By Gary Starr for American First Principles
Mar. 26, 2010
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A couple of days after our very own Leftist Junta (Obama, Reid Pelosi for those of you still in denial) did their little victory lap, our Fraudinator-in-Chief was out on the campaign trail trying to sell the new law (he never did sell it us) to the American people. There was something about a "nice day on the mall", "the ground didn't open up" and some other feel-good bromides about how all of this really good for us. After all, Pelosi said we would find how great Obamacare was after they passed it.
What is interesting is that, even after all of the bribes, union carve outs, arm-twisting and finally the Stupak sellout, this bill passed by one vote less than the original house bill in November 2009. The real principles of the Junta's machine were articulated by Democratic Congressman Alcee Hastings who was impeached and removed from the bench as a federal judge, before being elected to the House when he said ""There ain't no rules here, we're trying to accomplish something. . . .All this talk about rules. . . .When the deal goes down . . . we make 'em up as we go along."
Obama has shown just how unserious he is about healthcare, and how this was always about his ego. By trying to soft-pedal the bill on the road he hopes to deflect attention away from the fact that the real problems don't begin until 2011 and 2014 when the post election triggers kick in, including the unconstitutional mandate that everyone have health insurance enforced by the IRS. Those clever Dems.
By the end of the week alarm bells were starting to go off in big business.
- Caterpillar Inc. said the health-care overhaul legislation would increase the company's health-care costs by more than $100 million in the first year alone.
- More Fortune 500 firms followed with similar write-down announcements: Valero Energy ($20 million), Deere & Co. ($150 million), 3M ($90 million) and AK Steel ($131 million).
- In an employee notice, Verizon warned about the 40% tax on high-end health plans, though that won't take effect until 2018. "Many of the plans that Verizon offers to employees and retirees are projected to have costs above the threshold in the legislation and will be subject to the 40 percent excise tax." These costs will start to show up soon, and, as we repeatedly argued, the tax is unlikely to drive down costs. The tax burden will simply be spread to all workers-the result of the White House's too-clever decision to tax insurers, rather than individuals.
- AT&T announced that the bill will cause a reevaluation of their employees' healthcare benefits, calling it an "additional tax burden." AT&T stated that it will take a $1 billion non-cash charge this quarter because of changes to the Medicare-subsidy tax treatment.
From the Heritage Foundation:
The leftist majorities in Congress were incensed that America's employers would dare warn their investors about the costs of Obamacare at the same time as the Obama administration's national sales pitch was set to begin. So using the full force of the federal government to bully and harass America's job creators, House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-CA) sent letters to the CEOs of Deere, Caterpillar, Verizon, and AT&T demanding all documents "from January 1, 2009, through the present" regarding "any analyses related to the projected impact of health care reform" and "any documents, including e-mail messages, sent to or prepared or reviewed by senior company officials related to the projected impact of health care reform." Waxman intends to haul these CEOs in front of the Subcommitte on Oversight and Investigations, which just happens to be chaired by Rep. Bart Stupak (D-MI), for a hearing April 21st.
While it is unfortunate that the left in Congress believes our nation's business leaders' time is best spent being browbeaten by congressmen for not doing more to support their policy preferences, the American public should look forward to these hearings. The more information the American public is given about Obamacare, the more they will oppose it. The more they oppose it, the easier it will be to repeal it. We have a long road ahead of us, but eventually the Obamacare nightmare will end.
The Democrats who passed this turkey and their cheerleaders in the media also tipped their hand. It was about wealth redistribution and population control all along.
Sen. Max Baucus declared the "healthcare bill" to be "an income shift, it is a shift, a leveling to help lower income middle income Americans." Baucus continued, "[t]oo often, much of late, the last couple three years the mal-distribution of income in America is gone up way too much, the wealthy are getting way, way too wealthy, and the middle income class is left behind. Wages have not kept up with increased income of the highest income in America. This legislation will have the effect of addressing that mal-distribution of income in America." This is how Marxists think so this would make Baucus a communist.
Rep. John Dingle in an interview with Detroit WJR News/Talk 760 host Paul W. Smith - 3/22/10: "Let me remind you this [Americans allegedly dying because of lack of universal health care] has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you're going to pass legislation that will cover 300 [million] American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people."
Fascists and communists always feel the need to control the people.
And finally Dave Leonhardt in Pravda, err, The New York Times
For all the political and economic uncertainties about health reform, at least one thing seems clear: The bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday is the federal government's biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago.
Over most of that period, government policy and market forces have been moving in the same direction, both increasing inequality. The pretax incomes of the wealthy have soared since the late 1970s, while their tax rates have fallen more than rates for the middle class and poor.
Nearly every major aspect of the health bill pushes in the other direction. This fact helps explain why Mr. Obama was willing to spend so much political capital on the issue, even though it did not appear to be his top priority as a presidential candidate. Beyond the health reform's effect on the medical system, it is the centerpiece of his deliberate effort to end what historians have called the age of Reagan.
...Since Mr. Obama began his presidential campaign in 2007, he has had a complicated relationship with the Reagan legacy. He has been more willing than many other Democrats to praise President Reagan. "Reagan's central insight - that the liberal welfare state had grown complacent and overly bureaucratic," Mr. Obama wrote in his second book, "contained a good deal of truth." Most notably, he praised Mr. Reagan as a president who "changed the trajectory of America."
But Mr. Obama also argued that the Reagan administration had gone too far, and that if elected, he would try to put the country on a new trajectory. "The project of the next president," he said in an interview during the campaign, "is figuring out how you create bottom-up economic growth, as opposed to the trickle-down economic growth."
Folks, it was never about healthcare.
Our friends across the pond are none too fond. Nile Gardiner writes in the London Telegraph:
Congress health care vote: a dark day for freedom in America
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/nilegardiner/100030793/a-dark-day-for-freedom-in-america/
The passage last night of Barack Obama's health care reform bill through the House of Representatives is yet another blow to freedom in America inflicted by the Obama administration. The legislation, which comes at a staggering cost of $940 billion, will hugely add to the already towering national debt, now at over $12 trillion. It is yet another millstone round the necks of the American people, already faced with the highest levels of unemployment in a generation.
It is also a great leap forward by the United States towards a European-style vision of universal health care, which will only lead to soaring costs, higher taxes, and a surge in red tape for small businesses. This reckless legislation dramatically expands the power of the state over the lives of individuals, and could not be further from the vision of America's founding fathers. It has also been rushed through Congress without proper scrutiny, in the face of overwhelming public opposition, and with not an ounce of bipartisan support.
Above all the health care bill is a thinly disguised vanity project for a president who is committed to transforming the United States from the world's most successful large-scale free enterprise economy, to a highly interventionist society with a massive role for centralized government. The United States has thrived as a nation for over 230 years precisely because of its love for freedom and its belief in free markets.
What we have just witnessed is a massive slap in the face for limited government and the principle of individual responsibility. Its net result will be the erosion of freedom in America, and a further undermining of the country's economic competitiveness. This may be a political victory for the president and his supporters in Congress, but it is in reality a defeat for America as a great power, and another Obama-led step towards US decline.
Finally the saddest part of Obamacare will happen over the next twenty to forty years. Since the end of World War II Europe and Canada have built massive social welfare, cradle to grave societies at the expense of maintaining there own security. That job fell on the United States. Europe has sort of thrived under our nuclear umbrella, all the while spitting in our face for being the world's policeman.
Well, after forty years the worker's paradise party is over...they are running out of money for the socialist utopia. Greece and Spain are broke…there are riots in the streets of France and Greece and everyone is running around in circles trying to figure out if they should bail out Greece with worthless Euro bucks.
The same scenario will unfold here if Obamacare entrenches itself. Mark Steyn writing in National Review:
...one of the first things that middle-rank powers abandon once they go down this road is a global military capability. If you take the view that the U.S. is an imperialist aggressor, congratulations: You can cease worrying. But, if you think that America has been the ultimate guarantor of the post-war global order, it's less cheery. Five years from now, just as in Canada and Europe two generations ago, we'll be getting used to announcements of defense cuts to prop up the unsustainable costs of big government at home. And, as the superpower retrenches, America's enemies will be quick to scent opportunity.
Can you say Russia?, China?, Iran?
Max Boot Writing in the Wall Street Journal:
ObamaCare and American Power
The lesson of Europe is that the U.S. can't fund a health entitlement and maintain superpower status.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703312504575141
744210163602.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion
MARCH 25, 2010
By MAX BOOT
A lot has been written about the impact of ObamaCare on health care and the economy. I am worried about its impact on our global power.
The United States currently spends roughly as much on defense ($661 billion in fiscal year 2009) as the rest of the world combined. But that's a pittance compared to what we spend on three major entitlement programs-Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Combined, they cost $1.38 trillion or almost 35% of the budget, compared with 17% for defense. And entitlements will only grow dramatically. The current unfunded liability for Social Security and Medicare, according to the 2009 Social Security and Medicare Trustees Report, is nearly $107 trillion-seven times the size of our economy.
It's hard to remember now, but there was a time when the federal government spent most of its money on the armed forces. In 1962, the total federal budget was $106 billion of which $52 billion-almost half-went for defense. It wasn't until 1976 that entitlement spending exceeded defense spending. Since then the totals have been getting more lopsided-more for social programs, less, in relative terms, for defense.
In 1935, Franklin Roosevelt assured the public that the new Social Security system would not lead to runaway spending. In 1965, Lyndon Johnson pledged that the fiscal impact of Medicare would be minimal. And now Barack Obama cites a Congressional Budget Office estimate claiming that the vast new health-care entitlement will actually reduce the deficit.
Count me as skeptical. Odds are great that the cost-containment provisions will never be rigorously implemented while the promised subsidies will prove more costly than projected.
In other words, ObamaCare will likely continue the trend already evident during the first year of the administration-when, thanks to the bank bailout and stimulus bill, federal spending as a share of GDP soared to 24.7%, unprecedented in peacetime. If you add in state and local spending, the government as a whole consumes 37.5% of GDP, up from 34.7% in 2008. Prepare for those figures to climb further as government takes on new health-care obligations.
To consider the implications for defense, look at Europe. Last year government spending in the 27 European Union nations hit 52% of GDP. But most of them struggle to devote even 2% of GDP to defense, compared to more than 4% in the U.S.
When Europeans after World War II chose to skimp on defense and spend lavishly on social welfare, they abdicated their claims to great power status. That worked out well for them because their security was subsidized by the U.S.
But what happens if the U.S. switches spending from defense to social welfare? Who will protect what used to be known as the "Free World"? Who will police the sea lanes, stop the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, combat terrorism, respond to genocide and other unconscionable human rights violations, and deter rogue states from aggression? Those are all responsibilities currently performed by America. But it will be increasingly hard to be globocop and nanny state at the same time. Something will have to give.
President Obama's budget projects that "core" defense spending (excluding supplemental appropriations for wars) will fall as a percentage of GDP to 3% in 2019 from 3.9% in 2010. Assuming the economy keeps growing, that will still deliver more defense spending in absolute terms-but economic growth may well be endangered by the higher taxes needed to fund ObamaCare. Even if defense spending stays steady, it will be increasingly hard to replace aging weapons systems such as Bradley Fighting Vehicles, Abrams tanks and Black Hawk helicopters, which were purchased during the Reagan defense buildup.
The Air Force, which is responsible for maintaining air and space superiority-a sine que non of American power-faces a particularly big budget crunch. Its aircraft are aging and need to be replaced (KC-135 tankers and B-52 bombers are more than 40 years old), but each new plane is much costlier than its predecessor.
The Navy faces a similar problem. It now has only 283 ships-the smallest number since 1916. Granted, each of those vessels is much more capable than earlier models. But at some point quality cannot substitute for a crippling lack of quantity.
The crunch will not come anytime soon. The U.S. will remain strong for years to come. But if we are looking at major threats to our global standing, we should not look at China, Iran or Russia. We have met the enemy and he is us-specifically, our insatiable demand for entitlement spending, which ObamaCare will only exacerbate.
Mr. Boot is a senior fellow in National Security Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and author most recently of "War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History, 1500 to Today" (Gotham, 2006).
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