E-Newsletter No. 60 ____ December 2018
Our country’s long and painful political season is now behind us. Reading the various opinion pieces that have been written since the election, the general consensus seems to be that the end results were “mixed”. The number of Republicans in the US Senate increased to 53, and for the US House of Representatives, there was a “blue ripple”, with the Democratic party taking control of the House next month. In many ways, this year’s elections were no different than the vast majority of other previous midterm elections, where the party of the most recently elected president typically loses seats in both the Senate and the House. It was somewhat unusual for the GOP to have a net gain of two seats in the Senate.
Our Editorial Board members have read a number of opinion pieces that seem to indicate our country’s citizens might very well be most comfortable with a divided government. Maybe this is simply one of those other checks and balances that are built into the structure of our federal government. Maybe our country’s citizens won’t be getting the benefit of an additional tax cut, but this might be OK as the annual deficit continues to creep back up towards the $1 trillion range.
And maybe our country’s citizens won’t be coerced into paying for the Socialists’ agenda that calls for a massive new single-payer healthcare program (“Medicare for All”), or a guaranteed minimum income (whether you work for that income or not), or for “free” college, etc. In many ways, stopping the advance of Socialism would be a good outcome, because more “entitlements” simply lead to more spending and an increase in the level of dependency on the government.
As we mentioned in our September and October newsletters, Socialism doesn’t work – – it never has, and it never will. If the Democratic party’s “success” in the midterm elections can be attributed to one primary issue, it was healthcare and how to address the issue of pre-existing conditions. As we have discussed elsewhere on our website, there are other ways to address health insurance issues via the Free Market and Civil Society, without the involvement of the federal government. “Medicare for All” is a horrible “solution”. Obamacare has been an abject failure, and our country should not “double-down” on Obamacare 2.0. We will re-visit health insurance (again) in our next newsletter.
The upcoming 2020 elections will represent yet another opportunity for our country’s citizens to choose between a smaller (limited) government, versus an ever-expanding, more intrusive federal government. Our Editorial Board remains committed to advancing the concept of Personal Responsibility and re-establishing the positive aspects of Civil Society (versus “the government”). And we support the Founders’ vision spelled out in the Tenth Amendment – The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
US Debt Clock – – November 1st – $65,932 per citizen / December 1st – $66,237