One begins to get the extremely uncomfortable feeling that this nation is being railroaded right now. Between the wholly-owned media and this item that just popped on Memeorandum, this is beginning to look ugly.
The nonpartisan $1 trillion over ten year price tag that CBO slapped on part of the Kennedy health committee version of health care has apparently been instructive for the other committee writing a health care bill.
At the Senate Finance Committee, which is also drafting a health care bill, they’re keeping everything under wraps, out of the public view, and behind closed doors.
Sen. Max Baucus, D-MT, and the Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, which is working on a separate but related version of health care reform, admitted today that a past proposal by his committee was estimated by CBO to cost $1.5 trillion over ten years.
But Baucus said today things have changed since that CBO estimate two weeks ago. When will we know his final proposal? It’s still not clear. The Finance Committee is supposed to begin a markup of their bill this week.
A Democratic Finance Committee staffer said today that whatever the Senate Finance Committee ultimately produces “will cost less than a trillion dollars and it will be fully paid for.”
Here’s the thing. If you buy the idea that the goal here is to cover some 47 million uninsured – which is a very questionable figure, indeed – than you need to understand the numbers here. Let’s assume for a moment that all the costs of this massive spending spree were to give those 47 million insurance. Then this bill will give each and every one of those people somewhere north of $21,000 per year in coverage.
Yeah, I know that is not how it will all be wasted spent, but the number is instructive. But the Democrats are not even giving anyone – especially the Republicans – any chance to actually read the details of this spending frenzy. We are being pushed into something without any public discussion, without any debate and without any chance to look at alternatives.
I will just point out that every, single member of the House who votes for this will have to stand for election next year. They will have to face an electorate that will just be beginning to see the havoc that a trillion dollar tax hike will cause.
Many Senators will also have to explain their votes.
(One has to have some hope, even in this rigged a game.)
Better start calling right now. We want to see the details. We want to see the tax hikes. We do not want to be dragooned into a huge expenditure that will cripple this country without seeing details.
