George Will’s RCP post today, A Victory for Obama’s Agenda of Spreading Dependency, focuses on the missed opportunity for health-care reform, the grime of the Democrats’ vote buying, and the ultimate desire for complete control through dependency creation. Some excerpts:
On missed opportunity for real reform: “Health care will not be seriously revisited for at least a generation, so the system’s costliest defect — untaxed employer-provided insurance, which entangles a high-inflation commodity, health care, with the wage system — remains. Obama could not challenge this without adopting measures — e.g., tax credits for individuals, enabling them to shop for their own insurance — that empower individuals and therefore conflict with his party’s agenda of spreading dependency.”
On the vote buying:”Because logrolling is how legislative coalitions are cobbled together in a continental nation, the auction by which reluctant House Democrats were purchased has been disillusioning only to sentimentalists with illusions about society’s stock of disinterestedness. Besides, some of the transactions were almost gorgeous: Government policy having helped make water scarce in California’s Central Valley, the party of expanding government secured two votes by increasing rations of the scarcity. Thus did one dependency lubricate legislation that establishes others.”
On dependency: “Promoting dependency is the Democratic Party’s vocation. It knows that almost all entitlements are forever, and those that are not — e.g., the lifetime eligibility for welfare, repealed in 1996 — are not for the middle class. Democrats believe, plausibly, that middle-class entitlements are instantly addictive and, because there is no known detoxification, that class, when facing future choices between trimming entitlements or increasing taxes, will choose the latter. The taxes will disproportionately burden high earners, thereby tightening the noose of society’s dependency on government for investments and job-creation.”
Obama’s course accelerates our journey on the road to serfdom. Sad that none of these socialists think of their children and grandchildren. Ultimately, they are really a selfish lot. And Obama is truly a post-American president, denying all the attributes that make us a great nation. Will’s excellent article is worth the read.