Beacon Street Journal

Can the nation afford President Obama’s costly plans for overhaul of the health care system?

In light of the fact that the Obama Administration has been spending like a drunken sailor, the Congressional Budget Office’s $1+ trillion estimate of the proposed plan sent tremors through the country and acted as a wake-up call for many moderate Democrats in Congress.

Writing in bloomberg.com, Kevin Hassett, adds an interesting dimension to the debate by arguing that the unprecedented fiscal calamity facing California is instructive on the question that is plaguing Obamacare, namely, how will it be funded without bankrupting the country:

The California morass has Democrats in Washington trembling. The reason is simple. If Obama’s health-care plan passes, then we may well end up paying for it with federal slips of paper worth less than California’s. Obama has bet everything on passing health care this year. The publicity surrounding the California debt fiasco almost assures his resounding defeat.

In terms of fiscal irresponsibility, Hassett correctly discerns that the only difference between the policies of Sacramento and the current policies of Washington under the Obama Administration is one of scope and degree:

California has engaged in an orgy of spending, but, compared with our federal government, its legislators should feel chaste. The California deficit this year is now north of $26 billion. The U.S. federal deficit will be, according to the latest numbers, almost 70 times larger.

Hasset notes that if the Obama Administration’s spending plans remain unchecked, the nation will go the way of California:

The federal picture is so bleak because the Obama administration is the most fiscally irresponsible in the history of the U.S. I would imagine that he would be the intergalactic champion as well, if we could gather the data on deficits on other worlds. Obama has taken George W. Bush’s inattention to deficits and elevated it to an art form.

…Obama has no story. Nobody believes that his unprecedented expansion of the welfare state will lead to enough economic growth. Nobody believes that it will pay for itself. Everyone understands that higher spending today begets higher spending tomorrow. That means that his economic strategy simply doesn’t add up.

In short, the self-inflicted financial meltdown plaguing California has provided a rather sobering object lesson for Washington politicians of the disastrous consequences of fiscal imprudence.

As Bill Dupray over at The Patriot Room notes:

Not only is Obama very likely going to adopt McCain’s policy of taxing employee health insurance benefits (a plan Obama vehemently opposed in the campaign – check the ad here), which would be a tax increase (along with the Energy Tax) on every American, but the Senate seems poised to reject the Socialist core of Obama’s plan; the “Public Option.”

Under either scenario, the Obama plan, as currently constituted, looks to be DOA once it arrives in the Senate.