Eighty Eight: Health Care Legislation And The Economy

The last watershed piece of health care legislation was the enactment of Medicare in 1965. After that, the economy was in the doldrums, including a couple of recessions, for the next twenty years. The post-Medicare economic malaise was the amount of time required to digest the tremendous inefficiencies and burden of a huge increase in the size of government. In 1985, the Reagan tax cuts kicked in and created the the economic expansion which lasted essentially until 2007.

Now BO and his band are about to enact another round of generational government expansion. In addition to health care, financial, insurance, and industrial meddling by government, in the name of consumer safety or economic stabilization, is going to suck capital out of the private sector and paralyze economic activity for at least as long as the post-Medicare period.

In 1996, Clinton declared that the "era of big government is over." Of course this is not what Clinton philosophically wanted, but he did recognize that the only way to stay in the oval office for another term was to jump on the band wagon of public sentiment which had finally tired of oppressive government intervention in their lives. While government growth never actually decreases in real terms, the rate of growth did slow down during Clinton's reign. Much of this was due to Clinton's inability to do much of anything on account of his constant personal crises. The result however, was the legendary economic expansion of the late 1990s. Reagan tax cuts + Clinton scandals = economic success.

BO and the Dems are doing exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time. Government should be doing everything it can to shovel capital into the private sector. Instead, they are diverting it away from productivity, which will create wealth, and building huge government incinerators to waste resources.

We'll just have to wait for another Reagan.