Like most liberals, the John Cassidy supports the passage of
health care legislation. But, unlike most liberals, he's honest
about the costs and consequences of passing it. Via
WSJ, I see
this item Cassidy recently wrote. While the substance should
not surprise anybody who is a regular reader of this blog, it is
rather startling coming from the pages of the New
Yorker.
"[W]e will be dealing with its consequences for decades to come,
and I think it’s important to be clear about what the reform
amounts to," Cassidy wrote. He goes on to confess that, "The
future cost savings that the Administration and its congressional
allies are promising to deliver are based on wishful thinking and
sleight of hand. Over time, the reform, as proposed, would almost
certainly add substantially to the budget deficit, thereby
worsening the long-term fiscal crisis that the country faces."
After explaining many of the accounting tricks the Democrats have
used to obtain a passing grade from the Congresssional Budget
Office, which I have detailed on numerous occasions, Cassidy
concludes:
So what does it all add up to? The U.S. government is making a
costly and open-ended commitment to help provide health
coverage for the vast majority of its citizens. I support this
commitment, and I think the federal government’s spending
priorities should be altered to make it happen. 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.
That takes me back to where I began. Both in terms of the
political calculus of the Democratic Party, and in terms of
making the United States a more equitable society, expanding
health-care coverage now and worrying later about its long-term
consequences is an eminently defensible strategy. Putting on my
amateur historian’s cap, I might even claim that some
subterfuge is historically necessary to get great reforms
enacted. But as an economics reporter and commentator, I feel
obliged to put on my green eyeshade and count the dollars.
If there is any smidgen of hope for small government conservatism
at some future date, it hinges on whether or not we can stop this
monstrous legislation.
