The political shenanigans contorting reform of US health care show, yet again, the towering virtue of governmental self-restraint. To question state activism, of course, is to risk being branded as a reflexive government-hater. Yet it requires no such predisposition to see that legislation affecting all Americans has been corrupted. And it requires no such predisposition to want to shoo political vultures away from other crucial issues—such as energy.
On health care, Democratic lawmakers began with the lavish ambitions of President Barack Obama and have been contending with reality ever since. Inevitably, as details emerged about costs and consequences, public support for politically misshapen bills in the House and Senate—though not, perhaps, for reform itself—melted away. The House hurriedly and narrowly passed a bill on Nov. 7, and the Senate passed its more moderate version of the legislation on Dec. 24, with no votes to spare.
Appalling deals
Passage required appalling political deals. The signature ugliness so far has been exemption from incremental Medicaid costs for Nebraska, granted to win support of Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson. If it survives, the constitutionally questionable bribe will make other states demand similar treatment, opening a new funding crisis.
Synthesizing a bill that both houses of Congress can pass—and that Obama can call a triumph—won't be easy. At this writing, House and Senate leaders were ready to bypass conference reconciliation of the bills and instead to meet with White House officials, in private, to configure the Senate measure for votes on the floors of both houses. More Nebraska-type deals will be needed.
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada sees nothing in this to regret. "I don't know if there is a senator that doesn't have something in this bill that was important to them," he said in a press conference after the Senate's payoff to the Cornhusker State. Midterm elections next November will show whether voters share Reid's cynical view of political routine.
Process notwithstanding, the product falls short of Obama's grand hopes. The legislation's centerpiece public option, a turn toward the liberal dream of nationalized health care, is dilute and might not survive. Its ballyhooed savings depend on budgetary tricks. And its flirtation with federal spending for abortion has become heavy political baggage.
Health care reform deserves better than this. But no issue can receive constructive treatment in the hands of self-righteous politicians pushing extreme reform against popular doubt. Energy certainly cannot.
After it finishes with health care, Congress very likely will turn to energy, which in the current political milieu means rejecting oil, gas, and uncleansed coal in favor of uncompetitive but politically preferred alternatives. Stated reasons to impose such reform are the twin fancies of climate-change mitigation and energy independence. Unstated reasons include the chance to dispense favors to political friends hawking economically hopeless energy.
Americans already have witnessed the mess that results when Congress applies to energy the squalid machinery at work on health care reform. The Energy Policy Act of 2005—a thornbush of political favors celebrated as a flower of bipartisanship—reinstated fuel choice by government. A sorry product of that mistake, compounded by later legislation, is a futilely aggressive biofuels program dependent on cost-blind subsidies and consumption mandates.
Now on the energy agenda is a cap-and-trade system for controlling emissions of greenhouse gases—and for enriching suppliers of carbon-free energy and traders of emission credits. Democratic leaders plan to press the issue despite public reluctance strengthened by failure of international climate-change talks last month in Copenhagen, evidence that the scientific case for managing greenhouse gas emissions has been distorted by politics, a frigid Northern Hemisphere winter, and the folly of raising energy costs in a struggling economy.
Buying votes
Congressional crusaders for energy reform won't be dissuaded by a wary public, of course. They'll just buy the votes they need. And energy policy will become as grotesque as health care is turning out to be—and as costly.
On health care and energy, the government would serve America better by taking no action at all.
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