"According to The Heritage Foundation's 2010 Index of Dependence on Government, Medicare, Medicaid and the [Children's Health Insurance Program] enrolled approximately 98.2 million individuals in 2009. That's almost a third of the population."
Spending is double what it was a decade ago, and Obamacare hasn't even kicked in.
As Feulner put it, "To say that such a trajectory is unsustainable is putting it mildly."
Look at what's happened to West Virginia, which is fairly typical of the country.
About half the children born in West Virginia are born on Medicaid.
Kids are turning down 12 years of free education because they don't see any need to get it.
After all, they'll be taken care of anyway. Why work?
What's the future for a society like that?
America wasn't always this way, and if the country is to survive, it can't continue to be.
As Heritage points out in its Index of Dependence, "the country may be rapidly approaching a point where one half of 'taxpayers' do not pay taxes, while receiving generous federal benefits."
Mathematically, that won't work. We can't stay on this path. We really can't.
Republican Senate candidate John Raese says the nation is in "an industrial coma."
No wonder. We have the highest corporate income tax in the developed world.
Economists tell us that repeated increases in the minimum wage - another "gift" from Democrats - actually keep unemployment high.
When the price of labor gets too high, employers don't hire.
Well, duh.
But the beauty of the American system is that when the people realize they have made a mistake - encouraging dependence instead of personal responsibility was one - they can change policies and solve their problems.
Voters need to do that now.
Capitalism has raised more people out of poverty than any system, anywhere, in the history of mankind.
Government programs can't touch it for relief of misery.
Americans need to get back to letting it work.
Maurice is editorial page editor of the Daily Mail. She may be reached at 3348-4802 or ha...@dailymail.com.
What Americans needed was a lot
more growth, not
more government
IN April 1994, Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va., told an Associated Press gathering of West Virginia editors and reporters:
"We're going to push through health care reform, regardless of the views of the American people."
In 2008, just before the election, Rockefeller said fellow Democrat Barack Obama was "the president I've been waiting for all my life."
So here we are, in 2010, and the Democratic majorities in the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives have passed into law a 2,309-page bill giving the federal government control over health care in the United States. That's about 18 percent of the U.S. economy.
Democrats have "given" Americans another entitlement program - subsidized health insurance. Taxpayers will do the subsidizing.
Now liberal Democrats seek voters' OK to proceed with the rest of their agenda.
Next: Control of Americans' energy use.
Early versions of the plan included government checks for those Americans who can't pay their electric bills once this "reform" is complete.
But many voters have had enough. They think the nation is on the wrong track.
It has been for a long time.
The Democratic Party has been encouraging dependence on the federal government for decades.
But manifestly, Great Society programs have not produced a great society.
They have instead produced an increasingly dependent one, its strength sapped by a growing entitlement mentality.
We have allowed government to grow itself - and strangle the private sector.
Federal taxpayers now subsidize rent, mortgages, health care, heating bills, food at home, food at school, college educations, agriculture, car companies - you name it.
Federal housing assistance now costs $52 billion a year.
Taxpayers even provide free cell phones for the poor.
And we don't have the money to pay for it all.
Americans now stagger under the combined pressures of a financial crash, 10 percent unemployment and a $13.2 trillion national debt.
Ed Feulner, president of the conservative Heritage Foundation, illuminated the growth just of taxpayer-subsidized health care in a recent column:
"According to The Heritage Foundation's 2010 Index of Dependence on Government, Medicare, Medicaid and the [Children's Health Insurance Program] enrolled approximately 98.2 million individuals in 2009. That's almost a third of the population."
Spending is double what it was a decade ago, and Obamacare hasn't even kicked in.
As Feulner put it, "To say that such a trajectory is unsustainable is putting it mildly."
Look at what's happened to West Virginia, which is fairly typical of the country.
About half the children born in West Virginia are born on Medicaid.
Kids are turning down 12 years of free education because they don't see any need to get it.
After all, they'll be taken care of anyway. Why work?
What's the future for a society like that?
America wasn't always this way, and if the country is to survive, it can't continue to be.
As Heritage points out in its Index of Dependence, "the country may be rapidly approaching a point where one half of 'taxpayers' do not pay taxes, while receiving generous federal benefits."
Mathematically, that won't work. We can't stay on this path. We really can't.
Republican Senate candidate John Raese says the nation is in "an industrial coma."
No wonder. We have the highest corporate income tax in the developed world.
Economists tell us that repeated increases in the minimum wage - another "gift" from Democrats - actually keep unemployment high.
When the price of labor gets too high, employers don't hire.
Well, duh.
But the beauty of the American system is that when the people realize they have made a mistake - encouraging dependence instead of personal responsibility was one - they can change policies and solve their problems.
Voters need to do that now.
Capitalism has raised more people out of poverty than any system, anywhere, in the history of mankind.
Government programs can't touch it for relief of misery.
Americans need to get back to letting it work.
Maurice is editorial page editor of the Daily Mail. She may be reached at 3348-4802 or ha...@dailymail.com.
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