Sun Blogs: Left, Right or Wrong?
Rules Are Not Meant To Be Broken
October 19, 2009 - 11:00pmWe all want to have faith in our government, in elected officials’ honesty and good intent. We want to believe in our President and in our system of government. President Obama has insisted that any health reform bill he signs will be deficit neutral and will place the nation on a more financially stable path in the long-term.
At the heart of discontent with healthcare reform is a fundamental skepticism about government. President Obama and the Democrats’ recent health reform proposal have helped to justify the widespread discontent that many claimed was manufactured. One day President Obama and the Democrats state they are committed to restoring America’s financial footing and ensuring deficit neutrality in health reform, and the next day they circumvent their own rules and stipulations to do just the opposite.
If you currently receive Social Security benefits, you can be expecting a one time check of $250 soon, at an aggregate cost of a measly $13 billion. This is in addition to a previous one-time payment that was issued as part of the Recovery Act. Social Security benefits are indexed to inflation, and change year to year based on a cost of living adjustment (COLA). This would be the first time there is no automatic raise since 1975, because prices have declined since last year, most notably as a result of decreasing energy prices. Accordingly, the purchasing power of Social Security benefits has in fact increased. However, President Obama has chosen to waive the COLA provision and write a check for $13 billion. Where does this money come from? Well it comes from China and anybody else who will buy U.S. debt, of course. There are several reasons the COLA provision was enacted, not the least of which was to prevent arbitrary expenditures not tied to the real economy. An economic downturn is not a license to increase debt on a whim.
The other troubling news is Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid’s proposal to fix Medicare’s payments to doctors. Doctor payments are currently tied to an index that has dictated payment decreases. However, the unpopularity of decreased payments has prompted every Congress to temporarily waive the decreased payment. Senator Reid has now proposed both a fix for 2010 and a permanent fix to the tune of $245 billion. Does this sound like a component of healthcare reform, because it sure does to me. Oddly enough, though, the so-called “doc fix” is to be introduced as its own piece of legislation, separate from the healthcare reform bill. This essentially moves $245 billion out of the healthcare reform bill and still allows reform to be deficit neutral. The “doc fix” proposal contains no way to pay for it, thus violating congressional pay-go rules that President Obama advocated for so fervently.
There is enough criticism and hypocrisy to go around, both among Democrats and Republicans. The one-time Social Security payments and “doc fix” proposal are not reason enough to fight healthcare reform. Yet, we are asked to trust our elected officials with reorganizing one-sixth of the economy and before a bill is even signed there is evidence of politicians using tricks and loopholes to take the easy way out. I expect better of my nation’s leaders. They should at least wait until healthcare reform is signed by the President to start taking shortcuts. I have come to expect nothing less.