The following is from a Tea Party website. Reading this statement it becomes clear how some Americans, especially those on the left can criticize, sometimes harshly, the Tea Party movement. This rhetoric is an oversimplification and displays a lack of understanding of the issue. It borders on childish.
Now when you look at health care for what it is, when you look at the US Constitution, when you look at the history of human freedom, when you accept the American value of the primacy of the individual over the fleeting wishes of the government, it becomes apparent that those who claim that health care is a right simply want to extend a form of government welfare.
When I make this argument to my “Big Government” friends, they come back at me with…well, if people don’t have health insurance, they will just go to the hospitals and we will end up paying for them anyway. Why should that be? We don’t let people steal food from a supermarket or an apartment from a landlord or clothing from a local shop. Why do we let them take health care from a hospital without paying for it?
Well my “Big Government” friends contend that it’s charity. They are wrong again. It is impossible to be charitable with someone else’s money. Charity comes from your heart, not the government spending your money. When we pay our taxes to the government and it gives that money away, that’s not charity, that’s welfare. When the government takes more money, so it can have money to give away, that’s not charity, that’s theft and when the government forces hospitals to provide free health care to those who can’t or won’t care for themselves, that’s not charity, that’s slavery. That’s why we now have Constitutional chaos, because the government steals and enslaves, and we outlawed that a long time ago.
Government may be too big, it may be inefficient, it may be the result of a political animal, spending may be too high, but taxation and government spending is not theft. No, we don’t let people steal from a supermarket or an apartment landlord. But we do send them to food banks and provide food stamps and as far as landlords go, we have shelters such as they are, or we have what many see a better alternative..living on the street or a car.
Clearly there are people who do not pull their weight, who game the system and some who are perfectly happy to let someone else deal with their problems and provide for them. That is not the government’s fault, it is the fault of human nature. Government can’t solve all of our problems. Take poverty for example, how many uncounted trillions have been spent over the years to wipe out poverty and yet it has been with us since time began and still is with us.
If you follow this pure Tea Party logic, Social Security is welfare (payroll taxes don’t cover your benefits), Medicare is welfare (your premiums are a fraction of the true cost), college loans are welfare (you do nothing for the benefit) the tax-free status of employer-provided health benefits is welfare (where is the logic, those who have employer coverage are subsidized by those who don’t) and deducting interest on your mortgage is welfare (people who rent cannot deduct their rent or property taxes, they are subsidizing homeowners). It is all one big system and we are all part of it.
I happen to think the Obama approach to so-called health care reform is wrong, mainly because it does not address the fundamental problem of cost while expanding coverage and because the way it is structured creates a massive new entitlement no different from Medicare. But that does not mean government does not have to assist in addressing the problem.
The Tea Party and the rest of us can yell all we want against government intervention and spending, but the truth is we like it that way or at the very least we have become addicted to government programs. I would like to see more personal responsibility and accountability in many areas, but I have been around long enough and worked with people long enough regarding their health care benefits and retirement planning to know that taking more responsibility just isn’t going to happen for the majority of people. There goes that human nature thing again.
The fact is that defense makes up 20% of the federal budget, Social Security 20% and Medicare and Medicaid 21% . Now unless everyone in the Tea Party wants this 61% of spending cut, dealing with the remaining 40% is not of much help. Also, let’s not forget interest on the public debt. For the month of February 2011 the interest expense for the US Treasury was $21,759,253,957.26, that is twenty-one billion, seven hundred fifty-nine million, two hundred fifty-three thousand, nine hundred fifty-seven and twenty-six cents. Half of that interest goes to foreign governments…talk about foreign aid.
Everyone, including politicians, is for lower taxes, balanced budgets, and less spending so why don’t we have all of that? Because it is easier to pay your taxes (or not for forty percent of Americans or so) and to benefit from all the goodies provided by government, than it is to take personal responsibility.
So Tea Party folks I ask you, do you have adequate life insurance, are you saving prudently for retirement and perhaps college, do you live entirely within your means without unnecessary debt, do you carry health insurance, do you pay your own way in all things? For the few who may be able to answer yes to all those questions, you still must have viable alternatives to the current state to make the changes you seek…good luck!
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