I Was Wrong And I Admit It

In an earlier post I said this about Obama's health care proposal:

Imagine a salesman that walked up to your house, looked at your missing front door, and said, "You know, if you bought some new windows you could really snug up this place." If you buy the Obama proposal you are paying for new windows while ignoring your missing front door.

Boy was I wrong about that. I had overlooked a then very-recent re-analysis of the President's 2011 budget proposal by the Congressional Budget Office. Kind of buried in there was the following line:

Under the President’s budget, debt held by the public would grow from $7.5 trillion (53 percent of GDP) at the end of 2009 to $20.3 trillion (90 percent of GDP) at the end of 2020. (emphasis mine)

And then this:

Mandatory outlays under the President’s proposals would be above CBO’s baseline projections by $1.9 trillion (or 8 percent) over the 2011–2020 period, about one-third of which would stem from net additional spending related to proposed changes to the health insurance system and health care programs. (emphasis mine again)

So I take back may analogy; it was a poor one. I should have said this:

Imagine a salesman that walked up to your house that had just been hit by a tornado, looked at your missing front doorgiant scrap heap, and said, "You know, if you bought some new windows you could really snug up this place." If you buy the Obama proposal you are paying for new windows while ignoring your missing front doorthe fact that the rest of your house is completely fucking wrecked.

In 2020 my oldest child will be 22, and on the verge of entering the job market for the first time. I'd like someone to explain to him the rationale for increasing the debt load that is ALREADY expected to be crushing by the time he is of working age. I'd like someone to explain why the President is focusing on health care instead of righting our economy and getting our national balance sheet back where it belongs. I'd like someone to explain to him why the biggest threat to our nation's balance sheet - - THE COST OF HEALTH CARE - - goes completely unaddressed in his reform proposal. I'd like someone to explain to this sweet boy, who goes to bed dreaming about hockey and video games, who loves the New York Yankees, who wants to manage a professional sports team one day, why our so-called representatives are lining up to pass a bill in service of a slogan championed by a vulgar stand-up comic: "Let's get it done." He deserves more than that.

This is serving in-flight meals on a plane that has no hope of a safe landing.

Enjoy the peanuts.