The Dangerous Costs Of ‘Reform’
Wednesday - April 07, 2010
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Del.icio.usThree years ago, if anyone predicted the United States government would hire 16,000 new IRS agents to police and enforce a private citizen’s personal health care business, most would’ve scoffed, “Not in America!”
But that was before Congressional Democrats, by a cracker-thin margin, rammed through a health care bill rejected by a large majority of Americans and mostly unread by representatives who voted for it.
“We need to pass ObamaCare so that the public can find out what’s in the bill,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi cheerily pronounced before the vote as if she were plugging Cracker Jack prizes to third-graders. In truth, that little plastic red devil prize lurks at the bottom of the sugary details so we “little people” can’t discover it till we’ve choked on teeth-rotting goo.
So here’s our Cracker Jack prize: An Army of IRS agents/health care police poring over our personal and business files with the expanded powers to fine us up to $250,000 or worse if not in perfect compliance (i.e. simply choosing not to buy insurance) with the new health care law.
And then there’s the money thing. How will we, in a time of astronomical national debt and a 10-year, $45 trillion Obama budget, fund this IRS expansion?
“The CBO (Congressional Budget Office) estimated the IRS would need $5 billion to $10 billion in the first decade to cover the costs of its expanded role. The IRS’ annual budget is currently $11.5 billion. The IRS already has trouble meeting its primary duty: collecting taxes. By the IRS’s own estimates, it failed to collect about $290 billion in taxes in 2005, the latest year for which data are available,” say Phil Galewitz and Christopher Weaver in “Health bills could expand IRS role” in Kaiser Health News.
But why would Congress enact a law that will potentially punish themselves? Answer: Their Cracker Jack prize is a lot different than the average American’s.
This recent Investors Business Daily online editorial, America’s New Nomenklatura, says, “The just-passed health care bill ... carefully excluded the White House, congressional leaders and their staffs from having to live under the reforms’ restrictions.”
“President Obama will not have to live under the Obama health care reforms, and neither will the congressional staff who helped to write the overhaul,” said Iowa Republican Sen. Charles Grassley. “The message to the people at the grass roots is that it’s good enough for you, but not for us.”
The article also shows today’s wage discrepancies in public and private sector jobs ($38,548/year higher wages and benefits for a federal than for private worker for same job and duties) and other signs America is heading toward the old Soviet system of nomenklatura that sets up a privileged class inside the government. “This semipermanent bureaucracy earned higher incomes, got better health care, ate better food and had greater job security than average Russians, the much-despised proletarians. Today, our bloated federal government seems, in significant ways, to be creating this same dynamic.”
In the last 18 months the private sector has lost 4.71 million jobs while the government has added 81,000, and with the new IRS hires the debt our grandchildren will wear like a sand bag vest only grows. Founding Father John Adams wrote: “There are two ways to conquer a nation. One is by the sword and the other is by debt.”
I’d like to give those nation-killers in Congress who voted for this bill a Cracker Jack box with a prize: a one-way ticket home. In their place, put those who represent decreased spending and smaller government.
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