It took some work for me to find a video of the question posed by Katy Abrams to Senator Arlen Specter which included his response, but the reward was well worth the effort.  Katy’s question is interesting not only for its power (which is obvious enough from the response she got), but because it is the most crystal clear delivery to date of the question Americans should be asking.

At so many of these town halls, citizens are standing up and asking tough questions to their politicians about the proposed health care reforms.  Many come prepared with questions about the House bill, some speak more in general.  There are questions of taxes, of who pays, of what will happen to private insurance, and all of the other details.  These are important questions which must be asked.

What Ms. Abrams asks, though, is a question which is far more important.  She says it herself, that what she wants to know is not just about this, or that, or the other thing.  Her question — the one all of us need to ask — is what any of these things mean for the foundation of the country.  Even if the health care plan was perfect, as Americans and proud believers in constitutional government, we cannot neglect to ask ourselves if the government is acting within its constitutional authority.  As believers in liberty, we must not neglect to ask ourselves if the government is acting within its appropriate role.  If either of those two questions are answered in the negative, then none of the rest even matters.

Senator Specter’s response is telling in a number of ways.

After stammering around for a bit, he offers a platitude about his work defending the Constitution, then instantly changes the subject completely away from health care.  I do not believe, Senator, that however zealously you may have defended the Constitution in the past, that you or any other government official may be excused from defending the Constitution now or in the future, as long as you continue to serve.  The oath you swear is always and everywhere; it has no provision for “I did good last time,” or “I’ll get the next one.”

From there, Senator Specter proceeds to talk about how our “social compact” has a “provision to take care of people who need some help.”  Whatever his “social compact” may be, I guarantee that it is not the Constitution.  Nowhere can I find in the Articles or Amendments a “help those in need” clause.  Not that they needs one, of course.  The Founders knew what history has shown time and again: The best way for a government to help those in need is to stand back and get out of their way.  The people themselves can — should — take care of their own, and that’s what a “social compact” is all about.  It is an agreement of and among the people, far different from a constitution which is a contract between the people and their government.

Our Constitution, of course, is not one that is admitting of government operated health care.  The power to provide health care is certainly not “delegated to the United States by the Constitution,” which means that it must be “reserved to the States … or to the People.” (US Constitution, Amendment 10)  As that language makes clear, it is impossible to uphold and defend the Constitution and support government health care at the same time.

When the government has no authority to do something, the vote should be simple and  clear.  “No.”  The people understand this, and they proclaim it proud and true from every side of the aisle.  But to get the answer, we must do as Ms. Abrams and ask the question.  Defending our freedom is at the pinnacle America’s “social compact.”

Over on the White House Blog today, Macon Phillips tells us about an interesting new service being offered by the federal government.  The services is introduced as such:

There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there, spanning from control of personal finances to end of life care.  These rumors often travel just below the surface via chain emails or through casual conversation.  Since we can’t keep track of all of them here at the White House, we’re asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Now, I know it doesn’t directly affect health insurance, but I, too, get a lot of disinformation about healthcare concerns in general.  Not a day goes by, it seems, where I’m not being introduced to a product or service that falsely promises to improve my level of health and wellbeing.  Most of this stuff comes in through my email, but I have also seen the lies show up on web forums I visit, on blogs I read, in conversations over instant messaging services, and even on television.

Of course, I tend to be fairly busy, and I assuredly don’t have time to read every lie that comes my way.  But, to my good fortune, I am, first and foremost, a child of technology.  A better life can come through software, and I have customized software systems to automatically sort most of these things out for me.  Perhaps the government will do the same.  But, if they are to really keep sharp on the latest information, then they must be prepared to do better than I do; to sit down, and actually read the things that we send.

Next time you see this disinformation, you might as well just send it along.  Though, you may want to create an anonymous email address first, certainly nothing that has your name.  But disinformation is disinformation, and the government clearly needs to care no matter who the mail is from.  They asked for it, after all.

So, why wait?  When it drops in your inbox, just go ahead!

Send them Viagra.

(Nothing in this post should be construed as recommending or encouraging the violation of applicable laws.  Indeed, the world is better off if you don’t.)

In today’s Washington Post, Dan Eggen and Rob Stein tell us about how abortion has played into the health care debate.  The article focuses on regulation, particularly, whether or not government or private insurance may be required to fund abortions under some or all of the new health care proposals currently winding their way through Congress.  As the article reads (and as I’m inclined to believe), the effort for compromise would allow private insurance to fund abortion, but not federal dollars.  While the compromise is common and has worked well in the past, it is also no compromise at all if the “public option” is made to exist.

As I have argued previously, the “public option” is long-term irreconcilable with private insurance.  Nothing has changed my mind on that point.  Eventually, the government will be responsible for paying all of our medical bills.  Once that happens, the government will no longer be able to avoid paying for abortion.  There will be no room for compromise.  The reason federal abortion funding will happen is subtle, and has very little to do with politicians.

Under the abortion regime handed to the country in Roe and updated in Casey, the government is constitutionally prohibited from imposing an “undue burden” on the ability of women to receive abortions.  While there is plenty of room to debate whether or not such a standard is proper, what is clear is that it denying payment for abortion would be tantamount to denying abortion itself.  Under the Court’s precedents (which make the legality of prohibiting a single procedure, while other procedures (and, thus, abortion in general) remain available, a close question), it takes very few mental gymnastics to conclude that the government’s failure to fund abortion when there is no other funding source would be an “undue burden.”

Whether the pro-abortion members of Congress are sincere or not, any compromise on leaving abortion out of the “public option” would be a hollow and temporary one at best.  Having been enshrined into the Constitution, abortion on demand is not a practice which will go away quickly or quietly.  For legislators concerned about federal dollars going to abortion, the only viable option is to vote against the “public option.”

According to the Associated Press, Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus has managed to find a way to make even less sense than Obama on the subject of healthcare.  Assuming that the AP article is an accurate reflection of what Senator Baucus actually said, he has just added another huge contradiction to the healthcare debate.

From the article:

A key Senate chairman says he hopes to convince President Barack Obama that taxing some employer-provided health benefits will help control escalating health care costs  … Baucus says the tax-free benefit packages Americans now enjoy are a big factor in the high costs of the country’s health care system, because they provide workers free or low-cost access to too many health care services.

So, according to Senator Baucus, a “big factor” which makes healthcare more expensive are “tax-free benefit packages … [that] provide workers with free or low cost access to … health care services.”  Put another way, healthcare costs so much because people don’t  have to spend a lot of money to get it.  Yet a third way, healthcare is expensive because it’s not.

Senator Baucus’s solution, which I guess is pretty obvious if you can swallow the contradiction above, is to tax private healthcare benefits.  The line of reasoning is certainly sound: Make healthcare more affordable by increasing the price.  Of course, with President Obama wrangling with care providers to knock costs lower, the only way to jack up the price is to do so artificially, with a tax.

Of course, it is possible that I misrepresented the Senator, and honesty demands that I address his “too many” straw man.  While some people certainly do behave this way, I know of very few people who seek out medical services that they do not actually need.  Indeed, part of the reason America’s emergency rooms are so full is the fact that most people don’t seek out medical services until they’ve long past needed them.  Even if you assume that people are overconsuming healthcare, are they doing so to the tune of offsetting nearly 46 million people who are not insured at all, and for whom President Obama wants to guarantee “free or low-cost” coverage?  And even if the answer is somehow, astonishingly, yes, exactly how is the government going to determine when a person has used “too many … services”?  And why wouldn’t private insurers do the same thing if they could?

The string of illogic given to us by Senator Baucus is only reconcilable with the proposition that he wants to end private insurance without saying so.  If President Obama goes back on his campaign rhetoric mocking McCain for supposedly having similar ambitions, it will be proof even stronger that his goals are the same.

Perhaps we should have given honest debate a health insurance plan ages ago.

A lot of noise has been made regarding the AIG bonuses. Obama has expressed his outrage. Congress has weighed in. AIG executives have been harassed in their own homes. So, is there cause for outrage?

Indeed there is, Virginia, indeed there is. However, it may not be directed at who everyone assumes.

As part of the ill-advised bailout plan, AIG has received about $170 billion of taxpayer dollars. One would assume that injecting that much money into a company would buy the American people a little bit of say into how the company is run. And, as far as I’m concerned, one would be right. In fact, Congress has made its wishes known in the stimulus bill. In that, they specifically allowed AIG to make good on pre-exiting bonuses. In fact, these bonuses represent contractual obligations on the part of AIG to its employees. In effect, Obama and Congress are upset that AIG is paying its debts.

It goes beyond that, however. During the uproar, we’ve had President Obama, Senator Chris Dodd (Senate Banking Committee Chairman), who wrote the amendment, and Secretary Geithner (Treasury Secretary) all claim they didn’t know about this. How can this be?

Obama voted for the stimulus bill. Did he not read it?

Dodd was the one who wrote the amendment regarding “excessive” executive compensation, where the exemption lies. After saying that he didn’t know how the exemption got there, he then said it was requested by Treasury. Which is it, Senator Dodd? If you were asked to put it in there, how can you not know how it got there?

Secretary Geithner, for his part, claimed no knowledge, until Sen. Dodd fingered him. Then he acknowledged requesting it.

This means that the Obama administration requested the exemption be placed into law, then made a public outcry when it was followed. On top of that, they tried to cover it up. At best, this screams of gross incompetence. More cynically, it speaks of intentional deception of the American public for purposes of demagoguing the issue for political gain. Is it time to ask “What did the President know, and when did he know it?”

Worse than that, however, is the decision by the House of Representatives to pass an ex-post-facto tax of 90% on those who received the bonuses. That’s right, congress writes the law to give them the money, then they take it back. That would be disgusting enough, however, even without the blatant disregard for the constitution that such a move demonstrates. Using the tax code as a weapon to punish those that the Congress doesn’t like is not just a disgusting piece of legislative abuse, it is also a Bill of Attainder, which is explicitly prohibited in the Constitution. It is also in violation of the equal protection clause and the prohibition on ex-post-facto laws.

What is surprising (or, alas, not-so surprising) is the number of Republicans who have voted for this law, including Virginia’s Eric Cantor. To disregard the Constitution in such a way, in pursuit of crass political points shows that they have learned nothing from the losses in 2006 and 2008. Cantor, and the rest of the Republicans who voted for this, need to find themselves in the unemployment line, come 2010.

The silver lining in all this, however, is the comic value for those who have been paying attention. Not only for the rank sanctimony, but also for the cognitive dissonance. Especially amusing is President Obama telling his Secretary of Treasury, despite all his screw-ups in such a short time, that he would not accept Geithner’s resignation. Yeah, you’re doing a heckuva job, Brownie.

I see what you are doing.  Quit it.

I’m probably a bit late to the party, but I tripped across something interesting today.  It seems our government is wasting no time preparing for the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, better known as the $800+ billion “stimulus” currently working its way through Congress.  It seems that the government has decided to launch a website, recovery.gov, apparently as a way to let anyone with an Internet connection keep track of where their tax dollars are being spent.  The idea itself is fundamentally interesting, though I am rather of two minds about what it is that I’m actually seeing.

On the one hand, there is more than a small amount of irony behind the site which is, currently, nothing but a placeholder for after the bailout is passed.  The site proudly bills itself as being “part of an unprecedented effort to root out waste, inefficiency, and unnecessary spending in our government.”  It would seem to me that not passing a wasteful, inefficient, and unnecessary spending bill in the first place would be a much more effective way to go about accomplishing that goal.  Nevertheless, I suppose it is good to know that the government recognizes that the bill is each of those things, and that they are willing to spend even more money to at least let us watch and bicker about the details.

On the other hand, I actually rather like the idea of having a site which details out where all of the government’s money is being spent.  Of course, if the government is really serious about rooting out waste, inefficiency, and unnecessary spending, I can think of no reason to stop at a single Act.  There is, after all, a lot of goverment spending going on even without considering all of the money being spent or proposed for economic recovery.  I expect that very few people  have any idea where the money actually goes, aside from the occasional media reports about pork earmarks winding its way into high profile legislation.  A convenient system for inspecting the details of the federal budget and an ongoing report of expenses actually paid would be a very welcome and useful innovation.

The interesting question whcih will be intersting to watch unfold is whether recovery.gov will result in any substantial changes being made to the stimulus funding once the program is in place.  Federal spending programs have historically been incredibly difficult to abort mid-course even in the face of significant public outcry for reform.  The ultimate test of reform.gov will be whether or not it allows changes to be made as soon as “waste, inefficiency, [or] unnecessary spending” become apparent in the stimulus plan.

Two things struck me today as I performed my daily glean of headlines from aggregate news sites. One, an executive order from our newly inaugurated President, the other, a policy change from his newly appointed Secretary of State. The problem? I mean, aside from the fact that government has no business at all doing either of these things.

Worked it out? It’s the recession. Presumably, President Obama knows about this particular situation and is working to alleviate the strain. So.. why is it that he and his top cabinet official are actively working to increase spending given to international programs?

These policies come hot on the heels of the most expensive Presidential inauguration in US history. It cost so much, in fact, that President Bush declared a state of emergency in Washington, D.C. to help cover the costs. A state of emergency. How is it that no one at the top is seeing that we just do not have the money for the things some of them are wanting to do?

This is not the first occurrence, nor will it be the last, in what I expect will become a long trail of breadcrumbs left by this administration. For all our sakes, I hope that I am wrong. In the meantime, stay vigilant and keep an eye out for the trail.