Douglas Elmendorf is hardly a household name. He’s just a smart, honest, non-partisan public servant currently telling unpleasant truths that could save the nation if enough people listen and take his message to heart.
Truth number one coming from this director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) is that the “federal budget is on an unsustainable path “ – debt is going to grow faster than the economy and the only answer is to cut spending, to do it dramatically, and to focus on the areas causing most of the problem: Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.
Deficits won’t rescue us. Tax increases won’t rescue us. The two in combination won’t do the trick, and here comes truth number two: The foremost proposals so far trotted out by the Democrats to reform health care delivery will not decrease costs, thereby lessening our peril. They will increase costs, worsening it.
Discouragingly, President Barack Obama then goes on the offensive, not through the statesmanship of promising long, careful calculation to devise some answer that stops short of destroying us, but by urging the Senate and House each to get something out the door before the August recess. By the way, he says in that soothing bedside manner of his, the spending will be controlled.
Maybe someone out there believes him, but not Democratic or Republican governors who made known to reporters at a recent conference that they were worried sick by increases in Medicaid coverage mandated in a House measure. States pay part of this program’s expenses and just cannot afford to pay more.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is not convinced of less expense either, not when there’s a soak-the-rich tax policy hitting owners of small businesses that will also be required to provide health insurance for employees whether they can afford to or not. Corporations – already paying just about the highest taxes in the industrialized world – will naturally enough be slammed, making them that much less competitive.
And the public is less a believer in a Democratic health bill than it once was. A Washington Post-ABC News poll shows that less than half of us are with Obama on this grandiose adventure, whereas more than half used to be. Why?
Well, polls also show the vast majority of us are happy enough with the health care we have, even if we worry about the suffering of others. Maybe some of us are catching onto the exaggerations – it’s actually a manageable 10 million American citizens who cannot get health insurance, not 46 million; we have Medicaid for many of the poor, and we have public hospitals, and public clinics and emergency rooms that are required by law to treat all the uninsured and penniless who arrive with serious ailments.
Yes, there are big problems requiring reform, real reform, such as slowly going from employer-based to privately owned insurance supported by tax credits. But when you recklessly hasten to make health insurance a “right” – meaning still another universal, government-sponsored entitlement on top of those with unfunded liabilities in the tens of trillions of dollars – you are setting America up for a fall that could cripple it.
Elmendorf, an economist scarcely known as a conservative and named to head the highly regarded CBO by Democratic leaders in Congress, does not aim to dictate policy, merely to spell out budgetary consequences.
But in telling us about some of those consequences, he has in effect made a mighty statement about the risk of policy stupidities in this high hour of irresponsibility, and of the need for Congress to take its time and get this matter of such enormous moment right.
Examiner columnist Jay Ambrose is a former Washington opinion writer and editor of two dailies. He can be reached at: [email protected].
