According to the nonpartisan Congressional BudgetOffice, the first bill's spending provisions cost $100 billion annually and itstax and budget-cutting provisions recoup $111 billion annually, thus reducingtotal federal expenditures by $11 billion each year. The second bill proposes$636 billion in annual spending and recoups nothing. Over 10 years, the firstbill would spend $1 trillion and recover $1.11 trilliona fantastic return ontaxpayer investment. Meanwhile, the second bill puts us on a path to spend $6.3trillion in the same time.
Save $110 billion, or spend $6.3 trillion? If you'reexplicitly claiming the mantle of fiscal prudence, this should be a no-brainer:You support the first bill and oppose the second one.
Yet, in recent months, the opposite happened.
When the House considered a health care expansionproposal that the CBO says will reduce the deficit by $11 billion a year, teaparty protestors and Congress' self-described "fiscal conservatives"opposed it on cost grounds. At the same time, almost none of them objected whenCongress passed a White House-backed bill to spend $636 billion on defense in2010.
The hypocrisy is stunninglots of "budgethawk" complaints about health legislation reducing the deficit and few”budget hawk” complaints about defense initiatives that, according to Government Executive magazine,"puts the president on track to spend more on defense, in real dollars,than any other president has in one term of office since World War II."And that estimate doesn't even count additional spending on the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.
So, as Bob Dole might ask, where's the publicoutrage at the contradiction? It's nowhere. Well, why not?
One clear answer is valuesor lack thereof. In ourmilitaristic culture, we are taught to prioritize Pentagon spending overeverything else.
Another less obvious answer is ignorance sown byskewed reporting.
The health bill's expenditures are typicallydescribed by reporters in 10-year, $1 trillion terms while defense spending isdescribedif at allas a one-year, $636 billion outlay. That can lead citizensto think the health care bill will cost more than defensewhen, in fact, the10-year comparison pits a $1 trillion health care bill against $6.3 trillion inprojected defense spending.
But even that's not apples to apples. Politicalheadlines of late have all been some version of Dow Jones newswire's recentscreamer: "CBO Puts Health Bill Cost At $1 Trillion." That's as trueas an Enron press release touting only one side of the company's ledger. Thoughthe bill's expenditures do total $1 trillion, the CBO confirms its otherprovisions recover more than that, meaning headlines should read "CBO SaysHealth Bill Saves $110 Billion."
Not surprisingly, the media distortions are beingtrumpeted by the same congressional hypocrites simultaneously backing biggerPentagon budgets and opposing health reform. Their dishonest arguments weresummed up by Sen. Joe Lieberman in a Fox Newsinterview last week. Ignoring CBO data about the health bill and the deficit,the Connecticut lawmaker (who voted for thebloated defense bill) insisted health legislation must be stopped because itwill rack up "debt (that) can break America."
Only professional liars could cite concern aboutdebt as reason to oppose a health care bill reducing the debtand then vote fordebt-expanding defense budgets. Unfortunately, professional liars are the normin today's politics, not the exceptionand they're leading America off thefiscal cliff.
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