Saturday, December 19, 2009

The single largest social policy advance since the Great Society

I know that Ezra Klein is on the black list for a while now, but i find him to be a sensible, knowledgeable guy, and i tend to agree with him more often than not. I think he put things in the right perspective today:

This is a good bill. Not a great bill, but a good bill. Imagine telling a Democrat in the days after the 2004 election that the 2006 election would end Republican control of Congress, the 2008 election would return a Democrat to the White House, and by the 2010 election, Democrats would have passed a bill extending health-care coverage to 94 percent of Americans, securing trillions of dollars in subsidies for low-income Americans (the bill's $900 billion cost is calculated over 10 years, but the subsidies continue indefinitely into the future), and imposing a raft of new regulations on private insurers. It is, without doubt or competition, the single largest social policy advance since the Great Society.

Not bad, huh?



No, not bad at all. Time to embrace the progress and work on improving this thing over time.

4 comments:

  1. I think Ezra Klein is sensible. And BWD, you're right. As Dave Edmunds sang, "From small things mama, big things one day come." This bill is a good start -- it's not the be-all and end-all -- and we can improve it over time.

    But you can't improve something that doesn't exist.

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  2. "You can't improve something that doesn't exist." This is a very good point, Ivy. It is also reflected in Sen. Tom Harkin's "starter home" analogy.

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  3. As I've said in other posts elsewhere, it is progressive to make progress. It is not progressive to scream (and falsely place blame) because you didn't get 100% of what you want when you wanted it.

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