Health-care deform won’t cut the deficit by one thin dime:
And here’s more from Chris Edwards:
And they’re doing such a bang-up job with TARP:
Barofsky’s report said it is possible the program only benefits half of the three or four million homeowners originally envisioned. Among other data, the program measures trial modifications, a metric Barofsky faulted for being, “essentially meaningless.” The number of permanent modifications could wind up being a small share of the millions of foreclosures filed in this year and during the past two years.
So let’s put them in charge of our health!
Of course it won’t. The deficit and or taxes will increase to match the enormous outlays this law will entail, assuming it survives.
This was never about lowering costs. That was just a suggestion that proponents used. They thought fiscal conservatives would buy into the tripe and support the bill. Those fiscal conservatives were not rubes and therefore never supported the bill.
The useful idiots will still claim costs savings, because they think they will convince fiscal conservatives that the conservatives were hypocritical to the principle of controlling costs. And so far, a small scratch in the progressive veneer of cost savings shows financial models that fail to mimic economic reality. We will spend more money and get less healthcare until Obamacare finally gives us our blue pill.
I’d like to see that graph adjusted per-capita, myself.
It’d only be a little flatter, since the population in 1970 was just over 200 million. And it’d be scrupulously fair, unlike a raw spending graph.
50% increase in population, 800% increase in spending…
Wonder what happens with that chart when they add Amnesty. I guess then we will get Sigivald’s chart, but it will still have the rise.
1. Barack Obama.
2. Nancy Pelosi.
3. Barney Frank.
Then of course there is the holes being blown in one of the core arguments for health reform: covering children’s healthcare costs. There are so many loop holes in the requirements for children’s coverage that insurance companies can still easily find ways to circumvent payments. Of course, as someone who regularly votes Republican I guess I’m supposed to be happy when children are sick and crying right?
Instapundit has a link to a Forbes article about non-violent civil disobedience to ObamaCare. The link didn’t work for me, but I gather it’s from an admirer of Gandhi. That alone is interesting to me because most of the Gandhi fans I’ve met or read about are Lefists. (A good example: Deepak Chopra.) Their pacifism goes out the window when it comes to armed agents of the State enforcing programs they believe in.
But what was most interesting yo me is that the article mentions an estimated 17,000 new IRS agents will have to be recruited to enforce certain aspects of ObamaCare. 17,000 NEW IRS AGENTS?! Isn’t that alone enough to want to stop it. Anything that involves the recruiting of even half that number of new IRS agents is to be resisted. It’s like hearing that the local gangland king-pin has recruited 17,000 new “soldiers.” You know that can’t be good for anyone.
Hockeystick graphs will be back, I predict
The bit about TARP funding just “spreading out” the foreclosure crisis certainly concerns me a bit. This is one of the key problems with a Keynesian approach, particularly an approach which promiscuously spends money. It merely spreads out the pain and prolongs the period of uncertainty and economic dysfunction.
What I see happening is a return to crisis in a few years as the fed money peters out or devalues due to inflation. Since we’ve been using that money to generate economic activity (particularly among Democrat constituents and donors) not investment, we’ll be back where we were except with the federal government owing more money.