The Federal Reserve has really caught on to the way things work in Washington. You say you won’t do something, then you do it anyway, with all the confidence that no one, especially the media, will call you on it.
No one, except Karl Denninger at The Market Ticker.
Karl brings the whole monetizing of the debt to light. It is the economic shell game that is the leading indicator of not just inflation, but hyper-inflation.
‘Choice and competition’ has become the new buzz phrase that Democrats in Washington are using to promote their health insurance reform plan, formerly known as their health care reform plan.
It’s a buzz phrase that uses the foundational principles of a free and market-driven economy. Choice and Competition. They are what has made this country, in only a couple hundred years, the greatest and most innovative country in the world. Which, of course, just drives the far Left and socialists and communists around the world crazy. Which was the whole point of President Obama’s apology tour.
But using Right thinking terminology to promote a Leftist agenda seems to work well with the dumb masses and the President, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Saul Alinsky know it. This is why they are using the buzz phrase to promote the government takeover of nearly 20% of the private sector economy with their health insurance/care agenda. Claiming that it is choice and competition that we need, and they’re going to give it to us if we buy into HR3200 and whatever else they can pile on to it. It is for the same reason that they lie to you and anyone who will listen when they say that Republicans ‘don’t have a plan’ when they do.
The way things are now, there is no market-based solution. It is not allowed. The market is mucked up by government with regulations that limit free market competition, and that limit not only consumer’s choices but the insurer’s choices with all kinds of ‘requirements’ of coverages that insurers must provide regardless of the needs and wants of the consumer.
HR3200 will increase government intervention to the point of taking the industry over, restrict competition instead of promote it, limit consumer choice, and increase cost. And, it conspicuously has no tort reform. In short, it will do the opposite of what it is claimed to do. The dirty little secret here is the administration doesn’t care as much for peoples’ health care as it does for the power of controlling it.
In a free market environment, from a business standpoint, it makes no sense to deny coverage to a customer. It happens every day in Canada and Great Britain. In fact, some European countries are now trying to move away from socialized medicine to private market-driven solutions. The idea is to get customers.
One universal truth is this, ‘everything that does not exist in infinite supply is rationed. In a free society, people are allowed to make their own rationing choices.’ Under HR3200, in reality, the government will be the one denying medical care by its rationing of choices.
There is a market for everything, and left to compete for that business, costs will come down, and choices will go up. One insurer will be trying to out-do his competitor and come up with something better suited for that consumer in order to get that customer.
The free market will be able to handle the vast majority of all peoples’ health insurance requirements. There will be a place for some sort of government fund to handle the very worst of circumstances that free market competition can not handle. But sacrificing the entire industry to government control for the benefit of the few that really will need its help is ridiculous.
If this sounds like an economics lesson, that’s because it is. It is a subject that is lacking in the typical liberal arts education curricula. But that’s another subject.
related link: GOP’s Alternative Health Care Plan
Considering that your taxpayer dollars, over 1/2 billion of them, are going to a company backed by Al Gore that makes hand-built custom cars, not for the middle class or working people, but for the evil rich like Al Gore, apparently so.
Happy days are here again. The latest model is an all electric one. From Fiskar Automotive . . .
We are accepting pre-orders for our Fisker four-door plug-in hybrid sports sedan – the FISKER KARMA to be delivered in 2010. All orders received from mid-January onwards will be delivered in the second half of 2010. Effective Jan. 1 the deposit amount is $5,000.
All Signature Edition Vehicles, which will be delivered with a special numbered and signed plaque, a color and trim combination similar to the Detroit Show-Car are SOLD OUT.
At this point in time we are also accepting deposits for our Fisker convertible – the FISKER KARMA S. The deposit amount is $25,000
Speaking of stimulating the economy. What? Not ours? Are you serious? How about $400,000 for Gadhafi’s sons? One of whom escorted the Pan American flight 103 bomber back to Libya.
What about the US taxpayers? Eh, we’re all suckers, that’s what. When will you ever learn what Liberals are all about?
Memo to President Barack Obama: It’s a tax. Make no mistake about it. His comprehensive health care reform scheme will add a financial burden on 100% of the American people. Ditto with the President’s ‘Cap and Trade’ scheme.
As a percentage of income, both will impact the poor way more than the rich. His pitch that 95 percent of Americans, the middle class and the ‘working people,’ will not get a tax increase is pure spin.
Are you old enough to remember The Who’s 1971 song ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again?‘ ‘Meet the new boss, same as the old boss,’ as attempts are made to repeat history.
From Wikipedia:
“Won’t Get Fooled Again” is a song by the rock band The Who. Written by Pete Townshend, it combines guitar power chords with heavily processed organ and synthesizer sounds to create a textured, atmospheric introduction that explodes into the verse. It tells of a “revolution of revolutions” in an endless cycle, where “the change it had to come, we knew it all along” but each successive new regime turns out to be just like the old one, so that straight away it’s time once again to “pick up my guitar and play, just like yesterday, then I’ll get on my knees and pray we don’t get fooled again“.
Did you know that the Democrat health care bills in the senate and house share the same five major faults? An analysis of those faults and the recommended fix are presented here by Nina Owcharenko of the Heritage Foundation.
Current efforts by Congress to “reform” the health care system are centered on several flawed policy initiatives that will transfer more power and decisions to Washington and away from patients and families.
Rather than create a massive government-based health care system and dislocate people from their existing private coverage, policymakers should focus on putting the health care system on a path where individuals and families are in control of their health care dollars and decisions.
The following five provisions are the cornerstone of the House and Senate bills and unavoidably result in legislation taking health care reform in the wrong direction.
1. New Public Plan and Federal Exchange. Both the House and Senate bills would create a new government-run health care plan through the establishment of a federally run national health insurance exchange. The result: widespread erosion of private insurance and substantial consolidation of federal control over health care through the exchange.[1] As is evident in the details of the House bill (H.R. 3200), there is no level playing field for competition between the government plans and private health plans. Plus, the incentives in the legislation guarantee that millions of Americans will lose their existing employer-based coverage.
2. Federal Regulation of Health Insurance. Both the House and Senate bills would result in sweeping and complex federal regulation of health insurance. Moreover, it would take oversight away from states and concentrate it in Washington.[2]
3. Massive New Taxpayer-Funded Subsidies. Both the House and Senate would expand eligibility for Medicaid, but they would also extend new taxpayer-funded subsidies to the middle class. Such commitments would result in scores of Americans dependent on the government to finance their health care.[3] This is unfortunate because Congress could have reformed the tax treatment of health insurance to enable people to keep their existing private coverage and buy better private coverage if they wished to do so.
4. Employer Mandate. Both the House and Senate bills would impose an employer mandate for employers who do not offer coverage and for those whose benefits do not meet a new federal standard. An employer mandate would hurt low-income workers the most and would also stifle much-needed economic growth.[4] Employer mandates are passed on to workers in the form of reduced wages and compensation. This is exactly the wrong prescription for businesses, especially during a recession.
5. Individual Mandate. Both the House and Senate bills would require all people to buy health insurance. There is no doubt that such a mandate would result in a tax increase on individuals and families whose health insurance does not meet the new federally determined standards. This means that Congress will, for the first time, force Americans to buy federally designed packages of health benefits, even if they do not want or need those benefits.
It also means that health benefits will tend to become increasingly costly as powerful special interest groups and representatives of the health industry lobby intensively to expand the legally mandated health benefits, medical treatments and procedures, and drugs that all Americans must buy under penalty of law.
Congress should stop and take a step back from these divisive House and Senate measures. Instead of trying to overhaul one-sixth of the American economy and seize an unprecedented amount of political control over health care decisions and dollars, policymakers should consider proceeding with smaller, incremental improvements. Policymakers need to proceed slowly and deliberately, making sure that the initial steps they take are not disruptive of what Americans have and want to keep, actually work, and do not result in costly and damaging and unintended consequences. There are three broad areas where Members can and should find consensus:
1. Promote State Innovation. Congress should preserve the states’ autonomy over their health care systems and give them greater legal freedom to devise solutions that meet the unique characteristics of their citizens. In addition, individuals should also have the freedom to purchase coverage from trusted sources and not be restricted by where they happen to live. This means that Americans should be able to buy better coverage across state lines. Congress should respect and encourage personal freedom and diversity.
2. Establish Fairness in the Tax Treatment of Health Insurance. There is little disagreement that today’s health care tax policy–which favors coverage obtained through the workplace–distorts the market and is inequitable. Instead of expanding government-run programs like Medicaid, policymakers should offer tax relief to those individuals who purchase private health insurance on their own, regardless of where they work.
At the same time, Congress should make sure that tax relief goes only to taxpayers. Congress should also devise a voucher program, giving low-income citizens the opportunity to get private coverage if they wish to do so. There is a broad bipartisan consensus that Congress should help low-income working families with direct assistance to enable them to get health insurance.
3. Get Serious About Entitlement Reform. Medicare and Medicaid, the giant health care entitlement programs, are not only increasingly costly, but they are also not delivering value to the taxpayers. The best way to secure value to patients (not government officials) is to compel health providers to compete directly for consumer dollars by allowing seniors and the poor to choose the coverage that is right for them using the money that is already available to them in these programs. This will “bend the cost curve” while at the same time allowing private-sector innovation to flourish.
Americans want to fix the problems in the health care system–but not at the expense of their own coverage. It is time policymakers recognize the lack of support for a major overhaul. But instead of continuing to protect the status quo, Congress should advance improvements that put the health care system on a path to reform.
Such improvements should be focused on increasing choice and competition not by turning control over to Washington but by empowering individuals and families to control their health care dollars and decisions.
Nina Owcharenko is Deputy Director of the Center for Health Policy Studies at The Heritage Foundation.
[1]Robert E. Moffit, “A Federal Health Insurance Exchange Combined with a Public Plan: The House and Senate Bills,” Heritage Foundation Backgrounder No. 2304, July 30, 2009, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare
/bg2304.cfm.
[2]Edmund F. Haislmaier, “Micromanaging Americans’ Health Insurance: The Impact of House and Senate Bills,” Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 2558, July 23, 2009, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/wm2558.cfm; Dennis G. Smith, “Undercutting State Authority: The Impact of the House and Senate Health Bills,” Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 2559, July 23, 2009, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/wm2559.cfm.
[3]Dennis G. Smith, “New Taxpayer Subsidies: The Impact of the House and Senate Health Bills,” Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 2564, July 23, 2009, at http://www.heritage.org/Research/HealthCare/wm2564.cfm.
[4]James Sherk and Robert A. Book, “Employer Health Care Mandates: Taxing Low-Income Workers to Pay for Health Care,” Heritage Foundation WebMemo No. 2552, July 21, 2009, at http://www.heritage.org/Research
/HealthCare/wm2552.cfm.
For someone who writes an article like this ‘The Flat Tax Is Not Flat and the FairTax Is Not Fair,’ it would help if its author, Laurence M. Vance, had his facts straight.
Coming from his premise that the FairTax ‘has the most vocal and intolerant proponents,’ I’m detecting a certain aire of superiority from him. Intolerant? Really?
The FairTax turns the current taxing system and taxing power on its head. It represents the largest shift in power from the federal government back to the people since the Declaration of Independence separated us from Mother England.
The FairTax is the result of $22 million worth of research by credible economists from around the country whose task was to come up with another way to fund the operations of the government. The task was qualified to the extent that the result would be ‘revenue neutral.’ That is to say the system must be able to generate as much money as the government is currently generating with the current system through federal withholding and payroll taxes, self-employment taxes, alternative minimum tax, estate and gift tax, and capital gains tax, all of which would be replaced by the Fair Tax. And from that point as the economy grows, so grows the treasury. It is a pro-growth, as opposed to punitive growth, taxing system.
First, the current system is not progressive by any stretch of the imagination. All the payroll-related taxes are taxed on a poor person’s first dollar. When that person gets another job to help make ends meet, he is taxed again. It is the prebate of the FairTax that eliminates this phenomenon. It totally un-taxes not only the poor but EVERYONE up to the poverty level (fair), actually helping them to rise up the socioeconomic ladder and realize the American dream. And when their spending exceeds that of the poverty level, they pay the same taxes as everyone else. What makes the FairTax a truly progressive tax is that the more one spends, like on yachts and private jets, the more ‘taxes’ will be paid.
Also, and this consequence is often overlooked, EVERYONE who is in this country enjoying what there is to enjoy about it, WILL CONTRIBUTE to funding the government when they buy anything new or purchase a service. This includes foreign tourists, the foreign diplomats in the UN and elsewhere, and all who are in the country illegally. Including those in the underground economy. The tax base is greatly expanded and is not limited to just legal citizens that legitimately work. (fair) Conversely, if you don’t want to pay any tax, simply don’t buy anything new. Under the FairTax, the people have control over what, how, and when they will pay their taxes, not the social engineers in Washington. Transparency in taxation will return. The amount you pay will be on your receipt instead of being stuffed into ‘deductions’ on your paycheck as it is now.
The question of the ethics of making people pay taxes is a philosophical one, but in reality, and as corrupt as it is, it does take money to fund the government to do what is necessary to keep us safe and sound. It is up to us to keep Washington in check on how they spend that money. The FairTax does not have any bearing on how the tax revenue is spent. It is strictly a plan to fund the federal government. And instead of punishing success, it actually rewards it. The FairTax is fundamentally, economically, stimulative. The term ‘take-home pay,’ coined by the creation of the current taxing system, becomes history. Under the FairTax, your gross pay is your take-home pay. YOU get what YOU make, and YOU spend it as YOU see fit. (fair)
Other consequences of the FairTax which are also overlooked, is the effect it would have on the estimated $13 trillion in business, each year, that has fled this country to escape the tax code. That business would come back. That would not happen under a flat tax. By the elimination of all the taxes on business and employment that you accurately list above, the US would become a tax haven to the world. And foreign business that don’t have a business unit in this country would have a powerful incentive to come. And 90% of those surveyed on that proposition say they would setup a business unit in the US if the FairTax was in place. The job creation and economic development that would result would go a long way toward bringing the country back towards economic solvency, all without any borrowing from China or anyone else.
Also, the ‘two-headed hydra’ that you mention will not happen under the FairTax. That’s because it calls for the repeal of the 16th Amendment so the political class will not be allowed to double dip. Were that to be the case, the FairTax would expire and we would return to the same abortion of a tax code that we have now.
There are no exemptions for government under the FairTax. They operate the same as everyone else and the same as every other business. There are no taxes on business-to-business transactions. That applies to government business the same as it applies to normal capitalistic businesses. (fair)
Lastly, and this is no small point, the research that went into the FairTax came up with a 23% tax that would be revenue neutral, not 30%, and it is inclusive, not exclusive like in your example. Here’s where it gets confusing and, easily demagogued. To be factually accurate, you have to know the difference. Otherwise you’ll be comparing apples to oranges.
The inclusive vs exclusive debate becomes easier to understand when you realize that companies do not pay taxes. The final consumer is the one that pays the taxes. We currently pay all the taxes that producers must pay in terms of all the taxes that would be eliminated under the FairTax that you correctly listed above. The over $20 million of research that went into developing an alternative federal revenue generating system determined that, on average, all of those above-mentioned taxes amount to 22% of the price of the goods and services we buy. Those are embedded taxes, inclusive. Under the FairTax, those taxes go away. If nothing else happens, the prices would drop by (on average) 22%. Under the FairTax, those are replaced by a 23% tax, which would be inclusive to the price of the item. Not added to it as though the 22% embedded tax was still there, ie. exclusive. Competition in a free market would make sure that this would be the end result.
If that headline evokes a reflex to hit the delete button, then you’re the one that needs to read this piece. It represents a fair analysis with a dash of humor, as opposed to White House talking points with no analysis whatsoever, into the current health care turned health insurance crisis as manufactured by the Obama administration and its anti-capitalist advisers.
Put in an easily understandable way, Ann Coulter (Mike Papantonio’s favorite punching bag, next to Rush Limbaugh of course) dissects five lies, or misconceptions if you prefer, that President Obama and proponents of government-run health care/health insurance use to get you to accept their prescription for this country.
You want to punish insurance companies? Make them compete.
As Adam Smith observed, whenever two businessmen meet, “the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public, or in some contrivance to raise prices.” That’s why we need a third, fourth and 45th competing insurance company that will undercut them by offering better service at a lower price.
Tiny little France and Germany have more competition among health insurers than the U.S. does right now. Amazingly, both of these socialist countries have less state regulation of health insurance than we do, and you can buy health insurance across regional lines — unlike in the U.S., where a federal law allows states to ban interstate commerce in health insurance.
U.S. health insurance companies are often imperious, unresponsive consumer hellholes because they’re a partial monopoly, protected from competition by government regulation. In some states, one big insurer will control 80 percent of the market. (Guess which party these big insurance companies favor? Big companies love big government.)
Liberals think they can improve the problem of a partial monopoly by turning it into a total monopoly. That’s what single-payer health care is: “Single payer” means “single provider.”
It’s the famous liberal two-step: First screw something up, then claim that it’s screwed up because there’s not enough government oversight (it’s the free market run wild!), and then step in and really screw it up in the name of “reform.”
You could fix 90 percent of the problems with health insurance by ending the federal law allowing states to ban health insurance sales across state lines. But when John McCain called for ending the ban during the 2008 presidential campaign, he was attacked by Joe Biden — another illustration of the ironclad Ann Coulter rule that the worst Republicans are still better than allegedly “conservative” Democrats.
Government-provided health care isn’t a competitor; it’s a monopoly product paid for by the taxpayer. Consumers may be able to “choose” whether they take the service — at least at first — but every single one of us will be forced to buy it, under penalty of prison for tax evasion. It’s like a new cable plan with a “yes” box, but no “no” box.
Obama himself compared national health care to the post office — immediately conjuring images of a highly efficient and consumer-friendly work force — which, like so many consumer-friendly shops, is closed by 2 p.m. on Saturdays, all Sundays and every conceivable holiday.
But what most people don’t know — including the president, apparently — with certain narrow exceptions, competing with the post office is prohibited by law.
Expect the same with national health care. Liberals won’t stop until they have total control. How else will they get you to pay for their sex-change operations?
Obama denounced the insurance companies in last Sunday’s New York Times, saying: “A man lost his health coverage in the middle of chemotherapy because the insurance company discovered that he had gallstones, which he hadn’t known about when he applied for his policy. Because his treatment was delayed, he died.”
Well, yeah. That and the cancer.
Assuming this is true — which would distinguish it from every other story told by Democrats pushing national health care — in a free market, such an insurance company couldn’t stay in business. Other insurance companies would scream from the rooftops about their competitor’s shoddy business practices, and customers would leave in droves.
If only customers had a choice! But we don’t because of government regulation of health insurance.
Speaking of which, maybe if Mr. Gallstone’s insurance company weren’t required by law to cover early childhood development programs and sex-change operations, it wouldn’t be forced to cut corners in the few areas not regulated by the government, such as cancer treatments for patients with gallstones.
You want to protect consumers? Do it the same way we protect consumers of dry cleaning, hamburgers and electricians: Give them the power to tell their insurance companies, “I’m taking my business elsewhere.”
The only reason most “pre-existing” conditions aren’t already covered is because of government regulations that shrink the insurance market to a microscopic size, which leads to fewer options in health insurance and a lot more uninsured people than would exist in a free market.
The free market has produced a dizzying array of insurance products in areas other than health. (Ironically, array-associated dizziness is not covered by most health plans.) Even insurance companies have “reinsurance” policies to cover catastrophic events occurring on the properties they insure, such as nuclear accidents, earthquakes and Michael Moore dropping in for a visit and breaking the couch.
If we had a free market in health insurance, it would be inexpensive and easy to buy insurance for “pre-existing” conditions before they exist, for example, insurance on unborn — unconceived — children and health insurance even when you don’t have a job. The vast majority of “pre-existing” conditions that currently exist in a cramped, limited, heavily regulated insurance market would be “covered” conditions under a free market in health insurance.
I’ve hit my word limit on liberal lies about national health care without breaking a sweat. See this space next week for more lies in our continuing series.
link: Liberal Lies About National Health Care: First in a Series
There is a poll that is sponsored by AT&T and Yahoo. You can participate in it if you wish. There is only one question and it concerns Obama’s performance on the economy. Remember ‘it’s the economy stupid?’ That slogan rings true today like never before.
Click this LINK to cast your opinion.
http://js.polls.yahoo.com/quiz/quiziframe.php?poll_id=46067
I just cast vote number 2501038, and here is the question and the results up to that point.
Q. The president’s progress with the battered economy has been both praised and criticized. How well are his efforts measuring up with you?
Extremely well. We are undoubtedly moving in the right direction. 9%
Fairly well. There’s still a long way to go. 9%
Not well at all. His plans are hurting more than helping. 80%
Not sure/No opinion. 2%
2501038 votes
President Obama has a health care plan that he wants us to accept. It’s called single-payer. Single payer as in the government does all the paying, to doctors, hospitals, clinics, etc.
If the government controls the money, they control the health care industry. If they control the health care industry, they control you.
But try to find out what his plan for your health care is and you will hit a dead end. No pun intended. Apparently, it isn’t written. President Obama was interviewed on national TV last month and questions of cost came up.
MORAN: One of the concerns is cost. People are looking at the cost of this plan, the Congressional Budget Office. By the way, you invited the director of the Congressional Budget Office to the White House.
OBAMA: Right.
MORAN: He had given this report, which was very damaging to your plan. A lot of people thought that was improper, that you were trying to muscle an independent arbiter of this debate
OBAMA: Terry, first of all, he was remarking on the House bill, not my plan, right? So, I think it’s important to get that clear. Number two, I invited him to come alongside a whole range of other health care experts to tell me exactly what they thought the most effective ways to bend the cost curve would be. And in fact, there was a pretty broad consensus that the plans that we had put forward around the MedPAC proposal, for example, which is essentially a commission to deal with doctors and health experts finding the best ways to improve quality while lowering costs. That that, in fact, was one of the most important levers to drive health costs savings in the system.
So his ‘plan’ is to use a committee of bureaucrats to suggest how to cut costs. That way you don’t need anything in writing. Exactly where socialized medicine enters the picture is unclear. Just vote for a pig in a poke, and if you don’t like it, just shut up and let him ‘fix’ it. Coincidentally, after his meeting with the director of the CBO, the director made a statement that was opposite of his first statement. Saying that it would not add to the deficit. Remarkable.
MORAN: So you weren’t leaning on him?
OBAMA: Terry, we don’t lean.
He doesn’t lean. He threatens. It’s the Chicago way. Like when he told auto industry creditors that he was the only thing between them and people with machetes. During that meeting, they agreed to give up a significant portion of their ownership shares (30 cents on the dollar), and Obama then gave majority ownership to the UAW.
MORAN: Do you think one of them problems is that Americans use too much health care?
He does, and explains it by saying too many people abuse emergency rooms for visits that should be in doctor’s offices or clinics. And . . .
OBAMA: We’ll have a situation in which we take five tests when we know one test would be sufficient, as long as that one test would have been forwarded to the other doctors, and specialists, and nurses who needed it to help treat the patient. That doesn’t happen right now. But, we’re paying for five tests. So if we could get a system where that one test is properly distributed, we all save money.
I get it. Aside from cutting payments to doctors and hospitals even more, where he expects to save, er I mean steal, a half billion dollars from Medicare and Medicaid, he will also save by telling doctors to do less tests. He didn’t call it defensive medicine, but that’s what he meant. You can not mention defensive medicine without also mentioning tort reform. And he is not going there. Sharing tests would be a good idea of course, but you have to believe it is defensive medicine, a practice necessitated because of trial lawyers, that Obama was really talking about.
And by doing all the above, Obama will have a socialized medical system that not only provides better care, to more people, but is cheaper and, will not add to the deficit. Must be the pixie dust.
I get the picture now. Lets tie doctors to the whipping post and give trial lawyers the whip. There is no mention about tort reform in his plan (whatever it is) or the House plan. Yet, Obama’s stated goal is to reduce the cost of health care. And while you’re going to pay them less, and pay them by the ‘quality’ of service, as determined by bureaucrats, instead of by services rendered, then you can expect a shortage of doctors and people going into the medical profession. It all sounds like a recipe for disaster with a history for it in Canada and Great Britain.
Bottom line is this. Obama says that his plan will not cause private sector health care to go away. When the truth is it will cause private sector health care to rot on the vine.
Obama also says that his plan will not increase the deficit. Can’t say that with the House plan.
Here’s my question for President Obama when he comes to Pensacola (more pixie dust).
Mr. President, the American people have seen politicians enact legislation that ended up exacerbating the problems they were supposed to fix. For most Americans, results matter more than good intentions. If it turns out that your health care plan does not fulfill what you promise, will you provide in the plan an exit strategy to terminate the plan and pursue a private sector solution before the end of your first term?
related link: Nightline’s Interview with President Obama
The recession is starving the government of tax revenue, just as the president and Congress are piling a major expansion of health care and other programs on the nation’s plate and struggling to find money to pay the tab.
The numbers could hardly be more stark: Tax receipts are on pace to drop 18 percent this year, the biggest single-year decline since the Great Depression, while the federal deficit balloons to a record $1.8 trillion.
Other figures in an Associated Press analysis underscore the recession’s impact: Individual income tax receipts are down 22 percent from a year ago. Corporate income taxes are down 57 percent. Social Security tax receipts could drop for only the second time since 1940, and Medicare taxes are on pace to drop for only the third time ever.
The last time the government’s revenues were this bleak, the year was 1932 in the midst of the Depression. Is raising taxes the answer to the problem? Of course not.
Which brings me to this FairTax teaching moment. The tax base shrinks every time a job is lost. 6.7 million jobs have been lost since December 2007. Over 5 million of those have been lost since January 2009. And everyone is saying that its going to get worse before it gets better.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how taxing income and investment leads to federal revenue losses in a big way during a recession. Revenue flow under the FairTax plan is not near as volatile during a recession. Under the FairTax, the tax base remains the same, which is about 30% larger (and growing) than under the current income tax plan. More importantly, a consumption based taxing system is more stable, more predictable, and less reactive to political actions.
In fact, if Washington could get their spending under control, and barring another ‘man made disaster,’ under the FairTax recessions would become a thing of the past.
Mobfather Rush Limbaugh comments on Obamacare and the organizations behind and in front of it.
Did you know you’re carrying a microwave oven in your pocket.