Obama's Healthcare Logic Deficit: You Don't Spend Money to Save Money

By Mary Kate Cary, Thomas Jefferson Street blog

David Leonhardt writes a great explanation in today's New York Times of where the deficit came from, and how big it is. It's in plain English and it makes it clear that the reckless spending of the Bush years made things bad, the current recession made things worse, and Obama's massive stimulus spending continues the mess. I highly recommend it to you. There's also a terrific graphic that conveys the information visually.

Why do we need to spend even more money to lower healthcare costs? With a projected $1.8 trillion deficit, it's time to stop the spending and cut costs. I don't get it. In our family budget, we don't spend more money in order to save it. We just stop spending so much money. It doesn't cost us more money to do that. The federal government isn't any different—except for the crazy attitude among politicians and interest groups that a "cut" is really a slowdown in the rate of growth. We don't need slowdowns in the rate of growth. We need real cuts before we're driven into bankruptcy.

Correction: In yesterday's blog, I mistakenly wrote that President Obama had moved from the second person to the first person in his use of "I" instead of "we," when I meant to say he had moved to the first person singular from the plural. My high school English teacher would be horrified, and I apologize to all the linguists out there.

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