Overleveraging American Foreign and Domestic Policy

Conservative voices are being raised against what defense hawks consider to be the Democrats' ulterior motive in addressing healthcare in America: a none-too-subtle longterm plot to curtail U.S. defense spending and thus render our military forces as strategically impotent as those of our NATO allies. This charge is at once hypocritical and correct, but not for the dark reasons ascribed to the Obama administration.

Continue reading this week's New Rules column at WPR.

Comments

[Petrer]

The dirty little secret that the BRIC countries know (especially China) is that it is better to be a developed power, rather than a superpower, anyway you cut it. History is clear, everyone wants to be "the guy" until they realize they can be "the guy" without all the crap that comes along with being number 1: countries like Germany, the UK, France are much happier after their "falls" from supremacy.

Regardless, the lefty dems have always wanted a damn NHS style system since Roosevelt!...at least a French state insurance system...and that is why a lot of the criticism on the current Senate bill is legit...but yes, there is hypocrisy on the Republican side.

[Andrew in DC]

"...versus controlling skyrocketing health care costs at home."

One point - "Controlling healthcare costs" is a canard. Neither party proposes anything resembling a plan which is capable of doing such. Dems propose shifting the burden from the service-user to any-and-all who pay taxes, while Reps propose ... well it's sort of unclear and it doesn't matter because it won't pass. The *costs* of healthcare will continue to rise, however. Now it'll just be another monster entitlement program. ...Unless the Dems have proposed implementing wage and price controls, shattering IP laws (or co-opting the drug companies) and I somehow missed it.

Proposals which truly speak toward *costs* - tort reform, unwinding the various codified doctors' guilds, and pushing more cost onto the consumer of the service in a direct (fee) rather than indirect (tax) basis, rightly or wrongly, aren't really on the table.

Ultimately, however, the creation of another entitlement program will only further over-leverage us and hamstring our future commitments to anything - including protecting the global system we've so eagerly propagated. Our leaders need to choose their next financial moves wisely because despite everyone's high interest in keeping this fiat-system going, we're increasingly poorly positioned in the unlikely eventuality that it stops.

[David Emery]

I'm a bit disappointed you didn't tackle the current proposal for a 'war tax' as part of this. It's time for us to live within our means on both foreign and domestic fronts, and gimmics such as 'war taxes' are just as bogus as the continued domestic spending for both guns & butter we can't afford.

I'm resigned to paying more taxes, but I sure am not going willingly unless there's some clear-thinking and some clear-talking on this from both the Administration and particularly Congress. After all, -Congress- has the Constitutional power of the purse, so they can't dodge that delegated responsibility (at least not in my mind...) But I don't have much faith that either side of the aisle really wants to tackle the hard fiscal problems and the bad choices they bring out. We might see a replay of the California debacle in a couple of years.

[large]

Apparently, the Administration's agenda priorities are something like this . . 1) Health Insurance Reform 2) Security 3)Environment 4)Economy . . with the Items 2 through 4 being shuffled by the media as the Administration dictates . .

And none of the above will be cheap for the taxpayer . . Congress, on the other hand, will do whatever it takes to retain the power status quo it enjoys . . currently, doing nothing would be better than the options given on most of the above agendas . . especially the Health Insurance imbroglio.