Irresponsible

There does appear to be one war that President Obama is perfectly willing to fight—no diplomacy, no soft rhetoric, no measured attempt to understand the “other.” It’s a war that fits nicely with the President’s overarching ideology, and a war that dovetails wonderfully with the core beliefs of his most rabid supporters. It’s a war that is backed by no less than Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with adherents that span a broad spectrum of our “leadership”—people like Charlie Rangel, Chairman of Ways and Means and Harry Reid of the Senate. And of course, like all politically correct wars, it’s bloodless.

If you watched the President’s news conference last night, I suspect you know which war I’m talking about—it’s class war and unlike any President before him, it appears that President Obama is openly engaged.

It seems that his weak solution for funding irresponsibly large and costly health care legislation is to tax the “rich.”

Bonnie Erbe is progressive columnist who writes for US News and World Report, and is certainly no enemy of Barack Obama and his administration. Yet, she writes:

Perhaps Democrats are developing some sensitivity on their "tax the rich" theme. I can't see NOT taxing the rich. It's just that I disagree with the Democrats' definition of rich. The only way to fairly assess all Americans for the ridiculously expensive programs Democrats are pushing is to enact a flat income tax. Then upper-income persons necessarily pay more in taxes, as 10 percent of $100,000 is a lot more than 10 percent of $20,000. But that'll never happen, so tax-hungry Democrats are going the route of class wars.

It’s shocking to read Erbe suggest a flat tax, but maybe it’s a more liberal idea than some realize. With a flat tax, everyone truly does pay his fair share and as a consequence, everyone contributes to pay for national health care reform. With current legislative proposals, one percent of taxpayers will carry the burden for the other 99 percent. That is unhealthy for any democracy.

But President Obama and his Speaker are undaunted. Rather than focusing on cost savings before increasing entitlements, some in the Congress and almost everyone in the executive branch insist on rushing ahead. I sometimes wonder if they truly understand the complexity of the problem and the gargantuan difficulty of crafting an effective solution.

It’s as if Boeing Aircraft designed a new airplane seating two thousand people, but decided that a six-month engineering effort was all that was required and no prototyping or testing was necessary. “Load the plane up and let’s fly her. After all, we need to go to market with this sucker.” Most observers would call that line of thinking irresponsible.

The health care legislation that the President is suggesting will carry 300 million people, and he is, in essence, suggesting “Load it up and let’s fly her.” No real engineering, no prototyping, no testing, no time for detailed analysis of consequences.

Irresponsible.