{"id":3923,"date":"2010-02-23T10:20:19","date_gmt":"2010-02-23T15:20:19","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/?p=3923"},"modified":"2010-02-23T10:20:19","modified_gmt":"2010-02-23T15:20:19","slug":"slow-motion-government","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/3923\/slow-motion-government\/","title":{"rendered":"Slow-Motion Government"},"content":{"rendered":"

In the President\u2019s shiny new once-over-lightly-with-a-higher-price-tag health care proposal<\/a> (too vaguely written, it seems, for the CBO to score the economic impact), parts of it are implemented all the way to 2018, when the excise tax on expensive health care plans kicks in (and kicks anyone who has one in the groin).\u00a0<\/p>\n

Many people who believe they don\u2019t have one of those \u201cCadillac\u201d plans now are likely to find that they do have one by 2018.<\/p>\n

Also in the proposal, the fines for those incorrigible scoff-laws who stubbornly refuse to yield to the so-called \u201cindividual mandate\u201d start small and progressively increase by year.<\/p>\n

Call that slo-mo government, which has the distinct and not-to-be-overlooked advantage that all who impose it will likely have gone on to greater or lesser rewards by the time the populace actually catches on.<\/p>\n

As David Brooks points out in his column<\/a> this morning, \u201cThe odds are high that the excise tax will never actually happen.\u201d\u00a0 But that excise tax (along with other tricks in the bill) is what allows the whole house of cards to be nominally (and nominally only if you are deceiver or deceived) \u201cdeficit neutral.\u201d\u00a0 We thus face punitive taxation or fiscal disaster.<\/p>\n

In a different slo-mo government development, EPA\u00a0Administrator Lisa Jackson has informed some unruly coal-state Senators (all Democrats) that they shouldn\u2019t get all worried about that EPA plan to regulate greenhouse gases.\u00a0 It will now be \u201cphased in\u201d beginning in 2011, so as not to upset the fragile economy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Hit the buzz saw with your overreaching, did you, lady?\u00a0 By 2011, the science on which the EPA determinations are being made will be so discredited that the EPA will have to cop an insanity defense.<\/p>\n

There are good and rational reasons for phased-in government projects (such as you don\u2019t build the bridge until you\u2019ve got the road to it, even if it\u2019s going nowhere), but the two aforementioned are not among those.\u00a0 They are examples of government folly, the former predicted, the latter now being acknowledged.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, where are the fast forward projects to get us out of our economic mess?\u00a0 You know, some stuff the people actually want the government to do.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the President\u2019s shiny new once-over-lightly-with-a-higher-price-tag health care proposal (too vaguely written, it seems, for the CBO to score the economic impact), parts of it are implemented all the way to 2018, when the excise tax on expensive health care plans kicks in (and kicks anyone who has one in the groin).\u00a0 Many people who […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[608,887,12,311,71],"class_list":["post-3923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts","tag-epa","tag-greenhouse-gases","tag-health-care","tag-individual-mandate","tag-taxes"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3923"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3927,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3923\/revisions\/3927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cfif.org\/v\/freedom_line_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}