President Obama Dangerous and Dogmatic Commitment to Health Care Reform

Presidential advisor said something fairly startling regarding health care this morning. In response to a question about whether or not taxing employer provided health insurance benefit would be off the table, here's how Axelrod responded.

One of the problems we’ve had in this town is that people draw lines in the sand and they stop talking to each other. And you don’t get anything done. That’s not the way the president approaches us. He is very cognizant of protecting people — middle class people, hard-working people who are trying to get along in a very difficult economy. And he will continue to represent them in these talks,”

The president has been similarly coy about whether or not he would institute the value added tax to pay for health care reform.

With budget deficits soaring and President Obama pushing a trillion-dollar-plus expansion of health coverage, some Washington policymakers are taking a fresh look at a money-making idea long considered politically taboo: a national sales tax.

Now, if I had a chance to ask Axelrod a question, I would ask him if a marginal tax increase was off the table in order to pass health care reform. It appears that the president is convinced that massive health care reform is in and of itself the best policy no matter how we get there.

In medicine, there is a very important principle, first do no harm. Politicians would be wise to follow the same rule. The world is littered with laws that wound up doing much more harm than good. It appears the president believes that the key to his legacy and to future American prosperity is Euro socialist style health care reform. Furthermore, it appears that he is willing to do whatever it takes to get there.



For a clue to Obama's belief system, we really only need to look at Obama's own words.

Obama praises Bill Clinton more highly than any other contemporary Democrat, because Clinton recognized the staleness of the old political debate between Left and Right and came close to moving beyond it with his politics of the Third Way, which "tapped into the pragmatic, nonideological attitude of the majority of Americans." But Clinton blew it, and the author gradually lets you know it. First, he regrets Clinton's "clumsy and transparent" gestures to the Reagan Democrats, and his "frighteningly coldhearted" use of other people (e.g., "the execution of a mentally retarded death row inmate" before a crucial primary). Then Obama notes sadly that Clinton's policies--"recognizably progressive if modest in their goals"--had commanded broad public support, but that the president had never been able, "despite a booming economy," to turn that support into a governing coalition. Finally, he gently accuses Clinton of the worst offense of all: strengthening the forces of conservatism. Due to his "personal lapses" and careless triangulations that ceded more and more ground to the Right, Clinton prepared the way for George W. Bush's victory in 2000.

President Obama is looking to be a transformative president on the scale of FDR and Lincoln. He believes that sweeping health care reform is his ticket to presidential immortality. President Obama should heed both the presidencies of FDR and Clinton. FDR wouldn't have much of a legacy had it not been for his victory in WWII. If President Obama thinks that Social Security, Fannie Mae, and other big government policies secured FDR's legacy, then President Obama had better re read history. As for President Clinton, the former president was very adept at reacting to events. When health care reform failed and the Congress transferred over, the president pivoted to the middle and passed a balanced budget and a capital gains tax cut.

The current president doesn't seem to have any of those instincts yet. So far at least, he will move toward passing health care reform at all costs. (except maybe including a conservative idea like health savings accounts) It appears that he believes that sweeping health care reform will be a transformative victory that will resolve everything no matter what he sacrifices in the process. He'd better rethink that approach. First of all, it's unlikely health care reform will pass if it includes massive tax increases like taxing employer's health insurance and the value added tax. Second, the voters will punish anyone that supports such an idea. It will mean breaking his very clear promise not to tax anyone but the top 5%. Sweeping health care reform will be a political, economic, and electoral failure if its first result is to raise everyone's taxes. Raising everyone's taxes isn't much of a legacy, and the president should realize that soon.

If the president continues to be blinded by the laser light focus that sweeping health care reform is itself a means to an end, it will ultimately bring himself, his party, and our economy down.