Moral Budgeting

John Edwards' appearance on Meet the Press yesterday was notable for the unveiling of his health care plan (see Ezra Klein for analysis; he likes it because public plans can actually compete with the private sector in employer-funded "Health Markets"). He said it would cost between 90 and 120 billion dollars to get going, and that he'd have to raise taxes to do it.

So that was the headline all over the place: John Edwards will raise your taxes. Because that's more important than reaching a goal where every American in this country can get good quality health care. Americans have spent 40 years hearing from conservatives that low taxes are an inalienable right, and they've gotten us to a point where 47 million Americans don't have equal access to health care, and we pay for it anyway in higher premiums to cover ER visits by the uninsured.

By contrast, look at the setting of priorities in the President's budget, which increases military spending to nearly 5% of GDP, while making permanent the tax cuts responsible for massive deficits, and takes $70 billion out of Medicare and Medicaid. So at PRECISELY the time when so many are acknowledging that there is a major crisis in health care, the President wants to remove some of the last remaining ways for the poor and the elderly and the infirm to have access to it.

Additionally, the President's budget eliminates all spending for Iraq and Afghanistan by 2009, so I guess that means we're out in two years. Actually, it's a dishonest means to hide the true costs and get to an imaginary accounting of a balanced budget by 2012.

We need a more moral budgeting system, one that recognizes the finite amount of money we have to spend and then prioritizes that spending according to actual public needs. This piecemeal way of rewarding friends rather than understanding needs has got to stop.