Selling Vapor Ware

In his most partisan speech to date, Obama spoke last night about the virtues of a non-existent healthcare proposal. He listed details about what he wants, and will sign into law, but most of those details are absent in the only proposal that lawmakers have to work with.

I sat in astonishment that he would be out pitching a non-existent bill and at the same time call everybody a liar who has read what is on the table. The president has no bill, and for him to cite what he would assure us would be in the bill is ludicrous. What the lawmakers are working on and what Obama was talking about are two different animals.

His sales pitch last night revolved around debt neutrality, tort reform and no insurance for the Illegals living in America. None of these items are in the House bill which is the only proposal on the table.

Obama could have helped his cause by insisting that the bill currently under consideration be sent back to committee for an overhaul and incorporate the items he was trying to sell. But he didn’t. He accused those who have read the proposed legislation, of being liars. This type of rhetoric is offensive and does not help to solve the healthcare dilemma.

The president is the chief law enforcer of the United States. I find it sadly amusing that everybody talks about the fraud and abuse in the current system, but there is no attempt to go after the perpetrators of these schemes. How will passing new laws help what is clearly an enforcement problem? How many speed limit laws are needed to control the highways? Passing laws do nothing if there is no enforcement. Is Obama admitting that he is a failure at policing medical fraud? After all, there are already laws on the books against those crimes. It seems that everyone seems to know all about the abuse in the system, but nobody is willing to stop it. Why? Are new laws going to help put away the bad guys?

A little leadership from Obama would be refreshing. I look forward to the day that he stops running for office and starts actually being president. Strong partisan, rhetorical speeches do him more harm than good – and besides it is boring to sit through his wordy self aggrandizing speeches.

His naïve ideas about how to fix the world are putting the U.S. in a position of debt that has no end game except the impoverishment of its citizens. This isn’t like the past where a world war destroyed most of the industrial world except that of America. At the end of that war, America was the provider to the world and was able to overcome government spending. Such conditions do not exist in today’s world. Today, the largest source of income for the government is from its taxpaying citizens.

Our shrinking private labor force is a real problem. All of the revenue that graces the U.S. treasury comes from that shrinking private sector. It is the private sector that pays the salaries for all government workers. Government workers do not pay taxes, the total of their paid income comes from the treasury – they do not add to the treasury.

So I would say to Mr. Obama, stop selling vaporware. Start finding ways to help our business community so that they can begin the process of commerce again. Devising new tax schemes is not helpful. We cannot all work for the government – it has been tried in several economies and has never worked. National prosperity begins with motivating individuals to be creative and start new enterprises. Prosperity isn’t figuring out how to extract more money from a shrinking segment of the population.

I keep hoping that this president will mature and realize that his Utopian ideas are both unrealistic and unattainable. But so far, he hasn’t shown any interest in reality.

Cheers,

-Robert-

Email Comment to Robert