Saturday, October 5, 2013

The No Pain Government

For a while I was feeling a little bit sorry for Federal workers who were unexpectedly furloughed last week.  But now I see that the House has passed a bill guaranteeing that they will be paid.

So let me see if I can get this straight.  We ran out of money, so we need to shut down the government.  But the one savings we might realize from that -- the cost of paying a bunch of Federal employees -- well, to actually impose that savings would just cause too much pain, and make too many voters mad at us.  So as soon as the government is back up and running, we'll just print some more money and pay them.  That sounds like soft-hearted liberal nonsense.  Lousy Democrats.  Oh wait -- it's the Republicans, trying to salvage something out of this disaster, by using taxpayer money to buy back the votes that they would have lost from the rightfully enraged Federal workers.

Onlyl in America -- and the American government -- does "furlough" essentially equate to "paid vacation."

It's ironic, but this is almost exactly like what the Democrats did by ramming through Obamacare without any concern for cost savings, and what the Republicans are in some (but not all) ways calling irresponsible.  Yes, it feels wonderful that people with pre-exising conditions can now get insurance, and formerly-uninsured people will no longer be bankrupted by unexpected medical bills.  But to get the votes we need, we need to make that the businesses that are responsible for soaring health costs will continue to make healthy profits.

So who bears the costs in these two parallel situations?  

In Obamacare, it's basically the people who pay more for insurance than they get out of it who end up paying for it.  I.e. most of us.

With the Federal worker paid vacation program, it's all of us. 

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