Trillion Dollar Health Reform, $3 Trillion in Tax Cuts
It is interesting, and perhaps worth noting, that while political opposition seems to be hardening against the $1 trillion, ten-year cost of the early versions of health reform, barely a peep of concern has been raised about the $3 trillion price tag for President Obama’s plan to extend most of the Bush-era tax cuts.
The message seems pretty clear: The President, congressional Democrats, and nearly all Republicans are fine with busting the budget to cut taxes for nearly everyone, notwithstanding a cumulative deficit over the next decade of $9 trillion. They are, by contrast, unwilling to spend one-third as much to provide medical insurance for those who cannot afford it. I’ve always felt that health reform is as much an ethical choice as an economic one. We appear to be making ours.
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It's also interesting that the government feels it has the right to extort money and dispose of it as it will. I guess that whole thing about inalienable property rights isn't taken too seriously :/
I believe every one should have an opportunity to health care… obviously not every one can afford it though! I broke my jaw and fortunately I had great coverage but if not It would have cost $25,000 dollars.. this really opened my eyes!!
And who does the federal government belong to? Us.
Some of us actually do want to live in a good society with necessary services. We got together and elected a government. And now that government is trying to give our money to you, to blow on flatscreens & SUVs (till you hand us the bill for the planet you destroyed.)
Republicans: putting the pig in pig ignorant.
Most of those transfers go to the elderly, not the working poor or the “unworthy” poor. Now, if your parents or grandparents (and those of your spouse) have passed, I can see how you might not like this circumstance. If your parents or grandparents are alive, however, than the alternative is that they would be living with you, which is what happened before Social Security. Social Security and Medicare benefit working families whose parents have not passed as much as they benefit the recipients. They also remove the link between fecundity and security.
Put another way, they take away an implicit transfer to families whose elderly members have already died.
Dear Also Anonymous,
The functions you have identified account for much less than half of the federal budget. Most are state and local functions. Many are partly private (e.g., volunteer fire departments in many communities) or could be privatized or are merely supplements to private actions (e.g., home alarms, fences, vigilance and private security guards all protect property vs. police action). Transfer payments account for approx 40% of the federal budget.
Right…. Is it just me, or did Obama say all the Bush tax cuts for those making over 250K were expiring… So, basically, we are giving priority to the middle class over the poor and uninsured, not to the wealthy. Would be nice if some people, only some of the time, got their facts partially correct. Guess that is too much to ask for these days.
Look, anonymous. If you can get the government to cut spending to match revenues after your tax cuts, then, fine, it's your money. But if spending is at record levels (and, remember, that started with your guy in the White House), tax cuts aren't your money. They're my kids' (and yours), because they're going to have to pay it back with interest.
And if we were making investments that would give our kids more productive capacity or a better quality of life, it might be worth it. But we're not. We're stealing from our kids to give tax cuts to ourselves. That's just immoral.
Anonymous said, “It's OUR money.”
At the risk of feeding a troll, Anonymous, if you can earn all your money without any government — without roads, schools, police, fire departments, property rights, courts, military protection, and all the other things our society does to support business, commerce, and our livelihoods that you take for granted — then perhaps your comment would make sense.
We all have to pay taxes to maintain the structures of this great nation that allow each of us to thrive and prosper.
How do you figure that giving back people $3 trillion of their own money so they can spend on their family and pump it into the economy is a “cost” or a “price tag” to the federal government?
That's an insane comment.
It's OUR money, not the Federal Governments.
I guess it depends on whether the Volker Commission produces some output that changes this when it releases its report in December. Obama is loathe to let tax rates go up in a recession, even on the wealthy who are hoarding money.