Monday, April 26, 2010

One bad piece of legislation, followed by another?

I'm all for health care reform, and I wanted to get that said up front. But the more I learn about the current attempt, the more I think it is a bad piece of legislation and will have negative consequences. This happens quite often with government programs. Even the government's Medicaid office agrees. You can read about this here at MSNBC, or here at Fox.

My first experience with governmental aid programs was back in the late 1980s. Our next-door nieghbors were having financial problems, as well as martial problems. They weren't bad people, just having a problem getting their act together. The husband moved out and the wife and two kids whet on whatever welfare was called at the time -- I think it was a combination of programs.

As they worked on their problems, the husband moved back in. Then the government swooped in because they had heard or suspected (from where I do not know) that the husband was back in the house. If there were to continue receiving aid, the husband could not live there. I will now admit I lied to the agency worker, that the husband only visited, but wasn't staying there. It did not seem right to split a family up like this...but we know this has been happening for decades.

Now we face financial "reform." I'm no expert on the mattter, but I'm nervous about the outcome. More than 1,000 pages long, the new bill has to be filled with pork and handouts for special interests. I suspect it will do more damage than good.

But don't take my word. Read John Mauldin's take on it in his article First, Let's Kill the Angels and decide for yourself. A short excerpt:
When you draft a 1,300-page "financial reform" bill, various special interests get language tucked into the bill to help their agendas. However, the unintended consequences can be devastating. And the financial reform bill has more than a few such items...a new problem has surfaced that has major implications for the US economy and our ability to grow it. For all intents and purposes, the bill will utterly devastate angel investing in the US. And as we will see, that is not hyperbole. For a Congress and administration that purports to be all about jobs, this section of the bill makes less than no sense. It is a job and innovation killer of the first order.
There's more, and you should read it.

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