I have been listening to the opening statements on the Senate Finance Committee since 9 am EST on C-Span this morning.It struck me with the various senators approaches to health care reform and government in general we have a certain segment of self fulfilling prophets calling themselves legislators.Legislators represent actual people called citizens and come to viable compromises that benefit the greater good on the issue at hand.They do this in a deliberate process based on facts and projections inclusive of costs and gains for the citizens they represent.
Then we have our self fulfilling prophets who openly state they hate the very institution that are a part of-government.
Senator Kyl just stated we do not need government mucking up health insurance.Senator Crapo has just projected a tax increase that will resemble the Alternative Minimum Tax that has to be modified every year.Senator Hatch wants to start over.He is shocked at the reckless speed the committee is going forward.There are many jokes and crass commenst that immediately come to mind but this is no longer a joke.
Pres T, Roosevelt called health care "The supreme duty of the Nation is the conservation of human resources through an enlightened measure of social and industrial justice," the platform said. "We pledge ourselves to work unceasingly in State and Nation for ... the protection of home life against the hazards of sickness, irregular employment and old age through the adoption of a system of social insurance adapted to American use."
The turning point in modern history with the self fulfilling prophets who claimed to hate government yet tried to run it was of course the Reagan Revolution.Ronald Reagan once stated "Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first." and sadly he used it like a pimp uses his employees.
Reagan used his presidency to faciliate multiple scandals developed which resulted in a number of administration staffers being convicted. The most well known, the Iran-Contra affair, involved a plan whereby weapons were sold to Iran and the profits diverted to fund the Nicaraguan Contras, in violation of U.S. and international law.Tax dollars were used for that as well.
Several other controversies also occurred in the Reagan administration; one involved Department of Housing and Urban Development secretary Samuel Pierce and his associates. Wealthy contributors to the administration's campaign were rewarded with funding for low income housing development without the customary background checks, and lobbyists, such as former Secretary of the Interior James G. Watt, were rewarded with huge lobbying fees for assisting campaign contributors with receiving government loans and guarantees. Sixteen convictions were eventually handed down, including several members of the Reagan administration.Taxpayers were never restored the losses.
Also involving the EPA: funds from the Superfund to clean up toxic waste sites were released to enhance the election prospects of local politicians aligned with the administration.
Reagan's "hatred" of big government in Americans pockets turned out to be a war on the middle class.His "elimination of loopholes" in the tax code included the elimination of the "passive loss" provisions that subsidized rental housing. Because this was removed retroactively, it bankrupted many real estate developments made with this tax break as a premise. This with some other "deregulation" policies ultimately led to the largest political and financial scandal in U.S. history: The Savings and Loan crisis. The ultimate cost of the crisis is estimated to have totaled around USD$150 billion, about $125 billion of which was consequently and directly subsidized by the U.S. government, which contributed to the large budget deficits of the early 1990s.
John Galbraith called it "the largest and costliest venture in public misfeasance, malfeasance and larceny of all time."He was right.
This is what I am calling a self fulfilling prophet.Reagan is reagrded as a modern day prophet by some in the GOP and they're right.A self fulfilling prophet is a person who begins evoking a new behaviour which makes the original false conception come 'true'. This specious validity of the self-fulfilling prophecy perpetuates a reign of error. For the prophet will cite the actual course of events as proof that he was right from the very beginning.
Our nation has been plagued with Reaganites to this very day.They are the most dysfunctional people in Congress today and they protect the status quo they have worked so hard to build.
The first senators I quoted are devout Reaganites.I look at there track records and see it is a no brainer.They are as Reagan was self fulfilling prophets.If you say government is the enemey you fight it and all it tries to accomplish.This is not legislation it is facilitating their own political premise that government is bad and it must be stopped.
The thought of a person walking into an potential employer and saying "no I don't need your health benefits let's just talk wages" scares the hell out of them and those that lobby them so successfully.The idea that a person of moderate means can say" I quit this job for a better one for more wages " free from the shackles of an employer provided heath care is horrifying to them.But let's stop and think for a moment.
Isn't that a vehicle for those personal freedoms they rant about.I don't need to carry a gun to be free I need a job with decent wages to be free.I want to open my own business but can not because I can't afford health care on my own.Is that freedom ? No it is not .So what are they really protecting? I ask that rhetorically of course.Imagine a labor union saying to a large corporation "no thanks our member have a large enough group to bargain for our own medical insurance .We want a cost of living increase plus an additional 2% a year for the next three years"Now that is freedom to bargain.That is true American vlaues.You barter wages for hard work from an equal playing field .One more lie from the so called haters of big goverment disappears with that kind of freedom for American workers.
The shackles of the status quo trading medicore health care benefits for wages has beat the middle class down for over a quarter of a century.It is time to end Reaganomic steady trickle that has beat down the American middle class and ferret these self fulfilled prophets out of our national discussion.