Leaders need to use courage to fix finances
I’d like to share my thoughts on the lessons that I learned from my recent experiences as both a member of Congress and a candidate for Congress.
With skyrocketing health care costs and the retirement of the baby boomers, our entitlement programs are headed for a painful collapse—a collapse that will bankrupt this nation and leave our children with an inferior standard of living. This reality is acknowledged by nearly all, but there is a dangerous vacuum of ideas on how to solve this crisis.
Tasked to tackle our nation’s most pressing problems, I devoted this past year to a comprehensive reform of health care, Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, the federal tax code and our budget process. This bold, innovative reform package—“A Roadmap for America’s Future”—would fulfill the mission of health and retirement security, lift the crushing burden of debt we’re handing to our children, and strengthen American jobs and competitiveness in the 21st century. It is real legislation that tackles directly the most fundamentally broken institutions in our federal government, and it does so with conviction and candor.
Pundits and pollsters told me that this would be political suicide. My colleagues in Congress told me that this Roadmap is just what we need, but that they could not publicly support something so bold. Everybody’s afraid to put a big idea out there for fear of being demagogued by the other party. Few are willing to do anything risky in an election year.
The problem with this notion is that it is an election year every other year in the House—so nothing gets done and our leaders kick the can of reform down the road for the next generation to deal with.
As the dust settles from election night, I am reminded of the words of those cautious critics. In a congressional district where the top of the ticket went to the Democratic candidate, I secured well over 60 percent of the vote.
When I held listening sessions around the district to discuss the merits of my proposal, I was not met by hostility but rather with applause and relief that finally somebody was talking about innovative reforms and actual solutions. Newspaper editorial boards around the state recognized the comprehensive and courageous nature of my reforms. They applauded me, even though some disagreed with some of the specifics of the proposal.
I challenge my colleagues to rethink political risk-taking. Clinging to the status quo and shrinking away from our most serious fiscal challenges is a recipe for electoral defeat. When a politician’s sole focus is to play it safe to keep a job, that person deserves to lose it. I hope that my colleagues get the message—our nation’s future depends on it.
Paul Ryan of Janesville is Wisconsin’s First Congressional District representative. Send mail to: Janesville Constituent Services Center, 20 S. Main St., Suite 10, Janesville, WI 53545. His phone number in Washington, D.C., is (202) 225-3031.
Nov 10, 2008 at 12:52 p.m.
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Bailout for all, not just a few: As bailouts go, here’s an idea that will help all citizens and all US industries at the same time, not just AIG and banking and not just GM and Ford:
Implement a "Medicare-for-all" system that transfers health care costs from all businesses to the public. It protects the citizenry and their children in the process! And it bails out all industry, not just a few favored companies, and it uses the same taxpayer dollars.
It’ll reduce employee costs for all companies by typically $6000 per employee per year, provide 100% health care to all Americans, reduce (for example) car prices by $1200-1500 each, save $400 billion in national healthcare costs, and make corporations more competitive with foreign product.
It will save ALL corporations money and keep jobs in the country!
How can we afford not to do this?
Medicare-for-all is simple. You get sick, you get care, and the caregiver gets paid. Simple as that. The hospital or doctor sends their bill to a different payor, the Medicare contractor. You will go to the same doctor and hospital as before, they’ll just send their bill to a different payor.
This would eliminate the 31% of healthcare costs that are currently consumed by the wasteful insurance bureaucracy. These are costs like high broker commissions, high executive salaries and bonuses and stock options, shareholder profits, cherry-picking and lemon-drop costs, and even lobbying and campaign contributions that are added to the system and passed on to the patient. Medicare’s administrative costs are just 3% of the total.
More of the same is not the answer.
And don’t you believe that we’ll turn into a Canadian system with its wait times. They spend just 10% of GDP and we spend 16.5%. We don’t have wait times now, and if the politicians are on the same system we’ll not have wait times then. And over 59% of physicians and 80% of nurses support the change.
The only industry that won’t like it is the insurance industry, and the business associations and politicians that take their money. Let’s hope they don’t win this battle and put the country further under.
Nov 10, 2008 at 12:04 p.m.
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And where is your explanation of how the bailout, which you fought for and got passed, reconciles with your "Roadmap for America"? Talk of the Roadmap is great Paul, but you didn't get any of it passed.
What you DID get passed was a $700 billion bill, which is being used to partially nationalize banks with little oversight, and being spent on companies with little chance of seeing a return to the taxpayer. According to BailoutSleuth.com, any information being released by the Treasury Dept. is being heavily redacted such that nobody knows what the money is being spent on. This came from YOUR bill. Where is the oversight that you supposedly got inserted?
The Roadmap for America cannot be used to justify your existance in Congress if it never comes to fruition, while at the same time you fight for and get passed bills which undermine our children's country, and their financial well being.
It is time to stop talking about the Roadmap, and start talking about the bailout, and how your Roadmap has to change because of that massive increase in spending.
For my part, I am glad that you turned down a role in the House leadership. You have shown the lack of clear thinking that is required for such a position. Someone with leadership potential would not have bought into the panic that Bush and the Fed were selling, that somehow if nothing was done in an irresponsibly short period of time, that we would fall into Depression.
You owe your constituents an apology.
Nick Schweitzer
http://www.nickschweitzer.net
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