At 1 AM ET last night, the Senate voted 60-40 to end debate on a healthcare bill, setting up a vote to pass the bill on Christmas Eve. The bill itself has become extremely unpopular with the public (a recent CNN poll released today showed 56% of people say they oppose it while only 42% support it), but that won't stop the Democrats from forcing it through in the middle of night. The whole process has been laughable and completely at odds with President Obama's promise of a "new era of transparency" that he promised during his campaign. The 2000+ page bill was written by 10 hand picked democrats behind closed doors, and the bill wasn't released to the public, or in that case the other Senators who had to vote on it, until just a few hours before the vote for cloture was invoked.
In short, this bill sucks, and I think that even the Democrats realize it. The major goal of the legislation was to provide every American with health insurance and do it without breaking the bank. Guess what? Neither goal will be accomplished under the Senate bill. First, although the legislation includes a new mandate that requires individuals to buy health insurance or face a stiff fine, even the Congressional Budget Office estimates that over 25 million Americans will fail to be covered even after the bill. Although Democrats were able to include several provisions that limited the insurance companies from denying coverage based on preexisting conditions and the such, they obviously have to be disappointed they had to abandon the public option, which many saw as a stepping stone to a single payer system.
But regardless of all that, there is one reason I find this bill reprehensible: Obama and the Democrats are STRAIGHT UP LYING about how much this bill will cost both in the short and long term. They are claiming that this bill is fiscally responsible based on the estimates made by the Congressional Budget Office. According to the CBO, the bill will only "cost" $781 billion over the next decade and will actually reduce the deficit by $132 billion over that time period. Really? Really? Does anyone actually believe that this bill is going to save money? Can you say that with a straight face? It simply does not make sense. They are claiming the quality will increase and costs will be lower. That's right! Democrats have finally figured out what most people couldn't: how to defy the laws of economics and make a system even better while making it cheaper in the process! Do you know why the CBO thinks this bill is going to save money? Because the tax increases to pay for the bill are going to start immediately, but over 98% of the costs do not start to accrue until 2014. So basically the CBO estimate uses 10 years of tax increases and only 5 years of entitlement benefits and then claims that it is a true estimate of the cost of the bill. This is the same type of accounting that has given us a Social Security/Medicare system that is set to bankrupt the country. Currently those programs have a total unfunded liability of over $50 trillion. That's trillion with a t. So what's the best way to address this coming financial crisis? Expand the program to include millions more. The whole entitlement state is nothing more than a Berni Madoff ponzi scheme on steroids, and if the accounting used by the CBO were used by a private company, the officers and accounts would be in jail for fraud (literally they would be).
Unfortunately, this health care bill isn't even the most destructive bill being considered by the Congress. The end of the world that is global warming must be stopped, and if we do not act... well, most people really aren't talking about what actually will happen if global warming continues. We are told horror stories about melting glaciers and rising sea levels, but I am not sold that any of these things will cause costs that are higher than those that would be imposed by cap and trade legislation. First, none of these supposed problems are going to occur in the near future or quickly. It will be a slow process and no one can predict exactly what is going to happen. By the time we start seeing any of these problems, we will be much more advanced as a society. Even under the most grave of predictions, it is impossible for anyone to say with accuracy what its effects on the human population will be. That is because humans are an unbelievably adaptable creature. We are the only mammal that can be found everywhere from North of the Arctic circle to the tropics around the equator. We will be ok.
Let's say the doomsdayers like Al Gore are correct. If we do nothing the Earth will warm two degrees over the next century. So what would be the actual effect on the human population? First, we will have advanced tremendously as a society by the time 2100 roles along. Technology has increased at an exponential rate since the advent of capitalism in the mid-sixteenth century. One hundred years ago, Howard Taft assumed the presidency, Einar Dessau made the first short-wave radio broadcast, and the first flight across the English Channel was completed. Today, instead of relying on radio we have the internet, so every individual has access to unlimited information, and we have planes that can fly without human pilots. Just imagine what life will be like one hundred years from now. I have full confidence that humans will adapt to a warmer climate, especially one that occurs slowly over decades. And do you know what the catalyst for change will be? Not a command and control economic push as desired by Obama and the other socialists, but the price mechanism. As global warming begins to impose actual costs in our society, the prices of the goods and services that are adversely affected by the climate will rise, encouraging innovation and alternative investments. Things like rising sea levels will be addressed by technological innovation. Consider this fact: 27% of the area and over 60% of the population of the Netherlands is below sea level. Using crude dikes and polders, the dutch have been able to keep the sea from destroying their homeland for hundreds of years. Imagine the innovation that would ensue if billions people faced a threat from a rising sea level, creating a large market in protecting against flooding.
And what about the positive effects of global warming? If the Earth does warm that will mean that more Northern regions will experience a longer growing season, allowing for the areas to grow crops that could traditionally only be grown in warmer climates. Critics say that the rise in global temperatures will lead to an increase in petulance and disease. Well why don't we address these problems directly rather than some indirect and causally suspect basis like global warming. If malaria will increase in tropical regions, we should invest in more mosquito nets, safe indoor DDT sprays and more education. No one can argue that stopping global warming would help protect poor populations from increased occurrence of disease more than this direct aid would. Additionally, the global warming alarmists insist that natural disasters will increase in both frequency and intensity. Even if this is true, which no once can actually prove, they are simply speculating, I think we will soon have the technology to address such concerns. Both researchers in the U.S. and especially in China are currently pursuing technology to control the weather. It sounds like science fiction, but so did a device that allowed you to not only to speak to anyone else on the globe from practically anywhere but also allows you look up any fact with the push of a button, to an observer 100 years or even 25 years ago (For those unsure, that last poorly worded sentence was my attempt to describe the iphone). For a few ideas about weather manipulation and where the technology is headed, check out this wikipedia article on weather control. Again, if the problem from increased storms is nearly as large a problem as the alarmists expect, one would expect research in this area to skyrocket.
Lastly, I just want to comment quickly on the EPA's recent "endangerment finding" that carbon dioxide is a "dangerous pollutant" and can be regulated accordingly under the clean air act. In order to make such a finding, they had to show that carbon dioxide threatens the public health and welfare. They based this finding on the "scientific consensus" that global warming will hurt "air quality," increase air born, climate-sensitive diseases, and increase the frequency and severity of natural disasters. Regardless of the fact that the clean air act was designed in 1970 to regulate pollutants like Sulfur dioxide that cause direct harms to human health through inhalation and the like, the fact that they found that emissions of greenhouse gases caused not only global warming but also the harms associated with it is disturbing. Traditionally, causation is a legal concept that has two parts: cause-in-fact and proximate causation. In order for a prior event to be considered a cause, both of these tests must be satisfied. For something to be a cause-in-fact, the second event would not have occurred but for the occurrence of the first. For something to be a proximate cause, an act from which an injury results as a natural, direct, uninterrupted consequence and without which the injury would not have occurred. Regardless, I see no way that someone can say that emitting carbon dioxide will cause the adverse effects of global warming. There are so many other contributing factors that contribute to these events other than U.S. emissions (the only emissions the EPA is allowed to consider in their endangerment finding) that it is impossible to say that they will not occur anyway even if the U.S. stopped emitting carbon dioxide immediately. Complex weather patterns, international emissions, and shirts in solar weather patterns are all potential intermediary actors that affect the potential harm. In order to be considered a cause in the legal sense, the event must have a direct and foreseeable impact on a harm that will not occur independently if the event is removed. Although they are strong arguments that warming is being caused by increased carbon levels, that link is too tenuous to be a legal cause under the clean air act, and any government intervention must derive its authority from new legislation, not some bullshit and speculative argument that misapplies a law that was designed to regulate pollutants that actually do directly hurt individuals because of things like toxicity.
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