he growing interest in the book soon to be released by Ron Paul named “End the Fed” is unprecedented in monetary history, and reveals the extraordinary times we live in where a chance to change the monetary policy in the United States in a way that cold benefit all of us.
What’s unique at this time is the near collapse of the banking system generated the desire and interest from people in how that could happen; that created the opportunity from those like Ron Paul who had spent their lives studying and fighting against what the Federal Reserve practices and represents.
Now what’s extraordinary about this is the Fed has enjoyed – for the most part – operating behind the scenes and in obscurity with almost no one having the name in their minds or talking about it. So when people talked about the folly and danger represented by the Federal Reserve, it fell on deaf ears, as it simply didn’t compute as to what it was and why we as American citizens should care.
That has probably changed forever now, as the practices of the Fed are starting to be grasped and understood by a growing number of people, and they can’t simply just slither back under their rock, even though they’re trying to do that at this moment by fighting off audits and other means of finding out what’s under their operational hood. They prefer to go back to the days where everyone forgets about who they are and what they do, so they can continue to go about their usual business.
So what’s happening now is the Federal Reserve is under intense scrutiny, and while the intensity will probably ebb and flow through the years, never again will be able to work entirely behind a closed curtain, and if Ron Paul and others have their way, will eventually be led to shutting down and never again be allowed to initiate its failed policies which lead us to an endless series of boom-and-bust periods from which we always have to struggle through.
So how immense are the times we’re living in in relationship to the Federal Reserve? If you’ve followed or researched the Federal Reserve and books having been written about them over the last 90 years, you’ll see that quite a few have said similar things as we’re hearing at this time, but now with Ron Paul we have a representative that actually knows what he’s talking about and has prepared his entire life for a time like this.
The result are over 280 lawmakers signing on to his H.R. 1207 bill to allow the auditing of the Federal Reserve, an unprecedented accomplishment in the history of the Fed.
Nobody could have ever predicted this type of thing would happen where a politician could write a book saying the Federal Reserve should be abolished and have it achieve what will most likely be ‘best seller’ status. End the Fed from Ron Paul is poised to do just that.
Monday
WHAT I THINK....GARY NORTH
I began my article on "The FED on the Defensive" with these words:
I do not recall this in my lifetime. A majority in the House of Representatives has co-signed H.R. 1207, a bill introduced by Ron Paul to have the Federal Reserve System audited by an independent government agency, the Comptroller General's office.
A reader sent me a suggested correction.
So if my realization is typical, framing discussion of the current crisis in terms of the U.S.A. repeating its own history could greatly facilitate comprehension of the vast majority who still do not perceive the present crisis clearly and otherwise won't until long after it has buried them. Because it is common to hear comments like "we're in uncharted territory" and your "I do not recall in my lifetime". While undoubtedly true in a sense, the more important other truth is that the nation has traveled this territory repeatedly in the past 300 years but apparently does not recognize it: we repeatedly failed to learn from the past. Why not hammer on the point that this crisis is the old recurring problem? Nothing new here. We should know what we've got coming to us as we've been "corrected" in the past so many times for the same contest between avaricious motives and libertarian ideals.
The critic means well, but he does not understand the magnitude of what Ron Paul has accomplished.
To suggest that, once upon a time, meaning before 1913, there were criticisms of central banking is like saying that, once upon a time, before Keynes' General Theory, there were criticisms of government budget deficits. Quaint, but irrelevant.
In the 19th century -- a century of the international gold standard and free trade -- there were critics of central banking. The economists debated this issue in sophisticated treatises. That, of course, is what economists do: debate. What is remarkable in retrospect is the high level of sophistication of the debates in the popular press.
Central banking was a hot topic in the Jackson era, especially in the key year of 1832, when the Whigs made it a political issue by introducing the bill to recharter the Second Bank of the United States four years before the charter would automatically expire. They did this in an election year. They thought they would win in November. Instead, they lost big.
Jackson won the bank war in 1832. The central bankers and the academic Establishment have never forgiven him for this. His position on the Second Bank is universally excoriated in economic history textbooks and monographs. This story even gets into lower division history textbooks. Students who are told about central banks only twice in the textbooks are told that Jackson was a narrow-minded bigot on central banking. The only other reference to central banking in the textbooks is the story -- carefully sanitized -- of the establishment of the Federal Reserve System, a victory described, though never explained, as a triumph of the American people over the political control of money. It was, of course, a triumph of the big bank cartel over competitive banks that offered greater safety. The bankers feared bank runs on overleveraged banks, meaning large New York City banks.
As an historian by training, I can think of no cartelization of any industry that has been more successfully concealed by academia. This is by far the largest, richest, and most successful cartel in American history. Yet there is almost no criticism of the system and its enforcement tool, the Federal Reserve System. Whatever mild technical quibbles the academic community has had with the FED, the central issue of central banking is never even mentioned, let alone refuted. What is the central issue? That all central banking is a government-licensed enforcement arrangement of a well-organized, well-funded cartel. As with all cartels, it operates at the expense of competitors who would otherwise offer better opportunities to the public.
For almost a century, criticisms of this arrangement have been confined to fringe groups. The most articulate of these critics have been members of the Austrian School of economics, most notably Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard. No school of academic opinion opposes central banking, other than the Austrians. The success of academia and the mainstream media in suppressing the story of central banking has been almost total. Anyone with first-hand knowledge of the battle to break through this blackout knows how little success critics have had. They have been almost completely marginalized.
This is true in every nation. Central banking is today universal, excluding Andorra, Monte Carlo, and Panama.
That a Congressman who is regarded by his peers as a highly principled eccentric could get a bill to audit the Federal Reserve accepted by a substantial majority in the House of Representatives is nothing short of sensational. He was the right man at the right time.
The timing was created by Alan Greenspan, whose policies created the bubbles, followed by Ben Bernanke, who had no clue that his stabilization of the monetary base in 2006 and 2007 would create a near-collapse of the banking system.
There was Ron Paul, running for President, saying that this would happen. He was dismissed as a crank. Then it happened in one 60-day period: early September to early November, 2008. He is now perceived as a kind of prophet.
He targeted the FED. Millions of people heard him. They had not previously heard of the FED, let alone its threat to the economy. Then the crisis came, before the election. He had seen it coming. No one else with a public presence had.
Ron Paul analyzed things accurately. He had warned about the Federal Reserve ever since his first term in 1976. He stuck to his guns for 32 years. Then . . . boom! The FED's policies blew up in plain sight . . . and plain sites.
The FED is on the defensive for the first time. Three men made this possible: Greenspan Bernanke, and Paul. Only Paul has profited from this.
He really did create a revolution in the literate public's perception of the Federal Reserve System. The FED will never get the anti-FED toothpaste back in the tube. Not with YouTube.
For a 42-minute video on the Federal Reserve System produced by the Ludwig von Mises Institute, click the PLAY button.
I do not recall this in my lifetime. A majority in the House of Representatives has co-signed H.R. 1207, a bill introduced by Ron Paul to have the Federal Reserve System audited by an independent government agency, the Comptroller General's office.
A reader sent me a suggested correction.
So if my realization is typical, framing discussion of the current crisis in terms of the U.S.A. repeating its own history could greatly facilitate comprehension of the vast majority who still do not perceive the present crisis clearly and otherwise won't until long after it has buried them. Because it is common to hear comments like "we're in uncharted territory" and your "I do not recall in my lifetime". While undoubtedly true in a sense, the more important other truth is that the nation has traveled this territory repeatedly in the past 300 years but apparently does not recognize it: we repeatedly failed to learn from the past. Why not hammer on the point that this crisis is the old recurring problem? Nothing new here. We should know what we've got coming to us as we've been "corrected" in the past so many times for the same contest between avaricious motives and libertarian ideals.
The critic means well, but he does not understand the magnitude of what Ron Paul has accomplished.
To suggest that, once upon a time, meaning before 1913, there were criticisms of central banking is like saying that, once upon a time, before Keynes' General Theory, there were criticisms of government budget deficits. Quaint, but irrelevant.
In the 19th century -- a century of the international gold standard and free trade -- there were critics of central banking. The economists debated this issue in sophisticated treatises. That, of course, is what economists do: debate. What is remarkable in retrospect is the high level of sophistication of the debates in the popular press.
Central banking was a hot topic in the Jackson era, especially in the key year of 1832, when the Whigs made it a political issue by introducing the bill to recharter the Second Bank of the United States four years before the charter would automatically expire. They did this in an election year. They thought they would win in November. Instead, they lost big.
Jackson won the bank war in 1832. The central bankers and the academic Establishment have never forgiven him for this. His position on the Second Bank is universally excoriated in economic history textbooks and monographs. This story even gets into lower division history textbooks. Students who are told about central banks only twice in the textbooks are told that Jackson was a narrow-minded bigot on central banking. The only other reference to central banking in the textbooks is the story -- carefully sanitized -- of the establishment of the Federal Reserve System, a victory described, though never explained, as a triumph of the American people over the political control of money. It was, of course, a triumph of the big bank cartel over competitive banks that offered greater safety. The bankers feared bank runs on overleveraged banks, meaning large New York City banks.
As an historian by training, I can think of no cartelization of any industry that has been more successfully concealed by academia. This is by far the largest, richest, and most successful cartel in American history. Yet there is almost no criticism of the system and its enforcement tool, the Federal Reserve System. Whatever mild technical quibbles the academic community has had with the FED, the central issue of central banking is never even mentioned, let alone refuted. What is the central issue? That all central banking is a government-licensed enforcement arrangement of a well-organized, well-funded cartel. As with all cartels, it operates at the expense of competitors who would otherwise offer better opportunities to the public.
For almost a century, criticisms of this arrangement have been confined to fringe groups. The most articulate of these critics have been members of the Austrian School of economics, most notably Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard. No school of academic opinion opposes central banking, other than the Austrians. The success of academia and the mainstream media in suppressing the story of central banking has been almost total. Anyone with first-hand knowledge of the battle to break through this blackout knows how little success critics have had. They have been almost completely marginalized.
This is true in every nation. Central banking is today universal, excluding Andorra, Monte Carlo, and Panama.
That a Congressman who is regarded by his peers as a highly principled eccentric could get a bill to audit the Federal Reserve accepted by a substantial majority in the House of Representatives is nothing short of sensational. He was the right man at the right time.
The timing was created by Alan Greenspan, whose policies created the bubbles, followed by Ben Bernanke, who had no clue that his stabilization of the monetary base in 2006 and 2007 would create a near-collapse of the banking system.
There was Ron Paul, running for President, saying that this would happen. He was dismissed as a crank. Then it happened in one 60-day period: early September to early November, 2008. He is now perceived as a kind of prophet.
He targeted the FED. Millions of people heard him. They had not previously heard of the FED, let alone its threat to the economy. Then the crisis came, before the election. He had seen it coming. No one else with a public presence had.
Ron Paul analyzed things accurately. He had warned about the Federal Reserve ever since his first term in 1976. He stuck to his guns for 32 years. Then . . . boom! The FED's policies blew up in plain sight . . . and plain sites.
The FED is on the defensive for the first time. Three men made this possible: Greenspan Bernanke, and Paul. Only Paul has profited from this.
He really did create a revolution in the literate public's perception of the Federal Reserve System. The FED will never get the anti-FED toothpaste back in the tube. Not with YouTube.
For a 42-minute video on the Federal Reserve System produced by the Ludwig von Mises Institute, click the PLAY button.
Tuesday
WE NEED SUNLIGHT TO DISINFECT THE LEGISLATIVE PROCESS!
During August recess, many legislators have heard an unexpected amount of discontent from their constituents about what is happening on Capitol Hill, particularly regarding healthcare. Some people are justifiably terrified at what the government could do to healthcare, should it get its claws even further into it. Others demand a public option for health insurance and are adamant that healthcare be treated as yet another absolute entitlement. One thing everyone agrees on is that the final bill needs to be read and understood by all legislators before a vote is taken. To any American, this is common sense. In Washington, that is unlikely to happen.
There is much confusion and debate over what is and is not in the reform plan being considered. Are there or are there not so-called death panels? What are the end-of-life consultations really for? How will private insurance be affected? Can you keep your current plan or will you eventually be forced into a government plan? Will it pay for elective abortions or not? What are the implications for medical privacy? The truth is no one knows what will be in the final bill until it is on the House floor, and provisions could be added in and taken out in the wee hours of the morning before.
In February, the House was forced to vote on an over 1,000 page “stimulus” bill that had first been posted on the internet just after midnight the morning of the vote. It passed. Then in June, House leaders rushed a vote on the cap-and-trade bill, even though an over 300 page “manager’s amendment” making substantive changes to the bill, was introduced shortly after 3:00 a.m. the morning of the vote.
Washington thrives on crisis. If enough people can be convinced that we are in an emergency, they will more likely tolerate rushing legislation to the floor like this. Last minute changes will be slipped in, benefitting who knows what special interests and at what expense to the taxpayer. But the mantra is repeated over and over: We are in a crisis. We must act immediately.
It should be unconscionable for legislators to vote in favor of legislation they have not had the opportunity to read. This is why I have re-introduced the Sunlight Rule, H.Res 216. The Sunlight Rule prohibits any piece of legislation from being brought before the House of Representatives unless it has been available to read for at least 10 days.
The Sunlight Rule allows citizens to move for censure of any House Member who votes for a bill in violation of this act. Because the Sunlight Rule could never be waived, any Member could raise a point of order requiring any bill in violation to be immediately pulled from the House calendar until it can be brought to the floor in a manner consistent with this rule. This rule does not require that Members read the bills. It merely guarantees the opportunity to do so. It has 4 cosponsors.
Justice Louis Brandeis famously said, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.” The Sunlight Rule would do much towards negating the cycle of pseudo-crises and cleaning up the legislative process here in Washington. I sincerely hope this is the year Congress remembers its deliberative duties and passes it.
There is much confusion and debate over what is and is not in the reform plan being considered. Are there or are there not so-called death panels? What are the end-of-life consultations really for? How will private insurance be affected? Can you keep your current plan or will you eventually be forced into a government plan? Will it pay for elective abortions or not? What are the implications for medical privacy? The truth is no one knows what will be in the final bill until it is on the House floor, and provisions could be added in and taken out in the wee hours of the morning before.
In February, the House was forced to vote on an over 1,000 page “stimulus” bill that had first been posted on the internet just after midnight the morning of the vote. It passed. Then in June, House leaders rushed a vote on the cap-and-trade bill, even though an over 300 page “manager’s amendment” making substantive changes to the bill, was introduced shortly after 3:00 a.m. the morning of the vote.
Washington thrives on crisis. If enough people can be convinced that we are in an emergency, they will more likely tolerate rushing legislation to the floor like this. Last minute changes will be slipped in, benefitting who knows what special interests and at what expense to the taxpayer. But the mantra is repeated over and over: We are in a crisis. We must act immediately.
It should be unconscionable for legislators to vote in favor of legislation they have not had the opportunity to read. This is why I have re-introduced the Sunlight Rule, H.Res 216. The Sunlight Rule prohibits any piece of legislation from being brought before the House of Representatives unless it has been available to read for at least 10 days.
The Sunlight Rule allows citizens to move for censure of any House Member who votes for a bill in violation of this act. Because the Sunlight Rule could never be waived, any Member could raise a point of order requiring any bill in violation to be immediately pulled from the House calendar until it can be brought to the floor in a manner consistent with this rule. This rule does not require that Members read the bills. It merely guarantees the opportunity to do so. It has 4 cosponsors.
Justice Louis Brandeis famously said, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.” The Sunlight Rule would do much towards negating the cycle of pseudo-crises and cleaning up the legislative process here in Washington. I sincerely hope this is the year Congress remembers its deliberative duties and passes it.
Monday
WHAT I THINK....RICHARD COOPER
Former presidential candiate, physician and Congressman Ron Paul (Republican-Texas) introduced HR 1207 with the name "Federal Reserve Transparency Act of 2009", but known to its many supporters as the Audit The Fed bill. Not suprisingly, Federal Reserve Board Chair Ben Bernanke has sought to prevent its passage. In the House of Representatives it now has 282 co-sponsors, a majority of the Members. It has been introduced in the Senate as S. 604. It provides for audits of the Federal Reserve by the Comptroller-General.
Bernanke and his supporters have contended that the bill would lead to politicized second-guessing of the Fed's decision-making on monetary policy.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-1207, one can read the text and find little to support such a statement. Moreover, it is not as if the Fed's decision-making was not politicized already. For example, the Federal Reserve under Arthur Burns increased the money supply to depress interest rates in the runup to President Nixon's reelection campaign in 1972.
When I studied public finance with then Professor (now retired) C. Lowell Harris at Columbia, we learned the sound principles of accountability and transparency. Ron Paul's Audit The Fed brings a most needed accountability to bear on the monetary policy of the USA. One could support this legislation without sharing the monetary policy views of its author or me.
Bernanke and his supporters have contended that the bill would lead to politicized second-guessing of the Fed's decision-making on monetary policy.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-1207, one can read the text and find little to support such a statement. Moreover, it is not as if the Fed's decision-making was not politicized already. For example, the Federal Reserve under Arthur Burns increased the money supply to depress interest rates in the runup to President Nixon's reelection campaign in 1972.
When I studied public finance with then Professor (now retired) C. Lowell Harris at Columbia, we learned the sound principles of accountability and transparency. Ron Paul's Audit The Fed brings a most needed accountability to bear on the monetary policy of the USA. One could support this legislation without sharing the monetary policy views of its author or me.
Thursday
THE FREE MARKET AS REGULATOR
Since the bailouts last fall, lawmakers have been behaving as quasi-owners of the bailed-out banks and businesses, leading to calls for increased regulation of executive compensation and other wasteful expenditures. We have heard much about bonuses and executive pay packages that sound more like lottery winnings than an honest salary.
Many lawmakers voted in favor of these unconstitutional bailouts, believing that these corporations were too big to fail, and allowing them to go under would precipitate widespread economic disaster. This second wave of citizen outrage at the bailouts has left these lawmakers with a bit of egg on their face, and once again, they feel the need to "do something" to "fix" it. Shouldn't there be a regulatory structure in place governing executive compensation? Politically, it seems quite feasible. People are outraged that the system has once again gutted the many to make a few at the top fantastically wealthy. But they are incorrectly demonizing the free market.
What we need to realize is that there WAS a regulatory structure in place that was attempting to stop bad management, including overpaying executives. That regulatory structure is the free market, and when poor management brought these companies to the point of bankruptcy, Congress circumvented the wisdom of the free market, and inserted its own judgment at our expense. And now because of that intervention, we will burdened with massive new regulations. We can be certain this effort will fail.
The free market is a naturally occurring phenomenon that can't be eliminated by governments, not even totalitarian ones like the former Soviet Union. It can be regulated, over-taxed and manipulated until it is driven underground. Lately it has been wrongly accused of doing so many things it just doesn't do, that are really the fault of crony corporatism and convoluted government policies that brought on the crisis. Too many people equate the free market with big business doing whatever it wants, but that is not the free market. Unconstitutional taxpayer funded bailouts are what allow giant corporations to run roughshod over the economy. The free market is what puts them out of business when they misbehave.
The free market is you and your neighbors working hard to produce what you produce, and exchanging goods and services voluntarily, in mutually agreeable arrangements. The free market is about respecting property rights and contracts. It is not about building up oligarchs and monopolies and confiscatory tax theft - these are creatures of government.
We must watch out when government comes up with interventionist solutions to interventionist problems. The root of our problems lie in interventionism. Trusting the free market is the solution.
Many lawmakers voted in favor of these unconstitutional bailouts, believing that these corporations were too big to fail, and allowing them to go under would precipitate widespread economic disaster. This second wave of citizen outrage at the bailouts has left these lawmakers with a bit of egg on their face, and once again, they feel the need to "do something" to "fix" it. Shouldn't there be a regulatory structure in place governing executive compensation? Politically, it seems quite feasible. People are outraged that the system has once again gutted the many to make a few at the top fantastically wealthy. But they are incorrectly demonizing the free market.
What we need to realize is that there WAS a regulatory structure in place that was attempting to stop bad management, including overpaying executives. That regulatory structure is the free market, and when poor management brought these companies to the point of bankruptcy, Congress circumvented the wisdom of the free market, and inserted its own judgment at our expense. And now because of that intervention, we will burdened with massive new regulations. We can be certain this effort will fail.
The free market is a naturally occurring phenomenon that can't be eliminated by governments, not even totalitarian ones like the former Soviet Union. It can be regulated, over-taxed and manipulated until it is driven underground. Lately it has been wrongly accused of doing so many things it just doesn't do, that are really the fault of crony corporatism and convoluted government policies that brought on the crisis. Too many people equate the free market with big business doing whatever it wants, but that is not the free market. Unconstitutional taxpayer funded bailouts are what allow giant corporations to run roughshod over the economy. The free market is what puts them out of business when they misbehave.
The free market is you and your neighbors working hard to produce what you produce, and exchanging goods and services voluntarily, in mutually agreeable arrangements. The free market is about respecting property rights and contracts. It is not about building up oligarchs and monopolies and confiscatory tax theft - these are creatures of government.
We must watch out when government comes up with interventionist solutions to interventionist problems. The root of our problems lie in interventionism. Trusting the free market is the solution.
Tuesday
HEALTHCARE PLAN BASED ON ECONOMIC FANTASY
As the healthcare debate rages on, there is one reality that even the proponents of this hostile takeover of healthcare by government cannot ignore – and that is money. The government simply does not have the money for a new, expansive, public healthcare plan. The country is in a deep recession that will deepen even further with the coming collapse of the commercial real estate market. The last thing we need is for government to increase and expand taxes to pay for another damaging, wasteful program. Foreigners are becoming less enthusiastic about buying our debt, and creating another open-ended welfare program when we cannot pay for what is already in place, will not help. Champions of socialized medicine want to tax the rich, tax businesses that already cannot afford to provide health plans to employees, and tax people who don’t want to participate in the government’s scheme by buying an approved healthcare plan. Presumably, all these taxes are to induce compliance. This is not freedom, nor will it improve healthcare.
There are limits to how much government can tax before it kills the host. Even worse, when government attempts to subsidize prices, it has the net effect of inflating them instead. The economic reality is that you cannot distort natural market pressures without unintended consequences. Market forces would drive prices down. Government meddling negates these pressures, adds regulatory compliance costs and layers of bureaucracy, and in the end, drives prices up.
The non-partisan CBO estimates that the healthcare plan will cost almost a trillion dollars over the next ten years. But government crystal balls always massively underestimate costs. It is not hard to imagine the final cost being two or three times the estimates, even though the estimates are bad enough.
It is still surreal that in a free country we are talking only about HOW government should fix healthcare, rather than WHY government should fix healthcare. This should be between doctors and patients. But this has been the discussion since the 60’s and the inception of Medicare and Medicaid, when government first began intervening to keep costs down and make sure everyone had access. The result of Medicaid/Medicare price controls and regulatory burden has been to drive more doctors out of the system – making it more difficult for the poor and the elderly to receive quality care! Seemingly, there are no failed government programs, only underfunded ones. If we refuse to acknowledge common sense economics, the prescription will always be the same: more government.
Make no mistake, government control and micromanagement of healthcare will hurt, not help healthcare in this country. However, if for a moment, we allowed the assumption that it really would accomplish all they claim, paying for it would still plunge the country into poverty. This solves nothing. The government, like any household struggling with bills to pay, should prioritize its budget. If the administration is serious about supporting healthcare without contributing to our skyrocketing deficits, they should fulfill promises to reduce our overseas commitments and use some of those savings to take care of Americans at home instead of killing foreigners abroad.
The leadership in Washington persists in a fantasy world of unlimited money to spend on unlimited programs and wars to garner unlimited control. But there is a fast-approaching limit to our ability to borrow, steal, and print. Acknowledging this reality is not mean-spirited or cruel. On the contrary, it could be the only thing that saves us from complete and total economic meltdown.
There are limits to how much government can tax before it kills the host. Even worse, when government attempts to subsidize prices, it has the net effect of inflating them instead. The economic reality is that you cannot distort natural market pressures without unintended consequences. Market forces would drive prices down. Government meddling negates these pressures, adds regulatory compliance costs and layers of bureaucracy, and in the end, drives prices up.
The non-partisan CBO estimates that the healthcare plan will cost almost a trillion dollars over the next ten years. But government crystal balls always massively underestimate costs. It is not hard to imagine the final cost being two or three times the estimates, even though the estimates are bad enough.
It is still surreal that in a free country we are talking only about HOW government should fix healthcare, rather than WHY government should fix healthcare. This should be between doctors and patients. But this has been the discussion since the 60’s and the inception of Medicare and Medicaid, when government first began intervening to keep costs down and make sure everyone had access. The result of Medicaid/Medicare price controls and regulatory burden has been to drive more doctors out of the system – making it more difficult for the poor and the elderly to receive quality care! Seemingly, there are no failed government programs, only underfunded ones. If we refuse to acknowledge common sense economics, the prescription will always be the same: more government.
Make no mistake, government control and micromanagement of healthcare will hurt, not help healthcare in this country. However, if for a moment, we allowed the assumption that it really would accomplish all they claim, paying for it would still plunge the country into poverty. This solves nothing. The government, like any household struggling with bills to pay, should prioritize its budget. If the administration is serious about supporting healthcare without contributing to our skyrocketing deficits, they should fulfill promises to reduce our overseas commitments and use some of those savings to take care of Americans at home instead of killing foreigners abroad.
The leadership in Washington persists in a fantasy world of unlimited money to spend on unlimited programs and wars to garner unlimited control. But there is a fast-approaching limit to our ability to borrow, steal, and print. Acknowledging this reality is not mean-spirited or cruel. On the contrary, it could be the only thing that saves us from complete and total economic meltdown.
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