COMMENTARY
Taxing selected groups in the United States exclusively for projects that are for the so called common good is a dangerous precedent. That precedent is being set in the Democratic congress and White House.
Altering the tax code is not new. It has been the favorite toy of politicians since the income tax was formally initiated by the 16th Amendment to the Constitution around 1913 (then as now, designed to punish the so called rich for their economic excess or success, whichever version you wish). The withholding tax on wages was introduced in 1943.
If health care is a national priority then all should pay, not just a very limited few. If defense is a national priority then all should pay, not just a very limited few. The current method outlined to pay for the massive expansion of federal control of health care is nothing more than a demagogic populist ploy by Democrats to make it easy for the majority of constituents to support this federalization of health care because it “won’t cost them anything” as in “it will be free”. Whoopee!
In tax year 2003 there were over 18 million non-filers and another 33 million who paid no taxes – all of these were modest to lower income returns. Should not citizens who benefit from our governmental, economic and military system pay at least something? $5? $10? Should not all citizens at least file a return? Is that too high a price for the privilege of American citizenship?
Have we learned nothing? Is our congress totally bereft of any semblance of public duty and commitment to honor our founding principals? Appartently, when it comes to their agenda, the Democratic majority cares not. They are willing to scuttle the great engine of American ingenuity and free market initiative which made us great, and yes, made our medical system great.
When few are invested, few care about the overall system and its outcome. When all are invested, most will care about the system and its impacts and outcomes.
We have argued aggressively for Real Health Reform. This bill does contain some of the ideas we have been touting for some time. However, it takes them and then uses them as pretext for massive intrusions, expansions and usurpations that are neither necessary or called for.
The current prescription offered is sadly typical of all of Washington DC thinking. Let’s not just fix the flat tire on the overall excellent car, let’s take the car apart and remake it to OUR liking . . . the way WE think a car should be made . . . and while we are at it, we will remake the way a person operates that car, parks that car, washes that car, maintains that car and we will in the end decide when that car is no longer useful, costs too much and should be discarded.
This my friends, in the end, is the point which will be reached in time if federalization of the health system proceeds, as it appears it will. Once down this road, return is not impossible, but improbable. There is still time as the Senate moves toward its final version of a bill for course corrections. Those corrections could still solve the majority of issues we face in reforming healthcare without massive costs and massive federal intervention.
If additional taxes are needed, all should participate if this is to be a national system of reform. Recall the words of Founder Thomas Jefferson above and write your Senator while you still have a chance to make a difference . . . obi jo and jomaxx
Though social policies sometimes governed the course of tax policy even in the early days of the Republic, the nature of these policies did not extend either to the collection of taxes so as to equalize incomes and wealth, or for the purpose of redistributing income or wealth. As Thomas Jefferson once wrote regarding the “general Welfare” clause:
To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his father has acquired too much, in order to spare to others who (or whose fathers) have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, “to guarantee to everyone a free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it . . . Thomas Jefferson