A Declaration of Dependence
By Tom Doheny
Created 11/10/2009 - 15:16
There is an ancient Chinese proverb that says “give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” The proverb encompasses two philosophies of the role of government: nanny state vs. infrastructure. By ramming through the House version of the healthcare bill on Saturday night, the message is clear from the government: “Gone Fishing”.
The government is involved in a delicate tango between convincing the American public that it will have the tools and funding necessary for the healthcare bureaucracy to pay for itself while establishing a system of permanent dependency. It is the latter element that is so troubling that it verges on sinister.
Last week, John Cassidy the left-leaning columnist for the New Yorker Magazine explained the real goals of the healthcare movement. In a surprising admission, he revealed what free market opponents had thought all long: that the eventual goal is to create a permanent middle class dependency on government entitlements. The party pushing these so-called reforms is actually creating a political movement where vast sectors of the population become trapped. The left no longer needs to sugar coat their proposals with false assumptions of fiscal responsibility. This has never been their goal, their goal has been to manage and provide…permanently.
It is now or never for the 21st century socialists. As the tide of public anger and opposition to the healthcare proposals continues to escalate, the only option is to force it through while they are still in power. And as we have seen with government programs of the past fifty years, once it has passed it will never go away.
I’ll leave you with Mr. Cassidy’s own words:
( “But let’s not pretend that it isn’t a big deal, or that it will be self-financing, or that it will work out exactly as planned. It won’t.
Many Democratic insiders know all this, or most of it. What is really unfolding, I suspect, is the scenario that many conservatives feared. The Obama Administration, like the Bush Administration before it (and many other Administrations before that) is creating a new entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible to rescind. At some point in the future, the fiscal consequences of the reform will have to be dealt with in a more meaningful way, but by then the principle of (near) universal coverage will be well established. Even a twenty-first-century Ronald Reagan will have great difficult overturning it.” )
Write to tdoheny@afphq.org
Source URL: http://www.americansforprosperity.org/node/17895
Saturday, November 14, 2009
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