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Funding the President’s Healthcare Program: Plans to Increase Middle-Class Taxes? (Guest Voice)
Funding the President’s Healthcare Program: Plans to Increase Middle-Class Taxes?
by Michael Reagan
In last week’s column, we discussed President Obama and his administration’s dangerous habit of making important policy statements and decisions before having all of the facts available. Well, this week some of President Obama’s top lieutenants, including Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, have countered the president’s earlier promise not to raise taxes on middle-class Americans to support his nationalized healthcare proposal. Is this yet another case of publicizing policy without having all of the input required from some of the nation’s leading advisers and supposed experts?
While the White House has pressed back, reiterating their position that middle-class Americans would not bear the burden of their overly ambitious plan, it is hard to figure out the disconnect between the political operations of the administration versus those who are tasked with actually developing and implementing the policies related to our nation’s economic well-being. If a middle-class tax hike is off the table, it seems key policy makers missed the memo. This is not just inexcusably sloppy — it’s dangerous.
As the nation continues to fight its way out of economic calamity, President Obama continues to insist on immediate passage of his hulking healthcare proposal. As a country, we’re not even sure if we want the plan, certainly can’t afford it, and yet the Obama administration demands action this calendar year, as though genuine debate and solid policy were made while running about as though on fire.
And this stubbornness holds beyond all odds — even as we know the federal government does not have the funds or a solidified plan for how to fund yet another soon-to-be bloated government program.
Certainly the administration recognizes that federal tax revenues are already down a historic 18 percent in 2009 — an astonishing decrease that the Associated Press calculates as the largest single-year decline since (you guessed it) the Great Depression. So what is their proposed solution to a struggling economy, insufficient funds to meet our current obligations including two wars and talk of additional government bailouts, and a deficit that is starting to near $2 trillion, you ask?
Spend more! And when the spending excesses and escalating deficit turns even the most liberal of stomachs, well, that’s when even the president’s own Treasury secretary recognizes the only way to proceed is to raise taxes on the middle class!
And on the political front, you may as well think of this new program as the fourth rail of American politics. If you thought that suggestions of changes to Social Security were met with scorn, imagine how difficult it will be for future generations of fiscally responsible candidates to run on platforms of government sanity in spending when the majority of Americans rely solely on the government for life-and-death healthcare decisions and our private insurance industry is shattered.
Our current system has its problems, but we have the freedom to solve those, carefully. If we rush towards President Obama’s bloated plan, the seemingly necessary resulting tax hikes may very well cause greater damage to our already fragile economy. Furthermore, we’ll be forever tying ourselves to an inefficient, unstable system which will drain our wallets and smother quality health care in this country.
Secretary Geithner’s suggestion of tax increases, the president’s backtrack, the conflicting noise coming from Congress, the hyped urgency — all of this only serves to demonstrate just how chaotic, and downright lost, this administration’s approach to policy making continues to be. It’s time for President Obama to get off the campaign trail and begin the hard work of governing with tangible, understandable solutions made in the full light of reality. I only wish I was more convinced he was up to the challenge.
Mike Reagan, the elder son of the late President Ronald Reagan, is chairman and president of The Reagan Legacy Foundation (www.reaganlegacyfoundation.org). Look for Mike’s newest book, “Twice Adopted” and other info at www.Reagan.com. ©2009 Mike Reagan .Mike’s column is distributed exclusively by: Cagle Cartoons, Inc., newspaper syndicate. This copyrighted column is licensed to run in full on TMV.
3 Responses to “Funding the President’s Healthcare Program: Plans to Increase Middle-Class Taxes? (Guest Voice)”
What bunk.
You need to go back to working on the loading docks Mikey.
Larry Summers echoed Geitner's remarks as well on this. Looks like they are trying to sound out the public mood on this and ease it in if its not too sour. I doubt it will happen, it would be political suicide for Obama and the entire Democratic Party if they tried. But they seem to be giving a middle-class tax increase some serious consideration. You just don't happen to have 2 of the President top economic advisors on the national TV political shows echoing each other by chance.
What will likely end up happening as the facts that the math in increasing only taxes on the rich doesn't work to pay for all the new government entitlement programs and other big government spending, is that other taxes will be snuck in one by one. We already had cigarette taxes boosted, expect energy taxes, alcohol taxes, taxes on sodas, etc to be increased. All of these impacting the middle class, but more difficult to label as “middle-class tax increases”.
As a practical matter, this country lacks the ability to address healthcare (and for that matter ANY problem), in a focused, direct, and coordinated fashion. It is also incapable of really planning much of anything of real value, at least not at this point in time. That type of activity does not fit within our governance model.
What you see here is an example of what happens when ANY entity is run by committee. We've known that as a society for a long time.
Our governance model is a “herding cats” governance model, where we let people and the entities they form have the freedom to do most of what they consider to be in their best interests, and we hope that it will also be in society's best interests.
Sometimes that works for us, and other times it doesn't. It will never yield consistency in approach, effort, and results. For us to think so is delusional in nature.
We (as a nation) lack the ability to rally around anything, unless it is perceived as An imminent threat to virtually all of us, and that's not going to happen often. And so we become self-absorbed in thinking about our own personal, close to home minutiae.
There are some positive and negative ramifications associated with ANY alternate approach we might pursue, and the yelling and screaming will always loud and raucous.
As George Will often says, there is the “inertia” which is Washington. There is also the “inertia” which is the U.S. and its constituent parts.
Although this approach has served us well for most of the last 110 years, from a theoretical perspective, one has to wonder how long we can govern ourselves using the “herding cats” governance model, in light of our increase in size and complexity of our citizens.
If the US were run like a business, then every single day, its management team would assess whether its goals are being attained, bust their butts to achieve those goals, ensure that it was getting the maximum value and productivity out of those working for it, and make on the dime changes to most effectively and efficiently reach those goals. In other words, be nimble.
This country is not nimble, and can not be.
I’m not advocating a particular change, either left or right; just the recognition that EVERY governance model has its limitations, and this one is no different. However, for us to think that we can continue to use it and not have negative periods and poor, inappropriate responses to problems, is not reasonable. A country needs to know its limitations.