The sky is falling! The sky is falling!
Okay, not really. But revenues are falling. And it feels just as dramatic.
As the economy slowly begins to recover, another challenge looms on the horizon: how to pay for this “stimulus.” Cash for Clunkers? Stimulus checks for the disabled? TARP relief for banks? Extended unemployment benefits? Just where is the money coming from? If you said “taxes”, you’re only sort of right.
The money for all of these programs – as well as spending on Iraq, Afghanistan, and other big-budget items – is supposed to be drawn from tax revenues. There’s just one teensy problem: we don’t have much in the way of tax revenues.
If the current pace continues, tax receipts for 2009 will be almost 20% less than last year. That’s before the tax cuts expire. It is the steepest decline since 1932, during the Great Depression.
According to the AP, individual taxes, Social Security and Medicare revenues are all down from the same time last year. Even more striking? Corporate revenues are down more than 50%.
What’s particularly scary about these numbers is that, even before the $1 trillion health care bill gets passed, spending continues to rise. Despite attempts to scale back in Iraq, military spending is still up from last year. Together with other spending, increases are set to hit more than 10%. That’s right: increases in spending, decreases in revenues.
You do the math.
Just to make a comment about the health-care thing, I think there’s a lot to Obama’s argument that a tax hike wouldn’t be that big a deal because “you’re already paying for health care as it is.” My wife and I are in our 40s, no kids, and use almost no health care, for the most part — we’re pretty healthy. Neither one of us has a job that provides health insurance, so we have an individual policy that costs $237/month with a $5,000 deductible. I.e., it’s basically just a catastrophic insurance policy — under normal circumstances, no way are we going to hit the deductible, so it’s just free money for the insurer. At a cost of $2,844 a year! That is not trivial.
So I don’t necessarily buy the argument that “ObamaCare is too expensive,” because that assumes it’s a new tax on top of everything else we’re paying now. If it’s a new tax, but at a savings to me of $2,844, maybe a trillion dollars for the public option isn’t such a bad deal.
Still, the revenue does have to come from somewhere — even tho’ Uncle Sam seems to think he can keep making money out of thin air forever. (Righties should remember that Obama did not invent deficit spending — his predecessor racked up some prodigious red numbers in his own right….)
Urb
Every time an uninsured person go0es to the doctor, pharmacy, hospital somebody pays for it. The uninsured pay some of it, but when they can’t, someone else pays. Hospitals get stuck with unpsid bills all the time, and the law usually doesn’t allow them to turn indigent patients away. A large number of these hospitals are run by state or local government; for them, the local taxpayers end up paying.
My wife and I run a charity that benefits the homeless. A small percentage of our “clients” are on Medicaid or Medicare; the rest have no insurance and, usually, no money. Rarely does a week go by that we don’t have to take someone to the ER, to a rehab or psychiatric facility, either a charitable or state-run outfit.
I suppose one effect of Obamacare would be to spread those costs around more. And, of course, to those who say “do you want a government beaurocrat to tell you what health care you can or cannot get, and where you can or cannot get it?” I would respond “And how would that be worse than having some private insurance company doing the same thing”.
The sad thing is we discuss how much government should provide for us rather than discussing what the purpose of our government is. On another site someone posted that it was the mandate of government to take money from people and give to others. Amazingly this is the belief of many Americans.
Tax increases have never been beneficial to the overall economy. Long term increases in government spending will eventually lead us to the same place it has every other nation has that followed that path… the pages of history.
Improving healthcare is not as easy as adding another government program. It will take a fundamental overhaul of the system which our government has never shown itself capable of. They will add massive programs, requirements, regulations, restrictions and pain to the system.
Deficit spending is like drug use. You enjoy it and need it… until you enter rehab or end up dead.
Great post. Would it be possible for you to include a source for this information. I can’t seem to find it anywhere. Thanks!
It was from the AP, I’ll see if I can dig it up.