Okay, let’s go to the core of the problem. As of last year, six of the ten wealthiest counties in America were suburbs of DC. Five years earlier it was four, and in 1999 it was only two.

One of the great distinctives of America in all history is that we did NOT have the wealth of the nation funneling down to the national capital, in contrast to every other nation in every other time.

That has changed. Federal government is quite simply much too large. It began under Bush, but Obama and his boys from Chicago have taken such extortion to levels unimaginable just a few years ago. “Health reform” is part of that trend.

It’s not about health, or reform. It’s about power. My grandfather (1890-1976) spent 28 years as a judge. He warned me back in the late ‘60s ... “When you lose your absolute standards of right and wrong it won’t be much more than a generation until things devolve into a raw struggle for power.”

We’re there. Sorry, Grampa. I tried.

Second comment, different feeling than the first ... Obama, a cross, far bigger than the White House. I want to puke.

Getting health into the hands of the government is all it takes to start the Socialism machine….that is also the goal. If this thing passes America will never be a free trade country ever again

Federal government is quite simply much too large.

Agreed.  But, didn’t it really greatly expand not only under the last two presidents but also under FDR and others?  So, the problem goes back many generations of presidents.

70 years ago Bob Hope saw it coming.

Bart, you took the words right out of my mouth with comment #2.  Seems not long ago that a certain Republican presidential candidate from Arkansas caught a lot of flack for a commercial that featured a cross in the background.  Is the NYT now pulling a Huckabee, except for BHO?

And, rather than a vast Medicaid expansion (which will get passed on to already hemorrhaging state budgets after a grace period) among other inflationary parts of this Pandora’s Box, how about some actual REFORM that won’t bloat an already humongous deficit?

Guess not.  Obama and Pelosi-Reid have doubled down, and appear happy to have their moderate Democrat troops die on this hill come November.  Can’t say they weren’t warned.

And as we start on a grand new entitlement scheme there is this:

PARKERSBURG, W.Va. – The retirement nest egg of an entire generation is stashed away in this small town along the Ohio River: $2.5 trillion in IOUs from the federal government, payable to the Social Security Administration.

It’s time to start cashing them in.

For more than two decades, Social Security collected more money in payroll taxes than it paid out in benefits — billions more each year.

Not anymore. This year, for the first time since the 1980s, when Congress last overhauled Social Security, the retirement program is projected to pay out more in benefits than it collects in taxes — nearly $29 billion more.

These funds will be drained by 2037

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_social_security_ious

I am beginning to think that the only difference between Bernie Madoff and the Government is that one is in jail and the other is not.

I find it astounding that some Democrats can actually think they’ll be better off politically if they pass this thing than if they don’t, considering that only the core Democratic base supports it.  Independents now decide elections, and independents have swung heavily against this.

#9 I think you have a war right now in the Democractic party, not unlike the war currently in TEC.  You have the ideologues who want to push through their agenda no matter the consequences, and you have liberal to moderate pragmatists who don’t want to walk straightforward into a slaughterhouse in the mid-term election.

The battle is TEC appears over- the ideologues have won and don’t care about declining membership or anything else other than their agenda.  The Democrats are also controlled by ideologues, but there just might be enough gumption among the pragmatists to stall the engine of “progress”.

I can’t say for certain, but I have come to think that it won’t matter if this piece of trash legislation actually passes or not.  We simply do not have the money to pay for it.  The median income in the US is about $44,000 a year (2004).  The current debt load per member of the U.S. working population is $60,100, (February 2008). Exacerbating that fact is a real unemployment level of about 17%. 

Then, with Social Security, Medicare, other unfunded liabilities, and the interest payments on a national debt that currently exceeds $12.3 trillion; the cost will exceed 80% of all federal revenues in less than 10 years.  The projected deficits will add another $1.5 Trillion per year to the debt over those ten years.

The Health Care bill, optimistically, is set to add yet another $1 Trillion to that enormous debt load.

They can write whatever blank check they want.  The simple fact is…the money to pay for it just isn’t there.  If wishes and buts were candy and nuts, we’d all have a Merry Christmas.

That is what is so scary.  The numbers are unimaginably huge.  They are so large that they loose all meaning.  I truly can’t believe that our politicians want to incur such debt.

Amen, Br. Michael Amen!

I hate to say this, but it appears that we have a ‘snowball’s chance in Hell’ for ever getting anything remotely resembling healthcare legislation passed without piling up an even more massive national debt.  I’d much rather we have health insurance pools, or something of that nature where one could shop around for coverage at a reasonable price.  Let public healthcare be reserved for the indigent.

There is one other thing which I haven’t seen mentioned on this, or any other blog:  We have in this country a Federal service dedicated to public health….a uniformed service.  It is called the United States Public Health Service.  They once ran USPHS hospitals and serviced the Coast Guard and the maritime industries, and it seems to me that if they could do it then, why can’t they do it now?  Why not reestablish USPHS hospitals and put our tax money to work providing medical care to those who so desperately need it the most?  Just an idea.

Well, in terms of the mushrooming of the federal government and the corresonding national debt I have to agree with #4, CanaAnglican.  There’s more than enough blame to spread around, among both Republicans and Democrats.  It grew under Ronald Reagan, for heaven’s sake, despite all his rhetoric about reducing the size of government and that “Big government isn’t the solution to our problems, it is the problem.”  One key one, anyway.

Thanksfully, we’ve largely managed to reign in out-of-control spending at the state level.  It’s long past time to do the same at the federal level.

It’s tax season, and I hope a lot of members of Congress, on both sides of the aisle, keep in mind that a lot of us are fed up with funding the irresponsible, spend-free attitude that’s dominated Washington for generations, especially since FDR and the Depression.

The excessive spending and taxation of the Obama administration, however, takes inexcusable and irresponsible governing to new extremes.  It’s nothing less than legalized robbery in my judgment.

David Handy+

15, of course state governments can’t print money.  But you are right, irresponsible spending cuts across party lines.

Re # 8
Katherine ,
As scary as this is, I think from a purely political POV they are better off passing this.  The Republicans are already united and are going to vote in huge numbers this year.  All the Dems have left is their base.  A party that loses its base is done.  You can stick a fork in them. 

That’s the major reason the GOP got trounced so badly in 2008.  It’s not because huge numbers of people suddenly decided that they were going to vote liberal.  It’s that the Republican’s base (both conservatives and libertarians) were fed up with the GOP talking one thing and doing the complete opposite for most Bush’s tenure as president.  Their base stayed home or voted 3rd party.

If the Dems, who were given the largest legislative majority that either party has enjoyed in a generation, fails to pass a major reform of the health care system their base will be furious and will abandon them.  There is probably nothing they can do that will avoid significant losses this fall.  But failure to pass health care reform is electoral suicide for the Democrats.  They would be annihilated.