Well, last week was a bad one for Democrats. Heck, it was a really bad week for Americans. Several times I had targeted what to say about the latest foofarah only to have it change before I was able to finish writing.

With an impending deal on the insane Bush tax cuts coming today, I decided to wait and see if the prediction of a ‘compromise’ would be true. And it was. And so I have spent most of the day in a bit of a fit.

What started with such hope, with such a charge of energy seems to have withered on the vine. It will be next to impossible to reverse this trend in the next year and a half if there were a desire to do so. The crown jewel of the first two years of the Obama administration, the health insurance reform legislation, must withstand 3 years of Republican bombardment before the majority of that legislation is put into effect. That is plenty of time for concessions that will strip it of any effectiveness.

I apologize for such a pessimistic tone.  What especially bothers me is the lost opportunities that extending these tax cuts represents. Four Trillion is a lot of money. If we were going to burn it anyway, then pumping it into the economy to build infrastructure for renewable energy or rebuilding the electric grid would have been good places to start. Wouldn’t $4 trillion give everyone in the US healthcare for free for a few years? Or surely there is some basic research that needs funding? Often that basic research is what leads to the breakthroughs that lead to huge new products.

Our current private health insurance situation is a huge lost opportunity cost. The US pays as much as $700 billion in extra costs per year over the cost of single payer. Think of the schools that could build, the university programs and research that could fund. Beyond that, if every American did not have to stay at a job to receive health care the number of new small businesses would explode.

One of the hallmarks of American industry used to be the efficiency with which we used our dollars. That is a long gone concept. Now the hall mark of American industry is how they can wangle a transfer of wealth from the poor and middle class using our governmental processes. And the biggest fallout will be 30 years down the road when America can no longer compete in various markets and the standard of living has fallen to that of a third world country for the majority of our citizens.

The money for these cuts come from loans from China and Japan. So add this to our lost opportunity costs. Not to mention the foreign policy implications. Extending the Bush tax cuts is an all-around horrible decision.
 
Alan Grayson listed some of the winners with this policy in a speech on the floor last week. Rush Limbaugh scores an extra $2 million/year; Glenn Beck nets a cool $1.7 mil; the poor man Sean Hannity only saves a million; and the goddess Sarah Palin should save @$850,000. That should make us poor folk feel better.

If you haven't seen it yet, Alan Grayson has set up a web page for you to send your ideas and advice to Democratic leaders.