DESIGN, NOT EVOLUTION:

How Alternatives to the Welfare State Evolve (Grover Norquist, April/May 200 4, The Guerilla War)

On December 8, 2003, the White House and Tom DeLay twisted arms to pass an expansion of Medicare that is now estimated to cost $534 billion over the next decade. Then in his State of the Union Speech on January 20, President Bush called for reforming Social Security by giving younger Americans the option of investing part of their Social Security taxes in personal savings accounts. And on January 22, Congress finally passed a spending bill that included 1,700 tuition vouchers for low- income students in Washington D.C.

Here were three very different approaches to the three largest government entitlements: retirement income, health care, and education.

Conservatives were elated that the President called for putting America on the path toward Social Security investment accounts. That could turn the greatest experiment in statism in American history (Social Security eats up 20 percent of the federal budget) into an engine that dramatically expands the nation’s investor class to include 100 percent of our citizens. Conservatives were distraught that the administration and Congress chose to dramatically expand Medicare spending, nationalizing a large portion of the provision of prescription drugs. And conservatives were delighted that amidst a large increase in government education spending, a small experiment in school choice for parents was enacted.

Of course, conservatives are nitwits, so don't recognize that the three approaches are identical, the one difference being that the reform the administration has been most open about is therefore the one that has failed. While the Medicare bill gave us HSA's and NCLB created a national public school voucher, the private social security accounts are dead in the water until the GOP has 60 seats in the Senate.

Posted by Orrin Judd at April 1, 2004 3:31 PM