Capitol Hill Blue Forums Political Issues Politics In General The fallout: Democrats rethinking health care bill

Ma, I thought you were not in favor of more deficit spending and a balanced budget. If that is true, how would suspending the federal income tax help matters?

Where do my income tax dollars go? The article is a few years old but the information is still pertinent IMO.

Thank you for the sympathy, because it is bitter to realize how fragile our country really is. And I thank you for keeping this dialog open and going. As a student of history I am quite cognizant that it is only progressive voices and ideas that created and have ever moved this nation forward. All of the progress, by definition, comes from progressives - conservatism is nothing but Luddism in action. The problem is that the brakes supplied by conservatism are unmediated - they stop every new idea, good or bad.

Not sure that you read the same history books I do, because I don't know when that has proved true. I know how often it has been untrue - think Prohibition.

True, but as your examples point out, it is private enterprise, and not necessarily corporate enterprise, and certainly not mega-corporate enterprise, which is distrusted - with reason - more than even the government: "Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Bill Gates, all are considered quasi heroes" as individuals, but not because they are responsible for the corporations they spawned. Each was a progressive in their times, by the way.

Here we distinctly part ways - I don't think that there is a natural distrust of government, I think it is a learned response, and not from experience, either. Nor, frankly, do I even remotely believe that "Americans do not want the government to do for them what they can do for themselves." I don't think that is a motivation at all, they want government to do for them what they can't do for themselves. Isn't that, after all, the reason that "government is instituted among men?" While I agree that many "do not like it but accept it as necessary," there are many elements within the conservative (ultraconservative, anyway) polity who do not accept it as necessary whether or not "they believe it is responsive to them and not the other way around." to wit: tea partiers. I do, however, believe government does need to be responsive to the citizenry (note, CITIZENry), and health care reform is certainly something that remains popular within the citizenry.

"[Private enterprise] is this reason that we have been so successful for the last century." (I hope I got your meaning right) In my view, it is not the reason, but a reason we have been successful - there has to be a balance between private success and public interests. That is what I see being completely out of whack at present. We are lacking an understanding of the counterweight that government provides to unbridled commerce. Markets can only be free if they are regulated. Teddy Roosevelt certainly understood that. Franklin Roosevelt clearly understood that. Economists from Adams and Keynes certainly appreciated that. And, I think that Obama believe that as well. Private enterprise may be the engine that powers the economy, but no engine can operate efficiently without governors. Otherwise they just fly apart - as we have just seen.

I'll get back to you on the rest - I'm getting too wordy.

And don’t forget the most important point of all. It is much easier to be a conservative than a progressive. Conservatives are dealing with a known entity, progressives not. And the majority of humans tend to be conservative by nature. It takes much more guts to be a progressive and venture “where no man has gone before.” Sorry.

Does that mean all progressive ideas are or have been correct? Absolutely not and many in retrospect were totally harebrained. No list here. But that does not mean all were bad as witnessed by our evolving nation and world. I too hope we have enough time to sort out our national mess before it is too late but that will require many very brave people willing to do what is right and difficult and not just what is politically expedient.

My assumption is that the government is going to do SOMETHING, if only to tell people that they tried to do something. That will mean another "stimulus", or maybe a spending package aimed at creating jobs? I believe that it is a foregone conclusion, so if it is going to happen then do it right. Put the money where it will do the most good for the economy and the country.

Besides, I would expect cuts to offest the loss of tax revenue.

Oh stop with the fabrication that liberal ideas are much harder to think about than conservative ideas. Think about the quality of people we have in Congress and tell me how complex any idea is that they have to try to understand.

Look, both parties are are just a group of people with roughly the the same ideology. The left has a much more dificult problem to solve than the right because the left considers everything a minority group. By recognizing that chubby white gay men are a unique political ideology, they dilute the ultimate power of the center. Every left wing fring group is part of the Liberal wing of the Democratic Party, and good for you, but managing the expectations of those splinter groups must be a little like parliment in Italy. The Republicans have their own issues, but not nearly as many as the Dems, making it much easier to keep internal peace.

I can sum a liberal's new idea up right now, Throw money at it, if that doesn't work throw more money at it. HCR is a perfect example, in order to pass something a huge, all powerful law had to be created when in reality a couple of minor (in comparison) laws would have satisfied the majority of both houses. Neither party has had an original idea since the Constitution was ratified, they have just rehashed other people's ideas and put their names on them.

I admit, I do not believe in the liberal anything. I believe they have foisted a series of bad ideas and laws upon the American society and irreparably damaged the fabric of our country. But you guys argue the same thing about the right. All I can say for sure is that there are times in history when it is acceptable to introduce massive new spending programs into an economy and times when you shouldn't even whisper about doing it. This is one of those times that silence is golden.

Ma, you think Obama/Bernanke/Geithner et al decided on a whim to throw billions at the US in the form of a stimulus package just because they were a group of bored liberals who could think of nothing better to do and who just wanted to spend wildly and recklessly? The same with HCR.

The wisdom of the stimulus or HCR, debating the pros, cons, intended targets and historical consequences of the decisions can’t be fully answered for awhile, but to it just call it liberal wasteful spending serves no purpose IMO.

I didn't call it wasteful spending. What I said was in order to placate the various factions withinn their party they have to develop very complex legislation, and that level of complexity causes the bill to cost a really really really lot of money. The fact I don't think the money was well spend really doesn't matter, it was spent, it hasn't accomplished a whole lot, and more will follow it.

I am a big fan of EASY! The KISS principle is one of my favorites, and even as an engineer I look for easy as opposed to complex. Why the push for single payer? Whay the push for a takeover? That was purely ideological and had no basis in the current political reality. I looked and looked for a reason to try something so obviously doomed from the start, I looked at the various angles that could be taken to achieve some hidden agenda, I tried to understand what they hoped to accomplish when the Senate was on record as against it. What I discovered was there was no conspiracy, it had to be that big to satisfy the rank and file in the house. There was a little bit of this, a little bit of that, and a lot of money to sweeten the stew. Then I looked at the Senate plan and didn't see anything in it that would satisfy the house, the Republicans or the American citizens. Hell, the fact that reid bought votes so publicly has convinced me that he never wanted this bill to get passed, but he to forward something to use as a basis for discussion, then when Brown got elected you could almost hear the collective sigh of relief on the left.

The left is more liable to spend lots of money than the right used to be before Bush. My guess is that the right has learned their leson and will again become fiscal conservatives. The Dems cannot do that. They have no history of fiscal restraint and their base instinct is to include everybody in everything and complain when everybody doesn't want to be included. Their party is far more fractured than the Reps, they have far more political ideologies to baby sit, far more feeling to hurt and fix. Let's face it, your internal problems have the potential to be far more interesting than the Reps. But, when you guys succeed in getting your act together you are a force of nature. I am just glad it doesn't happen very often or for a very long time when it does happen.

One more thing, Tim Geithner does not impress me. Just another insider brought in to act like an outsider.

Easy, huh? Single payer would have been easy - just expand Medicare by dropping the age brackets down 5 years at a time until everyone is covered. Easy. What is complex is the system we have now. Obama's original plan was much less complex - 5 pages, I think. Here's a simple idea - outlaw for-profit health insurance companies. The immediate windfall, economically, would be enormous. Investment money would become instantly available, insurance costs would plummet. Health coverage would expand as it became more affordable, business would pick up as the burdens were lessened. Indeed, the marginal effect of public-option health insurance far outweigh any tax incentives, including reduced taxation, that would reasonably occur.

That is the problem with the narrow thinking about Health Care Reform. A sweeping change is what is necessary, and there are plenty of examples the world over, all of which are superior to what we have. 5 Myths About Health Care Around the World The simplest thing would be to eliminate the "system" we have now, and pick one that will be more efficient (medically), more cost effective (economically), and more rational (socially), rather than spending billions trying to save the broken system we have now.

Thank you, NWP.
Simple, efficient and compassionate isn't the American way.