This week, Democrats in the US House of Representatives — including Congressman Steve Kagen –passed the widely-discussed healthcare reform bill. I often heard the word “historic” as they spoke of it. In fact, Nancy Pelosi and President Obama have so often referred to making history that I am wondering if it is their legacy that matters more to them than the American people. The primary problem with this action is that financial track record of the federal government’s “historic” acts is coated with red ink.
In 1935, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed into law the Social Security Bill. Today, that program – although well-intentioned — is hopelessly in debt and running ongoing deficits with no clear plan to correct it. The unfunded liabilities in Social Security are in excess of $14 trillion.
In 1965, President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Medicare bill. Today, Medicare’s unfunded liability is in excess of $74 trillion. This number is so large that it exceeds the total assets of ALL AMERICAN PROPERTY! All small business assets, corporate assets, American families and homeowner assets combined equal just $72 trillion.
In 2003, President George Bush signed into law the Medicare Prescription Drug bill. Today the unfunded liability for this program – after only seven years – is in excess of $18 trillion. All three of these bills combined total more than $107 trillion of liabilities – with payment due at some point by each one of us…the American people.
All of these programs were designed to help segments of our society–many who truly needed a hand up. The troubling thing was that at the time of passage, Congress promised the American people that they would save money from these endeavors; the legislation would pay for itself. Unfortunately as you can see in the preceding paragraphs, the cost was much higher than expected.
Now Washington politicians are asking the American people to believe them once again. Unfortunately, Congress passed a bill that will add trillions of dollars of new debt, a mountain of new taxes and new heartache for our children and grand children.
On Sunday night, Nancy Pelosi declared: “Just think, tonight we join those who wrote Social Security and Medicare.” Madam Speaker, given the national debt and the obscene mismanagement by Congress on these programs, that’s nothing to brag about.
What is so disturbing to me is that the bill that Congress passed will most certainly negatively affect job creation at a time when 8.5 million Americans are already out of work. It will raise taxes on the middle class. It will stress our current health care system and demoralize the millions of health care workers in the US that provide a level of service unmatched anywhere in the world. It is disconcerting that the expenses of this bill have been understated and that health care costs to consumers will undoubtedly go up. Even the Congressional Budget Office found that health care premiums will rise between 10-13% if the legislation is enacted.
An opportunity to actually improve our health care system has been missed. Many ideas to affect real change – change that would actually reduce costs – were not included. Most of the cost saving ideas that the Republicans and blue-dog Democrats submitted were summarily dismissed. President Obama in his election campaign declared that partisan politics were over. And yet they pushed through a bill that did not have one Republican vote; in fact the only bi-partisan agreement to be found was in the group of Republicans and Democrats that voted ‘no’ on the bill.
Finally, I have heard Congressman Steve Kagen say the bill will save lives – certainly a genuine and worthwhile objective…and yet the bill doesn’t take effect until 2014.
Congressman, if lives are truly at risk, why wait? Why not have it go into place years earlier and save the lives you speak about? It’s because the Congress knows that they need four years of taxes accumulated prior to starting to pay out the benefits to make the numbers work for television and political purposes. And what is Congress going to do with the taxes they collect from today until 2014? Put it in a lock box or trust fund? Sure they are…right next to the IOU’s for Medicare and Social Security.
In my lifetime there has been no time more challenging to the American people and the economy. The passage of this health insurance reform act will most certainly increase the national debt and in turn put our children’s future and liberty at risk.
