Have you ever noticed that progressives always start conversations “in the middle?” What I mean by that is their arguments are about “moral” inequities and the “grand funk” of the present: they never, ever want to document the efficacy of their “proven” solutions by citing historical fact nor are they willing to commit to metrics against which the consequences of “new” policies will be measured in the future. We need to hold them accountable for both.
Social security is a good example. When an accountant quizzed Roosevelt about the Ponzi scheme-like economic issues with social security, he said “I guess you are right about the economics, but those taxes were never a problem of economics. They are politics all the way through … with those taxes in there, no damn politician can ever scrap my social security program.” [“Statements on Taxes by Members of this Administration in 1939,” in Morgenthau Diary, January 5, 1939]. Both the accountant’s and Roosevelt’s perspective proved to be correct. Seventy years later, Social security, Medicare, and Medicaid have an off-balance sheet liability of $50T to $55T. This is equivalent to the annual GDP of all the people on the planet (currently 6B) working for one year or approximately 4 years of the GDP of the United States. In fact, Social Security, like nationalized healthcare, was presented as insurance, when in fact the “revenue” received from current payees was never invested in a sinking fund, but instead was transferred to the treasury, in exchange for an IOU, to meet ongoing obligations. As of today, Social Security has just reported, for the first time in history, the system will pay out more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office. Stephen Goss, chief actuary of the Social Security Administration, has said that although the CBO projection will probably be borne out, the change will have no effect on benefits in 2010 and retirees will keep receiving their checks as usual. Perhaps we should adopt a variant of the Dire Straits’ song as our national anthem: money ain’t for nothing but the checks are for free!
Health care will be no different. Progressives are remiss to discuss the disastrous future financial implications of the bill. Instead, they stack the cards to get an “acceptable” Congressional Budget Office score, while leaving out the cost of the “doctor fix [$250B],” they raise taxes for four years before realizing most of the benefits and all of the annualized cost of the legislation, and they double count the cuts in Medicare [$500B]. To paraphrase Joe Biden, our erstwhile Vice President, “ you have to spend money to keep from going bankrupt.” Only one problem, Joe, the government is not a business that creates wealth, it is no more than corporate overhead, whose purpose is to redistribute created wealth.
Conservatives need to transform the debate from the progressive’s mantra that somehow the absence of present pain and suffering is the moral pinnacle of a civilized culture. Using this logic, providing crack to a heroin addict – with no regard for the long term personal, societal, or economic consequences – is a morally acceptable solution. In fact, morally correct choices many times come from pain and suffering. As the saying goes, “good judgment comes for experience and experience comes from bad judgment.” Bad judgment is minimized through an understanding of history and a healthy respect for measuring and comparing future performance against objective reality, which we used to call Truth.
Until then, we will continue to be "Stuck in the middle, again."
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