Fork-Tongued in Washington

Guest Commentary be Edward Cline:

This is in the way of a correction to my “Fork-Tongued in Shanghai” (November 21), and of a footnote about our fork-tongued Senators as they sanction the groundwork of totalitarianism in this country.

This statement is corrected:

What Obama said about Sino-American relations in Shanghai is irrelevant here. China is the largest creditor of the U.S., holding about $800 billion in U.S. government securities, perhaps only three times what a health-care bill is estimated to cost over a decade.

I subsequently added a comment to the Shanghai post:

Last night (November 21) the Washington Post headlined: "Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (Nev.) this evening secured the 60 votes needed to move an $848 billion health-care reform bill to the Senate floor for debate, clearing the way for amendment deliberations to begin after the Thanksgiving recess."

So, this criminally irresponsible and morally evil legislation actually tops the $800 billion in U.S. government securities held by the Chinese government. Of course, there's no way the $800 billion debt can be paid. Now it's going to be $1.6 trillion -- and counting.

And counting, indeed. My projection of the debt doubling to $1.6 trillion was literal and quite innocent. Americans for Limited Government’s Bill Wilson issued the following statement today:

"On Saturday, the Senate voted 60-39 to proceed to the so-called ’public option’ legislation that will cost more than $2 trillion over ten years when fully implemented, ration health care away from seniors, raise the cost of premiums, drive the American people off of private health options, and bankrupt the Treasury.”

And counting, again. But, accepting my modest projection of only $1.6 trillion -- and this is exclusive of the billions in expenditure and cost to the economy incurred by whatever other socialist/fascist legislation is incubating in Congress’s collective mind, such as cap-and-trade, and exclusive of the costs of the looting, redistributionist “climate change” treaty President Obama is expected to sign next month in Copenhagen -- the logical question to ask is: How can the U.S. honor its debt to China, and also pay for socialist health care? Where is all this money supposed to come from? Is it the diminishing private, productive sector of the U.S. economy, which would become a mere servant to government debt service? For how long?

Captive, command economies and a fettered citizenry produce according to the law of diminishing returns, unless it can siphon off wealth from another economy and benefit from the blood transfusions made possible by semi-free nations. Is this, or is it not, a formula for catastrophic economic collapse? Yes. Will it be an open invitation for dictatorship to “take charge” of a crisis of the government’s making? Yes.

The question assumes a frozen, static debt figure, astronomical as it may be. Total U.S. government debt to foreign holders is nearly $3.5 trillion, with China followed by Japan, the United Kingdom and OPEC, in that order.

As for the scale of federal indebtedness in all categories, that figure also boggles the imagination. See these Federal Reserve calculations for 2005. These are Alan Greenspan figures and legacy.

Economies and human actions are not static. Economies either atrophy or grow. Men flee from atrophying economies -- when they can, when they and their wealth can remove to friendlier economic climes without being arrested and shaken down -- or they create new wealth that allows economies to grow, provided they are not barred from action by fiat law. The Emerson Electric Co. of Chicago is a case in point, cited by The Wire: Washington Insider’s Report. The ALG title for the report is “Atlas Shrugs.”

Finally, here is a breakdown of the 60-39 Senate vote on whether or not to “debate” the Senate’s version of the health care bill, also now known as the ReidCare bill, [PDF file of the whole 2074 freedom destroying pages] which incorporates all the expropriatory and extortionate provisions and language as the House Pelosi/ObamaCare bill. And then some. The names of the guilty are there for all to see.

The “debate” will not proceed on anything as honest as a principle, not even a statist, collectivist one. As happened in the House, it will be in the nature of horse-trading, arm-twisting and sugar-coated corruption instigated by malice-driven humanitarians.

Crossposted at The Dougout