TheAgitator.com
Parsing Sully
Sunday, September 5th, 2004Andrew Sullivan posts several paragraphs of commentary on the RNC, including some scathing criticism of Zell Miller. I didn’t see Miller’s speech, but judging by the analyses I’ve read, it was both deceptive and at times downright scary.
I like much of Sullivan’s commentary, though I don’t agree with all of it (the foreign policy stuff, obviously).
And much as I agree with his indictment of Bush as a free spending statist, I have to take issue with a couple of items in the laundry list of spending programs he pulled from Bush’s acceptance speech:
He pledged to provide record levels of education funding, colleges and healthcare centers in poor towns, more Pell grants, seven million more affordable homes, expensive new HSAs, and a phenomenally expensive bid to reform the social security system.
Sullivan I’m afraid falls into the leftist, statist trap of equating tax cuts and efforts to allow Americans to keep more of their own money as “government spending.” HSAs (health savings accounts) allow Americans to put tax-free income into accounts that they’ll use to pay for health care. Any money they don’t use gets rolled over into an IRA. The benefit is twofold — it’s essentially a tax cut, and it introduces personal responsibility, choice, and accountability into our belabored health care system.
As for Social Security, again, it’s troubling that a self-described conservative like Sullivan would label a move to give Americans possession of the money the government insists is ours anyway an exercise in “government spending.” It’s continuing to pay out promised benefits that’s “spending.” Letting young workers keep more of the money they’ve earned amounts not to a spending program, but to a tiny bit of ground gained for freedom.
Both of these programs expand liberty, though not nearly as much as I’d like (my ideal world would have no forced retirement program, and no state inolvement in health care). To lump them in with real spending programs that actually take money from some people and give it to others gives credence to the leftist notion that tax cuts need to be “paid for,” and that they’re really little more than government programs aimed at the rich.
There’s plenty in the Bush record that’s worth criticizing. But promoting HSAs and Social Security reform are among the few things that are worth some praise.
Another problem Sullivan has is that he thinks that increasing the gas tax would be a good thing.
It works, it works! Zell also challenged Chris Matthews to a duel? Click on my name for Hardball transcript.
The problem is that there aren’t “efforts to allow Americans to keep more of their own money.” If I can only spend the money the way the government tells me too (i.e. I can keep the money tax free, but _only_ if I spend it on healthcare), then it’s still really in the government’s hands.
Registration was painless. Might all be a bit too sophisticated for God though.
Stormy, that’s very true, but it’s still a step in the right direction. As the prior piece from A W View suggests, there’s a strong positive effect on resource allocation when you get to decide how the money is spent, even if the government still require it be spent on healthcare. That’s probably why it won’t happen.
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