The Nothing New-New Deal

Ken Duberstein, a former adviser to Ronald Reagan, once stated: “In campaigning, you try to annihilate your opponent. Governing, you try to make love to your opponents, as well as your allies.” Mr. Obama has not learned to turn off the “us versus them” campaign mode. The American Citizens sense Obama is too caught up in the “us”, and engages too much with words, decisions, and deeds engaged in a health-care agenda that is more divisive than the problem he wants to fix. Support grows on Capital Hill while the little backing The People ever gave it continues to diminish.

Speakers Pelosi, Reed and the Administration send the message that if you are against the overhaul, you are insensitive to the plight of fellow human beings, and are in bed with the insurance companies. Does anyone really care about the insurance companies? We know they do public good, and for the most part are there for us when we need them. We need insurance companies while we don’t necessarily like them. Insurance industry history demonstrates that health insurance has been an ad-libbed patchwork of jerry-rigging. And health care reform will just re-shuffle the strengths and weaknesses of the current system. The result being something new, that is nothing really new. Our government has shown us the same re-shuffling of itself during the past 80 years.

The 1930s started with our Founder’s vision…little government and little regulation or interference in daily life. The income tax was new and relatively unimportant. Along comes the depression later to be made into The Great Depression despite “The New Deal” employed to avoid it. Government’s quantum growth was never experienced in America prior. Our Constitution was designed to prevent it. But The New Deal was designed to push the limits on this tradition. Federal programs with corresponding and regulatory initiatives burgeoned. Domestic programs, Medicare and Medicaid brought the dawn of the welfare state like Sputnik ushered in the dawn of the satellite.

Along came The Great Society of the 1960s. A new spin on The New Deal. States, counties, municipalities and towns join in the game. The age of big government. The “Great Experiment” of the Constitution was fading. The demands on The Citizens grow to meet the costs associated with these programs. Some citizens being more secure because of it. All citizens seeing their standard of living decrease to “share the wealth”.

The American people are not excited about another quantum leap the Administration demands. Americans have been there before and don’t want to go there again. And Obama’s continued disappointment with that suggests he either doesn’t get it, or doesn’t really care. The New Deal and The Great Society are his allies.

Representative Paul Ryan, ranking member on the House Budget Committee addressed the consequences of the healthcare direction. The plan is “the absolute height of fiscal irresponsibility” And “the shame of it all is we could actually fix what’s broken in healthcare without breaking what’s working and without creating a huge new entitlement program that will accelerate the bankruptcy of this country". Representative Ryan continues: “Congress has a pattern of passing cuts to pay for bills and then restoring the cuts once the bill has been passed. It’s crystal-clear to me that the ‘pay-fors’ in this bill will not survive and we will have created a huge deficit-funded liability". Old things made new again. The American People seem to get it.

Publius