The federal deficit, and perceptions of it, start to imperil Barack Obama’s health care reform
June 22, 2009 at 1:46 pm by Mitch Perry
By Mitch Perry
PoHo contributor and anchor of the WMNF Evening News on 88.5 FM community radio
Health care reform in Washington is in peril.
In the words of Maryland Democratic Sen. Barbara Mikulski late last week, “Obviously this is not going to go as fast as we thought.”
The promise of reforming health care has been a singular focus of President Barack Obama — well, along with dealing with the banking crises, the foreclosure crises, and getting the economy recharged.
But now that crunch time is approaching, the various voices that comprise the debate in Washington are speaking up, and some groups previously considered as potential allies, (such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce) are now speaking critically of the legislation being discussed right now.
And it can’t bode well that President Clinton’s former pollster, Stan Greenberg, has written a new article that’s subtitled “Why health care reform could fail again.”
Greenberg writes in the New Republic that he’s compared surveys he did back in 1993 and now, and has discovered that on some basic fundamentals, the American public remains stagnant when it comes to making serious changes in our system.
His dismal conclusion?
“If anything, I found on most of these questions that the desire for change and support for reform was slightly stronger 16 years ago, underscoring the importance of learning some lessons from that history.”
If that isn’t portending inertia, the president’s supporters were then hit with a trifecta of major polls last week, all showing that for the first time since health care was last seriously debated in Washington, concerns about the federal deficit have become the most salient issue amongst the American public.
No doubt the $787 billion stimulus, followed by the less enthusiastic response for bailouts for AIG and even General Motors, has reinforced in much of the public’s mind that we are somehow running out of money and that making major changes to health care may be a tad too ambitious at the present time.
But according to The New York Times business columnist David Leonhardt, Obama is not the man to blame for the fact that we have a current deficit that is expected to go to $1.2 trillion dollars from 2009 to 20012.
In an interview on WMNF radio earlier this month, Leonhardt said that of our current financial deficit, Obama’s spending so far is responsible for very little of it.
In fact, he says, “Most of what he wants to spend is for continuing for Bush plans. Most Republicans want to keep the tax cuts going. So, yes, the stimulus bill is quite expensive, but it makes up about $150 billion of the $200 billion or so that his policies are responsible for(the deficit) right now. But the rest of what he’s proposing is not so much.”
Leonhardt explains that’s because health care reform simply will not happen until it’s “deficit neutral” (i.e. can be paid for, either though higher taxes or cuts in spending elsewhere). And he says the president and the Democratic Congress’ controversial cap-and-trade proposal on energy actually raises money for the government, tied to the price of carbon emissions. “The government is going to get a lot of money from that through these licenses,” Leonhardt said. “They can figure out how they’re going to spend that money, but it’s NOT going to make the deficit bigger.”
But even citizens who urgently want to see health care reform are feeling uneasy these days.
At a discussion on health care reform at the Seminole Library in Pinellas County on Saturday, I encountered several people who are not feeling as optimistic as they did after the election changes happening in health care.
Linda Gervitz, a clinical psychologist from Clearwater, said, “I’m really concerned that in these attempts to make everybody happy, the doctors, the insurance companies, to some extent consumers, that nothing is going to be done. What came out of the last attempt is by the Clintons actually made things worse — because then we got HMO’s. So I’m really worried that without a clear mission and a clear path we’re gong to end up with things getting worse, like Medicare Part D…. So I guess I’m pessimistic.
And a Seminole woman who would only identify herself as Jean added, “It seems like we had a lot of hope for this, and it does seem like people are now pulling back from it, and I think if we don’t get it this year, it’s going to be a lot less likely that we’ll get it next year.”
The next month or so should decide whether the U.S. can find a way to provide coverage to as many of the 47 million people are without right now, as well as lowering costs to consumers and businesses alike.
