Perhaps This Wasn't The Brightest Idea

In the wake of the Enron scandal, Congress passed new regulations that required public corporations to alter their methods of accounting and reporting their financial information.  One of those regulations requires corporations to immediately estimate costs associated with new taxes and/or regulations.

Those Congressional mandated reports of the costs associated with the recent health care "reform" bill have started rolling in. 

• AT&T, $1 billion
• Deere & Co., $150 million
• Caterpillar, $100 million
• AK Steel, $31 million
• 3M, $90 million
• Valero Energy, up to $20 million

Verizon has also warned its employees about its new higher health-care costs, and there will be many more in the coming days and weeks.

The response from Congress?  They want to haul those running these companies in for a Congressional inquiry as to why they are complying with a law passed by Congress to report that another law passed by Congress will have such a negative effect on their operations.

I suppose that in the land of the sugarplum faeries, new laws need not have any impact.  Simply wishing for things to different is enough to cause them to be different.

Here in the real world, gravity still attracts objects, and new government programs result in much thinner corporate bottom lines.

The Congressional response isn't surprising.  They don't understand why everyone doesn't think their latest bright idea isn't all that bright.

Well, this is par for the course: a complete disregard for the consequences of their own handiwork, the bullying of private enterprise, and the determination to politicize what were once economic and legal judgments. One can see in the Democrats’ fury the desperate attempt to conceal the implications of their monstrous legislation, to maintain as long as possible the fiction that ObamaCare is a great cost-saver, and boon to employers. It’s going to be hard to keep up the charade, for as the editors note, ObamaCare “was such a shoddy, jerry-rigged piece of work that the damage is coming sooner than even some critics expected.”

Why are we mad?

Social Security is $8 trillion short.

Medicare is $32 trillion short.

Both programs began under the gossamer thin pretext of being properly funded.  And yet today they are not.

They could have been properly funded if Congress had been willing to privatize those programs several decades ago.  But it is too late to do anything about it today.

We have less than 3 workers for every current retiree.  Soon we will be down to 2 workers per retiree.

And on top of that we have this monstrosity of a health care "reform" that claims to only add $200 billion to the annual deficit.  A claim that only makes sense if you accept the fraudulent accounting gimmicks used by Congress to get an "acceptable" score from the Congressional Budget Office.

Pouring sludge into an engine is the not the proper response to a flat tire.  Unfortunately, few currently in power have demonstrated any interest in fixing that flat tire. 

They are invested too heavily into sludge.

Gaming The System

This op-ed in the NYTimes about the health care bill that just passed the House points out the many ways that the Democrats have gamed the system.  Essentially, they lied to the CBO just to get an "acceptable" budget score for the bill.

We were talking about a bill that would cost $1 trillion per year and now they have put in enough gimmicks to make it look like $1 trillion for 10 years.  Anyone care to bet on how many of those gimmicks will still be around in a decade?

Yet Another Reason To Oppose Health Care "Reform"

Because some animals are apparently more equal than others.

Although I do have to offer some kudos to Congress for apparently placing themselves at the mercy of this mess.  I say "apparently" as it wouldn't take much of a legislative bit of chicanery for Congress to carve out something better for themselves.  It isn't like their track record is exactly clean on such issues.

Solving Sustainability Now

From Megan McArdle comes the following about the pending health care bill, our many other social programs, and sustainability.

But there is one thing of which I am nearly perfectly certain: If we pass this thing, no American politician, left or right, is going to cut any of these programs, or raise the broad-based taxes necessary to pay for them, without any compensating goodies to offer the public . . . until the crisis is almost upon us. I can think of no situation, other than impending crisis, in which such a thing has been done--and usually, as with Social Security, they have done just little enough to kick the problem down the road.  The idea that you pass a program of dubious sustainability because you can always make it sustainable later, seems borderline insane.  I can't think of a single major entitlement that has become more sustainable over time.  Why is this one supposed to be different?

[emphasis mine]

Social Security is crashing.  Now.

Medicare has been crashing.  For years.

Entitlement spending has been driving deficits.  For decades.

The current health care "reforms" are arranged so that the taxes kick in early while the benefits kick in late.....if ever.

It is long past the time when we should have had a serious national conversation about exactly how much government spending we can live with.  It is long past the time when we should have had a serious conversation about spending priorities, and selecting which federal programs were going to be ended so that the ones we truly need can survive.

"None of the above" makes a lousy basis for a government budget.  Based on the current bunch of elected Congresscritters, that is the only option left after decades of "All of the above" legislation.

The Biggest Hurdle

I got into an online discussion the other day.....yeah, I know....with yet another individual that demonstrates a complete lack of understanding regarding our Constitutionally limited form of government. He thinks the phrase "General Welfare" is not simply a loop hole, but instead is a sixteen lane wide legislative highway for Congress to use to pass just about any old law.

That discussion motivated me to look up the following, for the next time I need it.

"If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one ...With respect to the two words 'general welfare', I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators." -James Madison

Rumour Control

Apparently New York representative and tax scofflaw Charles Rangel is going to step down.......from being the chair of the Ways and Means committee in Congress.  He's not actually leaving Congress.  That would be far too much accountability for a person of his ...ahem..... stature.

Of course, he still hasn't been subjected to the full force of the IRS like any normal taxpayer that skipped out on over a million dollars in taxes by filing fraudulent tax returns.  If it was good enough for Leona Helmsley.....

Update:  It appears that half a maggot-infested loaf is better than none.  Mr. Rangel has temporarily stepped down as chair of Ways and Means while the Ethics Committee does their work.

Sadly, there is not much hope that the Democrats will hold Mr. Rangel accountable for his serious breach of the public trust.  They very rarely ever demonstrate the capacity to eat their own.  Not that the GOP has a stellar record on such things, but it is somewhat better.