he offers his party two pieces of political advice: Move fast, before there can be a public debate, and write as vague a bill as possible.

Guiding all of this is the left’s hope that by the time America wakes up to what’s happening, it’ll be too late. Democrats might be on to something.

Write to kim@wsj.com

Optimism! October 24, 2008

The media depresses me, but also uplifts! Here is a good article from Peggy Noonan from today:

43% Isn’t Nothing

Obama looks like a winner, but it’s not over yet.

It’s all going fast, the whirl of images on the screen, words on the page, data flashing by. Barack Obama’s up here, his lead now in the double digits there. In green rooms on book interviews, I see quietly angry former Reagan staffers, defensive former Bush aides, harried McCain spokesmen, and almost-jaunty Democrats. A network correspondent with a reputation for fairness—no one knows how this reporter votes—came by one day and shrugged with frustration. Everyone asks me about media bias. Of course the media loves Obama, but I can’t say it. I didn’t take notes, but I think that’s word for word. Soon after, I received an email from a different journalist who referred, in passing, to where many journalists stand.

Neither of these people is conservative. When nonconservatives see the Obama love, and refer to it without prompting, the Obama love is deep. Remember how John McCain used to refer jokingly to the press as “my base”? Now it’s part of Mr. Obama’s. But if Mr. McCain loses, the reason will not be press bias.

The press knows who the press is for, and it isn’t generally the one to the right. This has been true all my life. What has also been true is that the Republican had to get around it with the truth of his stands, the force of his arguments, the un-ignorability of his words, the power of his presence. You have to go over the head of the interpreters and gently seize the country by its lapels. Mr. McCain never got much over their heads. This is not because they’re so tall. His campaign was not so much about meaning as it was, in the end, a series of moments—a good interview with Rick Warren, a good convention, Joe the Plumber . . .

And yet: It’s not over. For one thing, Mr. McCain has got to be reading Steven Stark’s piece in the Boston Phoenix, which imagines the forces that could produce a McCain upset. What if Mr. Obama underperforms on Election Day, just as he did in the final primaries with Hillary Clinton? What if senior citizens turn out in record numbers and vote for the older guy, and the financial crisis seems to fade, and Mr. McCain finds new grounding on the issue of taxes, and the Obama campaign undermines itself with premature triumphalism . . .

Mr. McCain has endless faith in his ability to come back. He’s been doing it for 40 years, from Vietnam, where, with the injuries he’d sustained and the torture he experienced, he might have died, was likely to die, and yet survived, to exactly a year ago, when he was out of money and out of luck. And then he won New Hampshire. When he says, “We got ‘em where we want ‘em” he must mean: They think they are looking at a corpse. No one in politics has so repeatedly relished coming back from the dead.

Not a single poll has Mr. McCain ahead. The RealClearPolitics average of national polls as I write, rounded off, is Obama 50%, McCain 43%. Actually Mr. Obama has 50.1%, and if that is true and holds, it would make him the first Democratic presidential nominee since Jimmy Carter to break 50%. But I find myself thinking of what that 43% means. It’s a big number, considering that this is the worst Republican year in generations. Amid two wars, a deep economic crisis, a fractured base, too much cynicism, and a campaign with the wind not at its back but head on in its face—with all of that working against Mr. McCain, 43% of the American people say, right now, in these polls, they are for him. And there are a significant number of undecideds. Four years ago about 122 million people voted. Forty-three percent of 122 million is 52 million people, more or less. A huge group, one too varied to generalize about because it includes flinty elderly Republicans from New England, home-schooling mothers in Ohio, libertarianish Republicans in Colorado, suburban patriots outside the big cities, and many others.

They are the beating heart of conservatism, and to watch most television is to forget they exist, for they are not shown much, except at rallies. But they are there, and this is a center-right nation, and many of them have been pushing hard against the age for 40 years now, and more. For some time they have sensed that something large and stable is being swept away, maybe has been swept away, and yet you still have to fight for it. They will not give up without a fight, and they will make their way to the polls.

And they will be a rock-hard challenge to Mr. Obama if he wins.

This is the thing: If Mr. Obama wins, and governs as a moderate liberal, not veering left, not seeming to be the cap that pops off a kettle that’s been boiling for eight years, but governs to a degree, at least in general approach, as Bill Clinton did—as a moderate Democrat well aware of the terrain—he may know some success. And he may be able to tamp down the insistence of the long-simmering left by the force of his own popularity, which will grow once he is president among grateful Democrats, and others. But if he goes left—if it comes to seem as if the attractive, dark-haired man has torn open his shirt to reveal a huge S, not for Superman but for Socialist, if he jumps toward reforms such as a speech-limiting new Fairness Doctrine, that won’t yield success. It will yield trouble, and unneeded domestic arguments. We have enough needed ones.

In a way, Mr. Obama can more easily go left in foreign relations for the precise reason no one knows what going left is, because no one knows what going right in foreign relations is, at least if “right” means “conservative.” Mr. Obama has a great chance, in this area, to confuse the world. And a confused world is not all a bad thing. His persona, name, color, youth and approach will, at least initially, jumble up long-settled categories. Radicals enjoy hating America, but a particular picture of America. He is not that picture. He will give calculating Western European leaders an opening to be friendly to America again; they will feel that Mr. Obama’s victory constitutes the rebuke of the Bushism they desire. They will befriend the rebuker.

People wonder if he is decisive. It is clear he is decisive in terms of his own career: He decides to go for president of the law review, to move to Chicago, to roll the dice for a U.S. Senate seat, to hire David Axelrod, to take on Hillary, to campaign with discipline and even elegance. When it comes to his career, his decisions are thought through and his judgments sound. But when it comes to decisions that have to do with larger issues, with great questions and not with him, things get murkier. There is the long trail of the missed and “present” votes, the hesitance on big questions. One wonders if in the presidency he’ll be like the dog that chased the car and caught it: What’s he supposed to do now?

It is mean out there, and in the next week it will get darker still, perhaps spectacularly so. To me, the biggest nightmare would be a tie. The worst resolution would be no resolution. And the quarrel would not, for even a moment, abate.

I need to remember that there are lots of good people out there. By good, I mean, conservative. Heh. I especially like this part, “They are the beating heart of conservatism, and to watch most television is to forget they exist, for they are not shown much, except at rallies.” Because that is exactly what has happened to me. The media depresses me, and I know it does, but I still read and listen.

I should not be so moved by what I read though. I should have the integrity and thought to sustain me and give me confidence despite what others are saying.

Oh what a depressing article! October 23, 2008

I love the following article, but it depresses me at the same time. Read it!

October 23, 2008

Willie Sutton Goes to Harvard

By George Will

“Because that’s where the money is.”
– Willie Sutton, when asked in 1934 why he robbed banks

WASHINGTON — Washington is having a Willie Sutton Moment. Such moments occur when government, finding its revenue insufficient for its agenda, glimpses some money it does not control but would like to.

Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, and Rep. Peter Welch, D-Vt., recently convened a discussion of how colleges and universities should be spending their endowments. Grassley, who says more than 135 institutions each have endowments of more than $500 million, says perhaps they should be required to spend 5 percent of their endowments each year. Welch has introduced legislation to require that percentage be spent to reduce tuition and other student expenses.

This government reach for control of private resources comes even though last year colleges and universities spent, on average, 4.6 percent of their endowments. Furthermore, most endowments are too small to be a significant source of captured money.

Last fiscal year, Harvard’s endowment, earning an 8.6 percent return, grew from $34.9 billion to $36.9 billion. Although less than the 23 percent return in the previous year, it was an excellent performance, considering the economic turbulence. But only 45 private institutions have endowments of more than $1 billion. Among the other 98 percent (1,565) of institutions, the median endowment is just $14 million. So government in a Willie Sutton mood would target the wealthiest institutions — those that are the foundation of basic research that undergirds American prosperity, and that have the most generous financial aid programs for students.

Nowadays, much of politics consists of telling voters that the prices of many things they buy — gasoline, health care, higher education — are unreasonable. But demand for higher education has not declined even though its price at many institutions has risen even faster than the price of health care. Parents continue to pay rising tuition costs because they consider higher education a reasonable investment. They know that, today, wealth creation is driven by “human capital” — trained minds — and that “you earn what you learn.”

Daniel Mark Fogel told the Grassley-Welch panel that at the University of Vermont, of which he is president, 60 percent of undergraduates, and 74 percent of this year’s freshman class, are from out of the state. They pay the nation’s second-highest non-resident tuition, which subsidizes the lower tuition paid by Vermonters, and helps offset declines in state appropriations.

Some Massachusetts state legislators, committing two of the seven deadly sins, are angry because tax revenues do not match their ambitions, and envious of Harvard. They suggest raising more than $1 billion annually with a 2.5 percent assessment on the nine colleges and universities in the state that have endowments of more than $1 billion.

California legislators, disguising a third sin, avarice, as concern for “diversity,” want to require large California foundations to report the race, gender and sexual orientation of their trustees, staff and grant recipients. Other state legislatures will emulate this step toward government control of the flow of philanthropy.

So it goes. The almost erotic pleasure of spending money that others have earned and saved is one reason people put up with the tiresome aspects of political life. And now the government’s response to the financial crisis, including the semi-nationalization of nine major banks, has blurred — indeed, almost erased — the distinction between public and private sectors.

Hundreds of billions of dollars that the political class would have liked to direct for its own social and political purposes have been otherwise allocated. That allocation, by government fiat rather than by market forces, must reduce the efficiency of the nation’s stock of capital. Which in turn will reduce economic growth, and government revenues, just as the welfare state — primarily pensions and medical care for the elderly — becomes burdened by the retirement of 78 million baby boomers.

As government searches with increasing desperation for money with which it can work its will, Willie Sutton Moments will multiply. Government has an incentive to weaken the belief that the nation needs a vigorous and clearly demarcated sector of private educational and philanthropic institutions exercising discretion over their own resources.

So the frequently cited $700 billion sum is but a small fraction of the cost, over coming decades, of today’s financial crisis. The desire of governments to extend their control over endowments and foundations is a manifestation of the metastasizing statism driven by the crisis. For now, its costs, monetary and moral, are, strictly speaking, incalculable.

It seems to me that government are inclined to grow bigger. That’s why they are lame. I am not really depressed, but I kind of am. Politics are just so depressing right now. Why can’t everyone just admit that government IS NOT THE ANSWER?.

I Feel Annoyed When… April 12, 2007

Today at work we discussed conflict resolution; one part of resolution is to avoid saying You You You, but rather say, “I get frustrated when…” There are a few things that are annoying me right now:

One, that Sanjaya on American Idol is so popular. Why does that annoy me? Because he has long hair, and I think that is disgusting. Otherwise, I think he is a good looking guy.

Two, that Democrats, led by Nancy Pelosi, think it is a victory to deny funds to American troops.

Three, that Nancy Pelosi thinks it is OKAY to travel around the world supposedly representing the United States. What on earth is she thinking? Even if she does think she has the right to independently alter America’s foreign policy just because she is the Speaker of the House, why does she think she has the mandate to do so? The executive and the legislative branches were (purposely) designed differently. The presidency is a one person office. The legislature has 435 members of which Ms. Pelosi is ONE. Surely not everyone in the legislature thinks the way she does about foreign policy, so even if, as some argue, Congress has the power to take over foreign policy when the president is “messing it up” doesn’t mean that it actually makes any sense for it to do so!

Four, that it is not a big deal that the Duke lacrosse players HAD STRIPPERS IN THEIR HOUSE!! Why is this is not an issue? I know we live in a free country, and I know sex is no longer a big deal to a lot of people, but I cannot believe that no one thinks it is inappropriate that a university endorsed team is being entertained by strippers. A stripper has what other purpose than to turn guys on? And why is that okay?

YES, Exactly! October 16, 2006

You know, I co-authored a paper this summer about what Republicans should do to win maintain control of Congress this November, and perhaps I’ll post some of it sometime soon, but frankly, I think Kimberely Strassel in the WSJ gets it better than I did: http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/kstrassel/?id=110009100.

It’s about leadership and people who keep their promises. In my paper, my co-author and I argued that Republicans need to be leaders; they needed to figure out their ideology and then <i>stick to it</i>. It seems like a lot of Republicans have forgotten what conservatism stands for, or perhaps never cared.

It’s Time, and A Little Bit of Aristotle July 31, 2006

For awhile now I’ve been thinking that I wanted to change the world. And for awhile I’ve been frustrated that I haven’t been able to do it. I’ve been waiting for the time when I have, you know, influence, authority in my field, more education, a real job, etc. But I decided I don’t need to wait anymore. So I am joining the massive blogosphere. Not that I think that I will change the world by throwing my two cents in, but I hope to hone my ideas and my ideals by writing about them and hopefully getting responses to them.

I have a few specific things I hope to change: I think they’ll be detectable, if not downright obvious as I proceed with my new blog.

For a start, I like this quote from Aristotle:

“Lawmakers make the citizens good by inculcating (good) habits in them, and this is the aim of every lawgiver; if he does not succeed in doing that, his legislation is a failure. It is in this that a good constitution differs from a bad one.” (Nicomachean Ethics, translated by Martin Oswald, The Library of Liberal Arts, 1962, 35)

What is the aim of a lawmaker? To inculcate good habits in the citizens. I guess to determine whether or not a lawmakers is a success or failure, one would have to determine the definition of “good habits.” If going by traditional American habits, that seems easy enough: hard work, independance, individualism, distrust of government.

Perhaps by looking at one issue, we could take a sort of quick reading of how our lawmakers are doing. Let’s pick earmarks. The following links discuss government spending: de Rugy’s from AEI, and Congressman Jeff Flake on Earmarks and Federal Spending. Federal spending and earmarks are distinct, but earmarks add substanially to federal spending. Here is what bothers me about earmarks: they are amendments added to legislation that most members of Congress probably do not read anyway. And perhaps most members of Congress are okay not reading about them, before voting for them because they too want everyone else to pass their own earmarks. It’s a sort not-quite-ignorance is a bliss, a you scratch my back, and I’ll scratch yours i.e. don’t read mine and I won’t read yours and our constituents will all be happy. Is that really how Congress is supposed to work? And to you who excuse Congress by saying it has a lot of work to do and how we can we possibly expect every member to read every piece of legislation, I would respond: if Congress has so much to do that it cannot even read what they are voting for, then perhaps Congress has taken too much (or perhaps been given too much) responsibility. Perhaps Congress should not be handling as much as it is trying to handle. Peggy Noonan nails this on the head (I think you might need a subscription for wsj to read this article).

So, back to taking Congress’ (the ultimate lawmaker) temperature. Is it inculcating good habits by dishing out millions of dollars of federal money to their constituents? Probably not, because it trains their constituents to beg them (i.e. the government) for more money. Is that independance? Is that government distrust? Is that individualism? No, and therefore our lawgivers’ legislation is failing.