A scene from somewhere in my imaginary world:

“Good news!” said Madge, my hypothetical business unit manager. “You’re getting a raise!”

“Really? That’s great!” I hypothetically responded in the precise fashion that I always react when somebody tells me I’m getting some money.

“Yep,” she answered. “An extra two thousand per year. Just sign these forms and we’ll get it all processed.”

“Yes indeed!” I beamed, grabbing a pen. “Hey… wait a minute. This says I’m going to be taking home less money. What gives?”

“Ah. You know, a number of our consultants seem confused over this. You see, given the current economic conditions, we’ve had to reconfigure our base business model. This means that we basically had to recalculate how much total funding is paid to consultants, how much work is assigned, etc. and then it’s divided up between all of you.”

“But… but… this means you cut my pay!” I cried.

“Not at all,” she responded quite reasonably. “We raised your pay. We just raised from a newly redefined and somewhat lower base model.“

I bring up this brief bit of pythonesque humor only to prepare you both mentally and emotionally for some news from Charlie Rangel. (D – NY) Some of you will doubtless already know the Congressman from his groundbreaking work in funding the Charles Rangel Center for the Advancement of Charles Rangel in Brooklyn.

Health-care overhaul legislation being drafted by House Democrats will include $600 billion in tax increases and $400 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles Rangel said.

Democrats will work on the bill’s details next week as they struggle through “what kind of heartburn” it will cause to agree on how to pay for revamping the health-care system, Rangel, a New York Democrat, said today.

Rangel said Democrats are still considering options for tax increases that might be in the bill, including a possible end to the income tax exclusion for employer-paid health benefits.

So originally nobody was going to be paying more taxes except for a tiny sliver of the very, very rich. And now you’re thinking that perhaps I don’t need to have my own health-care (which I already arranged for on my own, thank you) remain free of taxes? Rangel himself is admitting that the total price tag for the health care makeover project will exceed 1.5 trillion dollars. At the same time, the President is telling us during his Saturday morning radio broadcast that the initiative will be paid for without increasing the debt by finding savings and eliminating waste, fraud and abuse. If you can find one and a half trillion in waste, fraud and abuse, then you shouldn’t have had the system in place to begin with.

I’m no expert, but this is looking increasingly clear to me. You simply can not keep spending this amount of money – which Obama admits we don’t even have – while not increasing the amount of money you take in (i.e. tax increases) without the system collapsing into a metaphorical black hole. Are there some problems in health care? Is there room for improvement? Obviously the answer is yes. But come on, folks. Don’t rush us off another cliff like you did with the magically disappearing TARP money. (And yes, I know, TARP happened on George W. Bush’s watch. There’s blame to go around on all sides here.)