What Do Democratic Leaders Really Want To Do?

The present wrangling in Congress over "Health Care Reform" (what I call Health Care Seizure) isn't about health care at all. It's about a radical restructuring of the American economic system. Those who lead the Democratic Party desire, first and foremost, to institute European (or Venezuelan, look how well that's working there, 25% inflation rate) style economic "reforms". What that boils down to is government direction (i.e. direct control) of the means of economic production as well as a more intrusive (or pervasive) involvement in the lives of the populace, just as the socialist governments in Europe and Asia do.

Unfortunately, that system doesn't work very well as a very high unemployment rate (above 8%) is considered normal. Rates that high are virtually unknown in a healthy economy here in America. It's only during periods of economic down turn that we have unemployment rates that exceed 5-6%. Additionally, the European socialistic model also requires vastly higher tax rates in order to pay for all those services that intrusive government requires. European average tax rates exceed 40% of the total income of workers.

This burden is so heavy that the economic fabric of those successful socialist states such as Sweden, for example, are now beginning to fray as the number of unemployed/unemployable workers has risen beyond the means to provide those blanket services that they have become accustomed to. Many of those governments are now considering reducing taxes and services in order to maintain those "core" services that are considered vital. Sweden, this year, has reduced taxes for the first time in 70 years as a means to jump start their economy and encourage businesses to hire more people. Unfortunately, neither the Obama Administration, nor this Congress understand the severe consequences of that which they are attempting to achieve.

On the other hand, the (nebulous) "people" understand a shell game when they see it. Mr. Obama ran as a moderate who would be willing to work with both parties. Unfortunately, once he was elected he reverted to his political Chicago roots and moved far to the left. The last election was the greatest bait and switch ever perpetrated on the American electorate. Thus, the growing unpopularity of many of the far left proposals now being considered by Congress and this administration.

What the Democratic leadership in this country are trying to do now is to enact those sweeping changes that they have long dreamed of while they still control both the Congress and the Presidency.Eventually, an election will come along and they will be swept out of power. Their main agenda is to enact huge entitlement programs while they have the opportunity, and hope that they won't be dismantled later (to date NOT 1 entitlement program, no matter how dysfunctional has ever been repealed). After all, Medicare, which has exceeded it's funding mandate more than 10x's it's predicted cost is still with us, despite those "triggers" that were emplaced.

UPDATE: This post started out as a response (#4) on http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/is-health-care-reform-popular-the-democrats-and-the-polls-disagree/ and then mutated into this post...some interesting comments there