These are interesting times, for sure — nowhere moreso, unfortunately, than on Capitol Hill. A trillion dollar health bill appears destined to be excreted by Congress before New Years, despite the fact that 57% of Americans (and growing) staunchly oppose it. As recently as last week, it looked as though Joe Lieberman, the Senate’s lone independent, would put the kibosh on this whopping legislative turd when he issued an “over-my-dead-body” statement in opposition to the plan’s “public option.” Lo, there was Lieberman on the Senate floor Saturday afternoon, providing the 60th vote the Democrats needed to overcome a Republican filibuster. Because Lieberman does not drive on the Sabbath, he’d walked to the Rotunda after morning services at his Georgetown synagogue 3-1/2 miles away. Couldn’t he at least have waited until Monday to betray his supposed principles and sell out most of those who elected him?
What amazes most about the health care bill is how it just keeps coming, like some sci-fi dreadnaught that is impervious to bullets, flames and bombs. The bill most surely is impervious to the barrage of negative newspaper articles that have tried to explain, in language that even the village idiot could understand, why this is probably the worst piece of legislation to come out of Congress since the founding of the Republic.
Reid’s Triumph of the Will
The villain of this saga, Sen. Harry Reid, is very much in the driver’s seat. He has earned our grudging respect for being able to push through Congress a political Trojan horse that has the potential to complete Big Governnment’s subjugation of the free-enterprise system under the New Deal. The fact that the plan would be colossally wasteful and that it would benefit only a small minority of Americans while making health care significantly more expensive for everyone else, is testimony to Reid’s ruthless behind-the-scenes tactics. His most potent weapon lies in having 60 evidently robotic votes he can count on no matter what’s in the bill (which seems to be metastasizing by-the-hour with new giveaways). Republicans have voted as a solid bloc against every new provision, but if this bill can pass, it means the Democrats are capable of passing any bill, even one that would ban the Republican Party and banish its leaders to some remote island.
Reid’s path has been paved by fellow Democrats who neither know nor care what’s in the bill but who will vote for it as long as it seems to advance Obama’s goal of a Government takeover of the healthcare system. The latest fillip would lower the eligibility age for Medicare by ten years to 55, a change that we doubt even Reid has the chutzpah to argue will save the taxpayers money. According to Fox News, Dick Durbin, the Senate’s second-ranking Democrat, knew almost nothing about this proposed, huge Medicare expansion when he was queried about it by John McCain. Our guess is that it came to Reid as he drifted off to sleep one night, and that he simply dropped it into the bill the next day to see if it would fly. The fact that such a radical expansion of Medicare could be casually slipped into the bill, then “debated” in the newspapers for a couple of days, is evidence of the wanton recklessness and lack of deliberation that has shaped the healthcare legislation.
Ron Paul Interview
Meanwhile, over at Fox News, Glenn Beck was interviewing Rep. Ron Paul about another bill that would seek to shackle and punish Wall Street. It contains a useful provision to audit the Fed within two years, but we’ll believe that when it actually comes to pass. We have no political differences with left-wingers when it comes to putting a lid on Wall Street’s quasi-criminal excesses. However, there’s reason to fear that legislative overkill will wind up throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Specifically, a provision that would drastically hike trading fees and taxes is so heavy-handed that it could dramatically curtail liquidity on the nation’s securities exchanges and drive securities business to other regions of the world.
We’ve reprinted Yeats’ great poem above with no trepidation about whether these times are sufficiently interesting to measure up to his bleak vision of a world verging on “mere anarchy.” The financial system is no more than one default from unraveling, and it is quite possible that Dubai World will prove to be the catalyst. Less speculative is the prediction that a trillion-dollar health plan piled on top of a U.S. economy verging on depression will be fatal to any hopes of recovery.
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Other Paul said, “I want to see what happens after a few citizens get arrested by the ObamaCare police force because they haven’t paid their mandatory health insurance premiums.”
How are they going to make me work? The fact is, they can’t make me work and with no income how can I pay the tax? People voluntarily taking early retirement is a big problem with their plan.
RA said, “Strict term limits were always the answer.”
Please consider how this would simply give career gov’t employees and lobbyists more power. An answer that can be implemented now is for liberty-minded people to run for an office. RA, how about you run for a board seat of the water district or sewer district? Meet just once a month and get your feet wet. File you candidate forms (no charge at county clerk) in Feb 2010.
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I already did my stint, “SmallCity,” spending seven years as a newspaper reporter and editor. Your point is well taken nonetheless — that governance works only when citizens are willing to get involved. One gadfly willing to police town council or board-of-ed meetings is worth a score of letter-to-the-editor writers. RA
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Clarkman said, “… there are 60 million uninsured now.”
I know for a fact that some are voluntarily uninsured and they instead pay for multiple flat screen teevees and the 200 channels to feed that habit. I know others who are young and are simply making a risk/benefit decision to keep the money in their pocket. In other words, your statistic is misleading.
gary leibowitz said, “Imagine if we had no social security today.”
I imagine working people would have larger take home pay. The workers could spend more of the fruits of their labor as they desire, including on (voluntary) charity rather than forced charity via payroll taxes.
On the subject of national health insurance and high medical costs, we might want to first fire the medical establishment lobbyists. For example, prohibiting drug reimportation guarantees the drug companies will charge higher prices here and the lobbyists got this implemented as law years ago. Why not remove the ban on drug reimportation? Answer: the medical companies are all-powerful in Congress so they get their way at America’s expense.
I’m content staying longs physical PMs. Watching to go long speculative miners.