Posted by
Real Guy on Wednesday, January 23, 2008 12:56:56 AM
I live in San Diego. After the primaries in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada we started getting a startlingly insulting television spot this weekend.
Hillary Clinton claims she “hears me.” Apparently I want affordable health care (doctors, nurses, and hospital administrators are going to take pay cuts?). Apparently I want affordable gasoline (we’re going to drill in ANWR now?). Apparently I want my mortgage payments guaranteed (I have no idea how she plans to pull this one off). Apparently she’s going to pay for my son’s college education with tax credits (not deductions. Credits.).
By the way, it's to be understood that she’s going to pull all of this off while ensuring that our military stays second to none (after cutting it about 20%), keeping Social Security and Medicare solvent, and meeting or expanding all other federal government obligations. She’ll probably federalize the schools too…for the children.
If you’re old enough to vote then you’ve got to know that none of this is free. Medicare and other government paid health care programs are expensive enough now. Throw in the the other 200 million people currently covered by private health insurance and put them under a guaranteed federal health care program. The costs will be staggering. Oh, wait! We’re not talking about that? Well then just what is Universal Health Care? Who gets it and who pays for it? What tax rates are anticipated to pay for this? Could you just explain all of this please?
Now that I think about it, what about food? How can people be healthy if they don’t eat? So now it seems as though we’ve got to nationalize health care and the food distribution industry too? That oughta work just fine.
Shelter, too. We’ve got to tack that on. You can’t be healthy without a roof over your head. Now we’re nationalizing housing. What about clothing? Can’t be healthy without clothes. Transportation? Counseling? Dry cleaning and laundry? Internet access?
Sorry. I got sidetracked. Where were we? Let’s go back to making gasoline affordable. If she is unwilling to allow oil companies to drill for more oil within the U.S. to assert a little more influence in the oil market, then I guess we’re talking about good old “alternative energy.” You’re car needs to run on banana peels or corn or something. How about hydrogen fuel cells or a small nuclear reactor?
The car market will get there someday. It’s all moving in that direction anyway and new CAFÉ standards will ultimately require that you go to work on 2015’s equivalent of a Moped. What’s Hillary’s play? She’ll take the credit if she’s in office. The statistics on people getting killed in ultra lightweight vehicles will be buried.
Let’s talk about college tuition tax credits. I can see about a half dozen problems with this but let’s talk about the top three:
-- It won’t be enough to make much difference (for example, a $2,000 tax credit makes a pretty small dent when a year of college costs $25,000 to $40,000).
-- We have to assume the credit is for parents sending their kids to school. Giving a credit to a student who doesn’t pay any income tax to begin with is worthless.
-- It just generally means more federal influence over education. I don’t see how we need any more.
Mortgages? I can’t wait to see how she plans to take credit for me making my mortgage payment. Things are complicated enough without some kind of HillaryPlan for mortgages. I have the feeling it will be something like her cattle futures venture. It will work for her. The rest of us need to take cover.
Back to the orignal question. Does Hillary think we're idiots? Probably not. But she doesn't intend to tell us exactly what she's planning. This is for two reasons. First, she hasn't figured it all out yet. (She's still refining Hillary Care from 1993). Most importantly, she doesn't think we'll ask the hard questions prior to the election. She'll run the risk of getting elected without having to explain these things. Because she can't.