Rick Boettger Columns
Sunday, July 5, 2009
Cold feet

America is poised on greatness. Congress can vote right now to give us universal health care and replace our dependence on foreign oil with clean, renewable energy. Both bills also would create hundreds of thousands of permanent, good jobs that could not be shipped overseas.

But I fear we're going to blow it. Like an athlete who doesn't believe in himself and is afraid to hit his best shot when the championship is on the line, Congress, following the wavering will of a timid populace, may choke, and overrule the president we elected to do exactly what he's trying to do. And our fears are baseless.

Take health care. Supposedly, we can't afford it. Any "public option," something like my Veterans Affairs care or the programs our politicians themselves enjoy, allegedly will cause ruinous tax increases.

Stop. Look at who is paying for your current health care. If you have any, you are either paying for insurance yourself or your employer is. You also have out-of-pocket expenses, either for your co-pay or, if you don't have insurance, for everything.

For example, say you or your employer pay in total $5,000 a year. Of that, say $3,000 goes for medical care, $1,000 goes for useless paperwork and $1,000 goes to profits for the insurance agencies and HMOs for denying you as much health care as they can.

With the public option, you and your employer save the $5,000 and replace it with $3,000 in taxes. Jobs will shift from paper-pushers and claim-deniers to more doctors and nurses, because more Americans will actually be getting more health care.

Why get the government involved? Because public health is as vital as public safety. Police protection used to be private, only for the rich and powerful. Right now your public safety is paid for by your taxes, much more cheaply than if you had to hire your own personal security guards to keep your home and family safe from criminals. Health care, too, should be a public right.

Our renewable energy initiative may die for a sad reason: Big oil and coal already exist, and have the billions in hand to buy our legislators. Clean energy does not have a penny on the dollar as much to spend on lobbying, and may lose.

America has faltered like this before, getting cold feet on the edge of stepping into greatness. Both Hoover and FDR, for example, conceived and began excellent programs that were beating the Great Depression, but in 1932 and 1937 stopped them in fear of the demon deficit.

Raising taxes and cutting spending in both cases quickly plunged us deeply back into depression. Only by quadrupling our debt and printing more money were we able to beat the Depression, as well as Germany and Japan.

Rick Boettger was a business professor before writing his book and hosting a 25-state talk radio show on political economics. He has done tax and financial advising in Key West since retiring here in 1996. He also is featured at noon on Tuesdays and Thursdays on 1680 KONK-AM's Webcasts. Questions, information and differing opinions are welcome at rd.boettger@gmail.com.