Small versus large government, Part 1
Posted by GSDispatch Editor in by Bob Beigher, GSD Online
In his column, “Small versus Large Government, Jacob Turk Vs. Emanuel Cleaver,” the Lee’s Summit Conservative offers many generalizations and questionable claims. He claims that the real choice— is between keeping money in the private sector where it will be used to create jobs, or send it all to Washington in the form of higher taxes and thwart the economic growth we so desperately need.”
He claims that a search for Jacob Turk will lead you to “his Congressional run web page”. That is just not true. It will take you to Turk’s campaign website; it is not on the Congressional website. For that matter, political ads cannot appear on a Congressional website. On the right hand corner of that page, TurkforCongress.org, he claims, “With Cleaver ignoring all of us in voting for government run health care, it is time to join together to change the kind of people we send to Washington!” Oh, really?
What “government run health care” is he talking about? There is no government run health care plan; the public option was not adopted in the new health care bill. While a large proportion of Americans wanted the public option, the President did not introduce one and didn’t get behind one that many in Congress did want. What it does do is to make several important improvements to our current health care system. It would allow the insured to keep their children on their plans until they are age 26. That would allow students to complete their college educations before they would lose their health insurance. It would limit the amounts that insurers could raise your premiums. The new health care bill regulates insurance companies to protect that the insured are not dropped by their carrier when they come down with a serious illnesses. Some insurers have dropped women when they have developed breast cancer. It also requires that insurance companies provide insurance for people with pre-existing conditions. The bill provides you with a menu of health care providers so you can choose a plan. Choices will be similar to the Congressional health care program. I was told that Congressman Cleaver buys his health insurance from Blue Cross/Blue Shield.
The title of the column raises the question, “If government is too large, what would Jacob Turk want to do about it? What programs would he want to cut? “What makes the government “too big”?
Let’s look at the federal government and how it spends money: Defense will take a large chunk, 20%, of the federal budget. This year, the Department of Defense will take $715 billion dollars. All of that spending will come from general revenues. The next biggest part of government spending is paid for from payroll taxes paid by workers and their employers and by the self employed. Social Security, having its own source of funding, takes $708 billion, or 20% of the total budget. The program covers 36 million retired workers and their eligible dependents. It also provides benefits to 6.4 million surviving spouses of deceased workers. Social Security also pays benefits to 9.7 million disabled workers. Those benefits are paid from a separate trust fund. All of these sums are paid for, as mentioned, with dedicated payroll taxes. So, I would ask, what would Turk do to cut defense or benefits for the elderly, their dependents, their surviving spouses, and the disabled? Which part of these programs would he want to cut? Social Security surpluses have financed a large part of the National debt. You might say that they have paid for the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy.
Medicare, also funded by the FICA payroll taxes, accounts for 14% of government spending. It provides health care to 46 million people 65 years of age and older, as well as people with disabilities. Would a Congressman Turk want to cut that program? Or, would he like to do away with the Children’s Health insurance Plan, CHIP? The Democrats had to push for a renewal and improvements of the CHIP plan in face of the “Just say No” Republicans in the House and Senate. Would Turk want to eliminate or cut health insurance for children? Medicaid is a program for the elderly and low income Americans. Both CHIP and Medicaid are paid for from general revenues and matching funds from the states. When Missouri cut 100,000 Missourians from Medicaid, this state lost all of the matching funds that would have entered our economy from the federal government. For every dollar saved by dropping those Missourians form Medicaid, another dollar was lost from federal matching funds.
Then there are the safety net programs such as unemployment insurance. That program is paid for from taxes on employers. The current unemployment insurance extension would provide workers who have been out of work during the long Bush recession. Paying unemployment insurance helps workers to continue pay some of their bills and to be consumers. That is a stimulus during hard recessions. The Republicans object to extending those benefits. After he was fired from the Kansas City Royals, Rush Limbaugh drew unemployment for several weeks. What does he say now about unemployment benefits?
For more information, please visit the following website: http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=1258
Stay tuned…
Bob Beigher
