Back to the drawing board on healthcare

During his campaign, candidate Obama repeatedly promised not to raise taxes on Americans making less than $250,000 a year. But he has used nearly every bit of his political capital to cram through a government takeover of healthcare, the centerpiece of which is essentially a tax increase for every American. No economist left or right would agree that it is a good idea to raise taxes in a down economy.

{mosads}While the president and the Democrat majority have disguised their tax increase as a mandate, it is nonetheless a tax increase. When the government forces you to buy something you are not currently buying and enforces this requirement with penalties and fines, it is a tax. In this case, no one is currently purchasing government-approved health insurance, and forcing them to do so is the equivalent of taxing them.

Thumbing through several thousand pages in the healthcare bill, anyone can see the government takeover of healthcare contains “individual mandates” and “employer mandates” that compel every American to buy government-approved health insurance. Whether we recognize it or not, a government requirement compelling you to do something which separates you from your money is in fact a tax, and the president’s plan leaves Americans no choice but to pay up or be fined.

In Wednesday’s speech, we also heard President Obama say that his approach “would preserve the right of Americans who have insurance to keep their doctor and their plan.” Less than 36 hours later in his speech to Republicans in Baltimore, he admitted that the bills may “have violated that pledge.” While he asserted that the provisions that will preclude you from keeping your current healthcare plan were “snuck” into the bill, in fact they were there from the beginning.

While the president repeatedly promised change including openness and bipartisanship during the campaign, by leaving the writing of the healthcare bill, the cap-and-trade bill and stimulus bills to Congress, he has shattered this promise. There has been no openness and no bipartisanship.

In his address to Congress the president said his plan would “give small businesses and uninsured Americans a chance to choose an affordable healthcare plan in a competitive market.” In Baltimore, he illustrated this point, stating that his bill would allow healthcare purchases “across state lines,” a Republican idea. Unfortunately, his legislation does not allow states to do anything they can’t already do. The compacts authorized by the president’s legislation achieve nothing since states may already allow policies to be sold across state lines.

President Obama has promised openness, transparency and bipartisanship. But time and again, these promises have been shattered. By leaving the work of drafting his centerpiece legislation to the most partisan congressional majority in history, it is clear that there has been no openness, no transparency and no bipartisanship. Americans are frustrated about reckless spending, Washington self-dealing and special provisions for powerful members. They are fed up with a White House and a congressional majority focused on its ideological agenda rather than their genuine concerns about job losses and the economy. Indeed, Americans are openly angry with a government that simply won’t listen to their concerns.

I couldn’t agree more with the president’s statement that we must leave our children a better world than we inherited. However, I find it stunning that the president, who has created more debt than any of his predecessors, now says we need to control spending and proposes to do so beginning nine months in the future. If he is truly concerned about mounting debt it makes no sense to wait nine months to deal with this problem. In fact, the current monthly deficits under President Obama rival the annual deficits accrued by Republicans. Let me repeat that: Today’s monthly deficits now rival our prior yearly deficits. Under Republican rule the average annual budget deficit was $104 billion. Compare that with an average annual deficit since 2008 of $1.074 trillion — or about $90 billion per month.

President Obama and the majority in Congress should go back to the drawing board and offer commonsense solutions. We can start with healthcare. Congress can enact discrete healthcare proposals, like fixing the tax code so individuals can purchase health insurance on the same tax-advantaged basis as businesses, guaranteeing coverage for people with pre-existing conditions, and giving people real choice in healthcare by allowing them the opportunity to purchase coverage across state lines.

Is President Obama still promising “change”? Or is he changing his promises? Only time will tell.

Shadegg is a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee.