There are three big ideas -- sharply cutting defense spending, restoring taxes on the wealthy to the rates of the booming 1990s, and smart health care cuts such as a better records system and reducing unnecessary tests -- that are so common sensical they should transcend ideology and party.
First, that he is a self professed liberal talking about the deficit in the first place rather than about restoring jobs makes him an idiot. Politicians on both sides want to change the subject away from jobs because they have neither track record or constructive plans on that subject, but we should not allow them to distract us from what matters.
“Big ideas?” Raising taxes on the rich by three percentage points is not a big idea; it’s not even a small idea; it’s a tiny, infinitesimal idea. It cuts our deficit by 4% or less. It is tokenism and is presented by Democratic leadership as a distraction from the track record of the present legislators and President. It is designed to make us angry at rich people instead of at our elected government, and we are biting like suckerfish on a shiny lure.
“Big ideas?” Health care with “better records system and fewer unnecessary tests” is another case of thinking like midgets. Record systems is a good idea, but it’s impact on costs is trivial, and after complaining about insurance companies having veto power over the necessity of tests, do we really want to give that power to the government? This is another way of thinking small and talking big, of saying that we are addressing the cost problem of “for profit” health care without actually doing anything about it.
Health care reform was our chance to think big in this decade, to make a change that would really matter, and we were afraid to do that. The leader of this nation said that it would be “too disruptive.” Instead, we created 7600 pages of small thinking, with absolutely nothing new contained in it. A vast collection of small, unoriginal thoughts do not add up to a “big idea.”
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