By Steve Levy
For the first time, mainly because of the shutdown, many Americans found out that, indeed, Obamacare was not working.
President Barack Obama sold it on the lie that you can keep your doctor and that it would lower average premiums by $2,500 a year. Instead, annual premiums increased from $13,000 to about $25,000.
It was also exposed that Congress had given a one-time massive infusion of extra Obamacare subsidies during the pandemic. The Democrats themselves wrote in the bill that the extra one-shot funding would expire in five years, which is now.
But now they are making the case that these are the original Obamacare subsidies, and that not extending them would result in people dying.
Well, why weren’t they dying five years ago before the pandemic without these extra subsidies?
It was expected that, during World War II, spending would skyrocket. We were facing an existential threat and people accepted that it was necessary. But when the war ended, that unsustainable spending dropped precipitously back to normal levels.
On the other hand, when it came to the pandemic, the “temporary” emergency funding levels never retreated.
The $4.5 trillion budget in 2019 quickly jumped to $7 trillion, and it has stayed there ever since as the new normal.
Most anyone with an ounce of fiscal responsibility would agree that level would have to come down to more realistic, pre-pandemic levels, but not the Democrats or their allies in the media.
The Democrats have also made the continuation of food stamps, otherwise known as SNAP, a centerpiece of their shutdown. They’re claiming that, while the shutdown continues, emergency reserves should be used. They launched two lawsuits seeking to tap those funds, which we have no problem with.
But this too has exposed the fact that the number of Americans on the food stamp program has skyrocketed since the Obama administration. The number before Obama was traditionally about 9%. It’s now about 12%. That’s an additional 14 million more people on the dole.
The explosion of federal spending on food stamps and Medicaid helped the deficit to soar to $38 trillion, while $2 trillion deficits are becoming a regularly anticipated hole.
Certainly, we want to see the truly needy continue to get funding during a shutdown, but when members of both sides of the aisle start sitting down to negotiate on Obamacare subsidies, they should also delve into how these programs got so out of control.
Democrat Bill Clinton prided himself on “ending welfare as we know it” and requiring able-bodied people receiving benefits to work. Workfare was a major success. It actually led to a reduction in poverty due to its incentives and its work requirement.
But Obama and Biden eviscerated those work requirements. The study entitled “The Great Tansfer-mation” shows that government dependency has been growing larger and larger. The question is: Why?
One of the reasons is that the Democratic Party maintains a good chunk of its votes and power base by keeping people dependent on these government programs. It’s one of the reasons Democrats were so encouraging of over ten million illegal aliens crossing the border and becoming eligible for food, housing and medical assistance. Once you’re getting money from the government, you’re going to support those candidates who keep the money flowing and actually promise you even more.
That may be good in the short term for that political party, but such dependency is crippling long-term for the country that wants to promote innovation, higher wages, and more plentiful jobs. It promotes stagnation and the morphing into a welfare state like we see in Western European nations.
The things that made us exceptional, including incentivizing work, productivity and upward mobility, may become a thing of the past if we continue down this path.
So let’s fix the abuses in SNAP and Obamacare to help ensure we care for those in need without breaking the bank.