The Aftermath
Well, let’s not kid ourselves. Health care reform is passing the House today, and it’s very unlikely it can be procedurally derailed in the Senate. The game is, for all intents and purposes, over. The turning point was the CBO report that showed increased deficit reduction (though a higher cost) than the Senate bill. This was big for bill supporters for two reasons: deficit reduction IS an absolute must at the moment, and two, it allowed the use of the less controversial reconciliation option, as opposed to the absolutely weaselly “deem and pass”.
Refusing to face reality is not a strategy, so those of us opposed to this latest entitlement must be realistic. Democrats will hear the judgement of the voters this November, but regardless of how big the Republican gains are, we are stuck with this. I fear that this will some day be seen as the straw that broke the financial back of America. I continue to have zero confidence that this bill will actually reduce the deficit; instead, I would wager a very large sum that it will greatly increase it. I doubt very seriously that Social Security and Medicare were sold as bills that would someday drive the nation into insolvency, but they have.
If this country is to continue in its role of global economic prominence (and it may not for long in any case, given the Chinese economic juggernaut), the best thing leaders of both parties can do now that health care reform is effectively settled is to focus on deficit reduction. We will probably need some new taxes (that’s very hard for me to say, but unfortunately, it’s true) and we’ll DEFINITELY need real spending reductions. I don’t want to hear any blarney about government budgets being tight already – the bloat in the typical government agency is so large that any outside party without a vested interest in the power that comes with enlarged budgets and head counts could easily cut spending by a third without impacting public service whatsoever.
How much confidence do you have that these sorts of cuts will take place – REAL, substantive cuts, meaning permanent reductions in FTE counts, travel budgets, etc.? Not much? Me, either…but that’s what we’re left to fight for.
A real example of a solution, then, in closing: there are many services the government offers that entail people going to “real” locations and standing in line, where they are waited on by very real people who are paid a substantial salary to do things that a website can easily do. Oh, but the the poor don’t have access to computers, is the inevitable reply. Well, fair enough – replace all those government offices that require this totally outdated form of customer service with ONE (or even several, depending on the size of the city being served) office that has free computer terminals and several employees who will provide assistance. Note that this cannot be an ADDITIONAL service that adds to the size of government – it has to REPLACE, permanently, FTEs in buildings across the nation. (By the way, this would mean that large office complexes could be sold for considerable money, as well).
This would be a major initiative, but it’s completely doable, and would save untold billions of dollars annually into perpetuity. This is the kind of thinking we have to embrace. The typical government answer to any problem is to assign resources to it – and resources are expensive, and tend to be permanent. We have to realize that the answer to our biggest problem – a broke government – is to get rid of resources – permanently. It’s going to be ugly – you’ll be fighting the SEIU (government employee union) in a death match – but it HAS to be done.
We can’t afford our obligations already – we just added a trillion more dollars in obligation today. This is an imperative. My number one issue over the last year or so has been the defeat of health care reform. We lost that one. This one, we can’t afford to lose. Reducing the deficit has become the issue that the future of our nation rests upon. It’s as clear as that - cut back or kill the American dream…
UPDATE 10:40 p.m.: Think I’m exaggerating?
The bond market is saying that it’s safer to lend to Warren Buffett than Barack Obama.
Two-year notes sold by the billionaire’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. in February yield 3.5 basis points less than Treasuries of similar maturity, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Procter & Gamble Co., Johnson & Johnson and Lowe’s Cos. debt also traded at lower yields in recent weeks, a situation former Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. chief fixed-income strategist Jack Malvey calls an “exceedingly rare” event in the history of the bond market.
The $2.59 trillion of Treasury Department sales since the start of 2009 have created a glut as the budget deficit swelled to a post-World War II-record 10 percent of the economy and raised concerns whether the U.S. deserves its AAA credit rating. The increased borrowing may also undermine the first-quarter rally in Treasuries as the economy improves.
“It’s a slap upside the head of the government,” said Mitchell Stapley, the chief fixed-income officer in Grand Rapids, Michigan, at Fifth Third Asset Management, which oversees $22 billion. “It could be the moment where hopefully you realize that risk is beginning to creep into your credit profile and the costs associated with that can be pretty scary.”
While Treasuries backed by the full faith and credit of the government typically yield less than corporate debt, the relationship has flipped as Moody’s Investors Service predicts the U.S. will spend more on debt service as a percentage of revenue this year than any other top-rated country except the U.K. America will use about 7 percent of taxes for debt payments in 2010 and almost 11 percent in 2013, moving “substantially” closer to losing its AAA rating, Moody’s said last week.
“Those economies have been caught in a crisis while they are highly leveraged,” said Pierre Cailleteau, the managing director of sovereign risk at Moody’s in London. “They have to make the required adjustment to stabilize markets without choking off growth.”
Advanced economies face “acute” challenges in tackling high public debt, and unwinding existing stimulus measures will not come close to bringing deficits back to prudent levels, said John Lipsky, first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund.
Unfortunately, people are notoriously illiterate about economics, but to those who understand global capital markets, this is horrifyingly close to a major global crisis…
I’m feeling very sad about the state of our Country. I can’t wait for the next election years.
David Frum.
March 21, 2010: the day the America of our founding ceased to exist.
America has ceased to exist? Overblown much?
A great day for America. It shows how persistence, tactical brilliance, and decisive leadership can prevail over distortion, misrepresentation, and even the most determined obstructionism. Not to mention that it is the right thing to do.
It’s also worth noting that the Republicans overplayed their hand. They had an opportunity to negotiate a much weaker bill in the days after Scott Brown was elected. Instead they refused to negotiate and insisted on starting over, and they ended up with a bill which is much more robust than the one they could have gotten a month or two ago.
Yes, Jacques, everbody on your side is pimping Frum today, from the White House on down.
You can always count on Frum to knife conservatives in the back.
I’m generally not a fan. I was a big fan of his mother; the son … not so much.
Reality has a well-know liberal bias. Frum facing up to reality must feel like betrayal …
Most of his “reality” is envy of those who are actually successful. He wrote two thirds of a famous slogan and thinks he is some sort of political genius.
Nobody pays him any attention unless he is attacking conservatives.
Peter, a great day for America is quite overstating. A great day for Democrats, a not-so-great day for the 60% of Americans the latest CNN poll shows as still being opposed to this legislation.
I question your assertion that a massive new entitlement in the face of a mountain of debt is the right thing to do. The liberal thing to do, yes, but that’s not always the same thing.
Finally, it’s absurd to say opposition to this bill had no effect. Did you see a public option in the final bill? Neither did I…this is not the bill the liberals wanted, but they held their nose and voted for half a loaf rather than none…
It’s funny how opposition to anything you support, Peter, is never based on actual opposition on solid grounds, but rather distortion, lies, fear-mongering, etc. You’ve learned well from the master Krugman. Tell me, do you also support his notion of a trade war on China? THAT would be an act of genius, considering their quickly disappearing willingness to hang onto dollars is the only thing keeping us teetering on the right side of the financial precipice we are dangling over…good thing we don’t award Nobel prizes on the basis of political opposition to American presidents unpopular in Europe…er, wait a minute…
Right, Mark.
That 60% lumps together people who thought the legislation did not go far enough with those who think it went too far.
After the passage of the legislation, the polls tell a different story. By a 49%-40% margin, people say that passage of the bill was “a good thing.”
The President fares very well in that poll. Congressional Democrats (justifiably, I think), not so well, and Congressional Republicans fare abysmally.
Expect those numbers to harden as the fog lifts.
I’ll grant you the poll today was favorable to the bill. I’ll acknowledge the tide has turned somewhat if further polling confirms it. I’m not the type to only trumpet the news that favors my side…but I won’t be surprised if the bill gets a little honeymoon after the hagiography of the last few days of Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama…that would be quite natural and not at all unexpected. We’ve had months of polling opposed to the bill, and a single poll that I know of showing it favored…
But as Jacques noted, opposition combined single-payer advocates with right-wing supporters of the status quo. Of those, the former are much more likely to be glad that something passed, and to view the bill favorably in the wake of its passage. Again, it takes some time to be sure, but I’d be surprised if it weren’t the case.
I’d also be surprised if support didn’t start going up because people are actually going to find out what’s in the bill, rather than what’s in the Republican fever-dream version of the bill.
Fargus, I have to tell you what I told Peter – why must Republican opposition in your eyes always be based upon delusion? I know what’s in the bill – and I still opposed it – because I don’t think we need a massive new entitlement that I don’t believe will actually reduce the deficit and will in fact increase it (see latest post today for Jay Cost’s take on the supposed deficit reduction in the bill)…
Republican opposition is not always based on delusion. There are legitimate reasons to oppose health care reform, and they have been voiced by Republicans. However, in addition to reasonable arguments against the reforms, there has been an unprecedented level of “distortion, lies, (and) fear-mongering” which has been untethered to reality. Death panels, government takeover of health care, pulling the plug on Grandma: it’s all nonsense, and it’s been used repeatedly and shamelessly by everyone from the Republican leadership to their water carriers in the media.
45,000 die every year from no health insurance!
The bill will cut premiums by $2500 a year!
The bill will cut costs, cover more and reduce the deficit!
Looks like “distortion, lies, (and) fear-mongering” to me.
Other than snark Fargus, what is it that you do well?
With the passage of the healthcare bill we have traded off freedom and liberty for a vast new government program. That means that the America founded by Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Adams, et al, based as it was on the principles of individual liberty & freedom and limited government, no longer exists. It has taken 50 years to accomplish, a journey begun by FDR, and accomplished, in aggregate, with the passage of this bill. It is a matter of personal assessment whether you think that is a good thing or a bad one; I am unequivocally in the camp that thinks it is a bad thing.
Blame Mitt Romney and the Heritage Foundation
Peter, your comment about Republican’s water carriers in the media is laughable. It boggles my mind that even liberals can believe this nonsense – call it Eric Alterman syndrome.
The latest Pew Research survey from 2008 of close to 1,000 journalists in every branch of media found (you can view the PDF here) the following:
As was the case in 2004, majorities of the national and local journalists surveyed describe themselves as political moderates; 53% of national journalists and 58% of local journalists say they are moderates. About a third of national journalists (32%), and 23% of local journalists, describe themselves as liberals. Relatively small minorities of national and local journalists call themselves conservatives (8% national, 14% local).
So 32% self-identified liberals in the national media vs. 8% conservative (wonder how small that 8% would be without Fox News)…that’s a 4-1 ratio…
Peter, bring some facts to the game…
Bob might also enjoy Soon Oceania will have always been in favor of merely tinkering at the edges of Eastasia.
Evidently, Ramesh Ponnuru is another traitor to the cause …
Mark, as Peter said, not all Republican opposition is rooted in delusion, and I never claimed it was. But when you have people as prominent as Chuck Grassley and Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh claiming that the Democrats are pushing the bill because they want to kill your grandmother, there is no other word for that but delusion. And, truth be told, as the process wore on, the delusion became much more prominent than the principled opposition.
Steve, I don’t really understand your question. My post was snarky, but I don’t see how that implies that I do nothing well. I am, for instance, a pretty competent mathematician. I can play the clarinet. Maybe it would be appropriate for me to turn the question around and ask what, other than hyperbolic claims that America is dead, do you do well?
Why? In what way is that excerpt similar to Frum’s piece?
Ponnuru — traitoriously — points out that Senator Cornyn’s avowed support for one (popular) provision of the Bill (the ban on discrimination based on pre-existing conditions) logically requires supporting the other major provisions (the individual mandate, etc).
I suggest reading both that link, and the one in my previous comment again, carefully.
You can ban pre-existing conditions and compensate in other ways. Like tax credits to the insurance company, for instance.
This turd of a bill is not the only way to skin a cat.
I see that David Frum was fired from the American Enterprise Institute today. I guess others on even the “Beltway Right” see him the same way as I do.
Not really. It ain’t insurance if you are allowed to buy-in after you fall ill.
The only way you can still have a private, for-profit, insurance system, and ban discrimination on pre-existing conditions, is if you require everyone to carry insurance.
What you just described is a single-payer system, paid-for by the taxpayers, but administered by private for-profit companies (formerly “insurance” companies, but now simply in the business of taking goverment dollars and dispensing them to healthcare providers).
You really want to claim that’s better than RomneyCare?
Fair enough, but we are permitted a bit of pique, no? Maths are good, clarinet is awesome, seriously. For me it is golf, guitar, soccer, and handyman-ish things, but my most valuable skill is selling, it is the profession that I sought and followed for 25 years. It has made we wealthy. I’ve taken the risk and reaped the benefits.
It is not hyperbole, just fact that we have traded liberty and freedom for a certain type of equality or egalitarianism, as Greg Mankiw says here:
http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2010/03/healthcare-tradeoffs-and-road-ahead.html
This bill is 2,500 pages, or so, of rules, regulations, mandates, taxes, and fees, there is no other way to characterize it as anything other than an enormous abridgment of our freedom. You need to admit that, defend it if you will, as an appropriate price to pay for the equality you seek. I just think it is a horrible trade-off that diminishes us all.
eh, we/me, you know what i mean.
I doubt that. Here is a column which suggests some alternatives;
Would they work? I don’t know, I’m no expert. The point is that there is seldom only one way to accomplish something.
Those are alternatives to banning discrimination on pre-existing conditions. Some (like mandating insurance portability*) would make it easier for people to change jobs, or move out-of-State, without suffering the consequences that pre-existing conditions would otherwise entail.
That doesn’t address the point that Ramesh Ponnuru, Mitt Romney, and the Heritage Foundation have all managed to figure out (but that Cornyn, and some who would make apologies for him, apparently have not), namely that — if you do ban discrimination on pre-existing conditions, then you also have to mandate individual coverage. (And, if you do that, then you need subsidies for the people who can’t afford the premiums on their own, …)
In other words, you end up, more-or-less, with RomneyCare.
Sure, you can contemplate wholesale alternatives to RomneyCare. (I, for instance, would advocate strongly for a single-payer system; Steve thinks that the status-quo is just fine.) But you can’t just cherry-pick the popular bits from RomneyCare, and call that a policy.
That’s not, actually, what Mankiw says. He says that we traded efficiency for equality. Which is quite a different thing.
In any case, if RomneyCare is so bad (“That means that the America founded by Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Adams, et al, based as it was on the principles of individual liberty & freedom and limited government, no longer exists.”), then surely it was equally bad when the Heritage Foundation proposed it in 1994, and when Mitt Romney enacted it in Massachusetts in 2006.
* Never mind that insurance portability was already the point of HIPAA.
Yes, I say it is bad, regardless of who is purported to support it (Romney, Heritage, et al) because it restricts our freedom and takes, by force, the property of some and gives it to others. Your appeal to authority is no argument against mine, namely that we are less free today than we were when we awoke last Sunday morning. I’m open to argument on that point, but have yet to see or hear anything that refutes it. What I hear are various forms of why health insurance reform is good, i.e.; the benefit outweighs the cost.
Mankiw says, “I like to think of the big tradeoff as being between community and liberty. From this perspective, the health reform bill offers more community (all Americans get health insurance, regulated by a centralized authority) and less liberty (insurance mandates, higher taxes).”. The efficiency and equality point is made by reference to the work of Arthur Okun, with whom Mankiw seems not to wholeheartedly agree.
Ah. OK. Sorry.
If we’re going to start from the position that “taxes are theft,” then it follows that all government is inherently illegitimate. That seems like a poor starting point for any discussion about the role of government in something as complicated as healthcare, because it requires an elaborate argument that the government has any legitimate role in anything. (It is possible to make such an argument, but the effort leaves one so exhausted that one ends up abandoning the discussion long before one gets to anything interesting.)
The only countries which are truly free (ie, in which there isn’t a parasitic government, subsisting on theft of peoples’ property) look, to me, a whole lot more like Hobbes’s nightmarish “state of nature” than like any Randian paradise.
I’m not convinced that the proper role, and legitimacy, of government is a function of the funding source, nor did I mean that comment in that way. Taking assets, in the form of fees, taxes, and the mandating of spending (buying insurance), is part of the reduction in freedom that we all will bear as a result of this legislation. I think it’s a valid question to ask if that loss is philosophically and morally legitimate, and worth the benefit, which are two different questions.
Yes, it is.
That is why Mitt will not get the nomination in 2012.
The Heritage Foundation was wrong too. It may surprise you that if a think tank proposes something, it does not define the conservative view.
Sure you can. Where do you live? On Earth, policy by popularity is done all the time.
You compensate/offset the negative effects by other things. There is always going to be some option if you get creative enough.
Ah. Well if the Heritage Foundation and Mitt Romney are insufficiently conservative for you, that would make your position, at least, self-consistent.
Which leads to policies that fail. Which, I suppose is fine, if your attitude is government is supposed to fail, at whatever it does.
If, however, you’re interested in government that actually achieves its policy objectives (and doesn’t just waste the taxpayers’ dollars), then you want policies that actually work, as opposed to ones cobbled together for their ‘popular’ appeal.
Sorry. Government can’t exist without taxes to support it. You can define taxation as a reduction of freedom. I just don’t find that a useful definition because if I look around at those truly “free societies” (without taxes or a functioning government), they don’t much look like any place I’d ever want to live.
I’ll grant you that mandating that people carry insurance is a reduction in freedom. So is mandating that insurance companies provide coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.
As I’ve argued with Bob, you can’t have the latter without the former. Perhaps you feel that we shouldn’t have either. But I think that puts you in a distinct minority.
My opposition to the health insurance legislation is decidedly mainstream, I fully acknowledge that my reason for opposing it is not.
As I said above, it’s important to distinguish between different types of opposition. After all, we don’t want to be lumping you in with the advocates of single-payer!
Also, let me add a caveat to my previous assent that government mandates (and government regulations, more generally) are an abridgment of freedom.
That’s not a completely straightforward proposition. While they curtail some freedoms, they also frequently enable others. Thus, product safety regulations curtail the freedom of manufacturers, but they enable consumers to purchase their products, free of the anxiety that the product is defective, dangerous, or hazardous to their health.
Similarly mandating non-discrimination on the basis of pre-existing conditions (or mandating portability of insurance, or whatever) curtails the freedom of insurers. But it also frees individuals to change jobs, or start a new business, free of the fear that they, thereby, will be unable to procure health insurance.
Even if you’ve decided that “freedom” is your paramount value, trumping everything else, you’re still making a judgment-call in privileging one freedom over another when — as frequently happens — different freedoms collide with each other.
Surely, and the freedom I am most concerned about is that of the individual variety. Safety regulations do indeed curtail the freedom of manufacturers to positively or negligently harm me, but I would argue that is simply a preemptive vs reactive action against doing harm more than an abridgment of rights or freedom.
Can we agree that this is a continuum, a line that has total freedom at the right end and totalitarian control at the left (I couldn’t resist)? I mostly want to be left alone, to succeed or fail on my own, and to be responsible, or the beneficiary, of those actions. I disagree that healthcare is a “right” and I object to paying for others who are less responsible than me. I am in excellent help, not by luck but because I take care of myself, I exercise, I eat right, I deny myself some simple pleasures in the interest of good health; and now I have no choice but to buy health insurance and pay for it for people that do not take care of themselves. I’m rambling a bit here, so I hope you get the gist of what I’m saying.
If we only look at Social Security and Medicare, compare their current cost to that which was estimated when they were debated and enacted, I think we can anticipate that the health insurance law will eventually consume an ever greater portion of our government budget; we will pay a very high price for a very small gain. I hope I’m wrong.
Your preference for individual freedoms, over those of corporations, is rather unusual among Libertarians.
I agree that there’s a continuum, but not that it’s one-dimensional. Freedoms collide. Your desire “to be left alone” probably includes a desire that the Govenment abridge your neighbour’s freedom to open an iron smelter, discotheque, or pig-farm on his property.
Similarly, despite your assurance that you eat healthy, your “freedom,” to not carry health insurance, negatively impacts me. Among other reasons, the risk that you might step off the curb, be hit by a car, and end up as an uninsured patient in the Emergency Room, means that I pay higher insurance premiums (and probably higher taxes) than I otherwise would.
Well, you could allow me to expire, and without guilt I might add…
I suppose I could. But, frankly, I’d prefer not to live in a society that did that.
And, I suspect that (libertarian principles aside), neither would you.
Ah, so true, I would not. I think people that know me would say I am a charitable, neighborly person that helps others less fortunate than myself. I do this in spite of the fact that I believe I am not obligated to do so; I honestly struggle with why I do so, perhaps it is my Catholic upbringing or it has something to do with a simplistic sense of the karmic notion of “what goes around comes around”. The line I draw is at being forced into these acts by my government and the law.
There is a cost that accrues to me for the uninsured, I acknowledge that. I am willing to pay that cost in exchange for the freedom to choose how I live my life, and don’t accept that burden of cost as an adequate justification for, example, the freedom abridging health insurance law passed last Sunday.
A question: is your argument in favor of the health insurance bill based on a simple cost/benefit analysis, i.e.; it will be less costly, overall, to make all people have health insurance?
Well, first of all, let me point out that, from your perspective, this is one of those instances of colliding freedoms. This legislation will enable millions of people who want to buy health insurance, but who have heretofore been unable to, to do so. The price (an unavoidable one, under the circumstances) is that it will also require people, who previously were able to buy health insurance, but chose not to, to do so too.
To answer your question: Yes, I believe that, by enlarging the pool, it will lower insurance rates overall. The new Exchanges will also contribute to lower rates, but not as much as the Public Option would have.
I also believe that overall health outcomes be improved. Uninsured people are less likely to get regular checkups, and preventive care.
Well, we shall see on both the costs and the health outcomes, the CBO estimates have what many consider to be shaky assumptions about the future baked into their estimates, and there are serious questions about the prospective improvements in health outcomes, mortality and such, resulting from our new health insurance program.
My concern is freedom, however vaguely I might describe it, to act as I wish to do, while being entirely responsible for my, and only my, choices. I wonder why I should have to pay any price for this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhr7x_5HvF8
My other concern is that in the name of “efficiency” we drift toward totalitarianism:
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2010/03/025940.php
If I’m paying for your healthcare then we need to have a serious talk about your lifestyle choices.
All projections, both of future deficits, and of the impact of measures to reduce them, are based on assumptions that may or may not prove accurate.
I’m not going to mount a passionate defense of the CBO’s methodology, except to note that their methods are consistent. That is, they are most useful when comparing the impact of different proposed pieces of legislation.
One thing, however, that I do take umbrage at, is people who cite CBO estimates when the conclusions suit them, but suddenly find gaping flaws in the CBO’s methodology, when the conclusions don’t suit them.
In any case, this graph tells the story of where our medium term budget deficits come from.
Those strike me as unconvincing.
Quite a peculiar set of statements, when juxtaposed.
Maybe I should ask some related questions:
1) What’s your position on seatbelt laws?
2) How about regulations banning lead paint in toys?
One of the recurrent themes in several of your posts is the notion of moral hazard: that health insurance pools the healthy and the unhealthy together and that, by buying health insurance, you (as someone who looks after himself) are subsidizing the bad behavior of others.
It seems to me that
1) This has nothing to do with the current legislation, but is a feature health insurance generally.
2) In fact, it’s true of insurance more generally.With your homeowner’s insurance, aren’t you subsidizing the bad behavior of your neighbor, who likes to smoke in bed?
Jacques, the graph you show is very misleading. The Bush tax cuts have proven unwise in hindsight, I’m not denying, but more troubling was Bush’s runaway spending…and the fastly increasing amount of government outlays going to entitlements is far more pertinent to this conversation. And the fact is that we spend WAY, WAY more on entitlements than on anything else…and we just added another huge one. Not very smart…in fact, you might say it is both reckless and stupid…and I’m afraid hindsight will be every bit as unkind…
If you want to know what’s changed over the past decade — from when we were running budget surpluses, till now — then it not misleading at all.
Since Medicare Part D does not appear on the graph (and since that unfunded increase in entitlements is a bigger contributor to the deficit than some items which do appear), I assume that this is what’s called the “on-budget” deficit.
Here’s my take on the Bush tax cuts. Everyone likes tax cuts, no one more so than me. What made Bush’s tax cuts too large in hindsight were some things he couldn’t avoid (9/11, War in Afghanistan) and some things he could have (war in Iraq, prescription drug benefit). He was two-faced – he starved the beast of government with tax cuts, and fed the beast with increased spending. Combine the two, and you’ve got a prescription for disaster…but here comes Obama, with his talk of sacrifice and hard choices – and what does he do? Pass the biggest entitlement since Medicaid in the FACE of this fiscal disaster. That’s just wrong – it’s stupid, it’s reckless, and it’s going to bankrupt this country (not singlehandedly, but as in straw that broke the back). I hope I’m wrong, but I truly think I’m right…and I’m not being partisan. This is bad, bad news…
Or, as Robert Samuelson put it today:
Should the United States someday suffer a budget crisis, it will be hard not to conclude that Obama and his allies sowed the seeds, because they ignored conspicuous warnings. A further irony will not escape historians. For two years, Obama and members of Congress have angrily blamed the shortsightedness and selfishness of bankers and rating agencies for causing the recent financial crisis. The president and his supporters, historians will note, were equally shortsighted and self-centered — though their quest was for political glory, not financial gain.
You may not agree with the CBO score, but it’s hard to take this doomsaying when the Democrats at least crafted their legislation to come out reducing the deficit when Bush simply passed politically popular measures, let them sunset after ten years, so that someone else could get the blame for either continuing them or letting them expire.
Economist Menzie Chinn, on Robert Samuelson’s column.