Ithaca area’s Republican congressman Tom Reed published an op-ed in the Cornell Daily Sun Thursday night denouncing Cornell’s $350 student health fee.
Reed writes:
“By fining students who make the rational decision to remain on their parent’s health coverage or purchase it independently, students are just being set further back. Our bright minds do not need any more burdens. They need opportunity.
Students who sought hope and change are now paying the high price of politics as usual. This is not a cost they should have to face.
They are already being forced to have insurance, why must they pay even more for a catastrophe of social policy thrust on them by their university? This is double jeopardy and frankly, it is simply not fair.”
Reed goes on to challenge “high-paid professors, administrators and contributors who support the idea of universal healthcare to pick up this tab.”
Fantastic idea. Too bad they will have a million-and-one excuses.
Naturally, students erupted in disbelief and outrage at Reed’s op-ed, saying his opposition is misguided or “for the wrong reasons.” Wrong reasons? So now there are right and wrong reasons to oppose the fee?
Well, I guess it is only natural that liberal and progressive students lash out when their hypocrisy is exposed, since pointing out a person’s hypocrisy makes that person extremely uncomfortable.
The one area Reed failed to address is the fact that the fee is not just a redistribution of wealth, it’s an administrative bailout. Due to poor financial planning and decision-making, Gannet is now $4 million in debt, and students are making the interest payments on behalf of the University.
Perhaps Reed and his staff were unaware, in which case they ought to have conducted a little more research. As the Review originally reported, “$150 will go to ‘expansion of health services,’ $130 will go to paying for the increased staffing necessary to provide these services, and $70 will go to paying back a 2-year loan taken out specifically to pay for Gannett’s increased staff.”
At least Reed is demonstrating how conservatives can take the lead against corrupt policies whereby bureaucratic organizations unfairly tax the innocent in order to bail them out time and time again.
Now we’re all waiting on Martha Robertson’s two cents on the health fee.
Tom Reed. The master of pandering.He sent out literature saying he would never cut Social Security. His family received Social Security when he was growing up. The first bill he sent to Congress to cut SSI Disability payments for today’s needy. He lied about his opponent and her stand on the SAFE Act. And it worked. He points out, rightly, that students can now be covered on their parent’s policy, thanks to the ACA. (oops, he forgets to mention that part). I am not sure why he would want to interfere with the internal affairs of a university?
The bottom line for libertarians and conservatives is simple. Vote with your feet. Let the market decide. If the $350 fee is too onerous, then students can CHOOSE to go to another college. If too many Cornell students leave, the university will change it’s policy. Isn’t that the mantra of the libertarian/conservative movement.
Until it affects them . Seems pretty simple. If students don’t like the new fee, transfer.
I guess the funniest part of Reed’s quote is when he says this is “double jeopardy”. He is supposed too be a lawyer. “Double Jeopardy” is a specific legal concept that refers to not being tried for the same crime twice. Nothing to do with paying college fees.
I’m pretty sure he didn’t mean “double jeopardy” in a specific legal sense.
This isn’t pandering. He’s applying conservative principles to a situation at Cornell. Pandering is when you compromise on principles to win favor, votes, etc.
I agree with your “vote with your feet” argument.
A rational description of the welfare program knows as SSDI:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardfinger/2012/12/07/fha-will-cost-taxpayers-150-billion/
If you dislike Forbes, then please review what NPR had to say:
http://apps.npr.org/unfit-for-work/
Recommending cutting the SSDI program, or any entitlement, will make a congressman unpopular. But America needs to have a serious conversation about how it spends it revenue. Whether it’s supporting able-bodied but unemployed Americans, or Wall Street fat-cats, redistribution is wrong. Not everybody receiving SSDI is “needy”.
David. I think you linked the wrong Forbes article. It talks about the FHA, not SSDI ? I am not opposed to cutting SSDI IF we are cutting people who are not truly disabled. An across the board cut is not the way to do it. Anyone getting SSDI should be vetted to make sure they qualify. (As you probably already know 2/3 of applicants are denied help. After appeals, about 1/3 end up being disqualified). In today’s computer age there are probably many jobs that a person previously disqualified might be able to do. Instead of arbitrarily cutting money for people who need it, why establish a better system to weed out the deadbeats?
In order to get SS Disability you had to have paid into the program for at least 40 quarters (10 years). These are people who worked, paid, and then met a medical problem. (Like my neighbor who had his leg amputated).
Reed and others like him are, in fact quite popular. They provide simplistic answers to complex issues. People like that. They want slogans (Compassionate Conservatives,Yes We Can, Remember the Maine) . But simple answers to complex problems do not work. Blindly cutting SSDI hurts people. Reed, whose family lived on SS should understand that. But, I guess he forgot how he was helped by others.
My guess is that most of the problem comes from dishonest doctors and lawyers. Just as most food stamp fraud comes from dishonest grocery store owners. The only way to stop that is to have more inspectors. But that means big government.
I lost you at the unsubstantiated claim / generalization about liberals and progressives being hypocrites.
A loss I will surely regret forever.
We have an interesting brand of conservatives in this generation.. Tom Reed and his family survive on SSI and he wants to cut it for others. Ted Cruz makes his life’s work trying to destroy the evil Obamacare and as soon as he needs it he signs up. No hypocrites in that philosophy. LOL
President Obama promised the most transparent administration ever. Turns out that it’s the most opaque that I’ve seen in my lifetime. Undoubtedly Obamapologists will vehemently disagree. That’s politics.
Regretfully, politicians and hypocrisy go hand-in-hand, regardless of which side of the aisle they sit. I’m sure that for every example of a democrat elected office-holder who has pandered, prevaricated, and did not do as he/she said, there is a GOP elected office-holder who has done the same. Neither side can rightfully claim superiority in this regard. This is not good for America, but based upon history, unlikely to improve.
JU, here is the correct link for the article in Forbes on SSDI that I mangled the other day:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardfinger/2013/01/14/fraud-and-disability-equal-a-multibillion-dollar-balck-hole-for-taxpayers/
David. I found the editorial and read it. Is there fraud in SSDI? Yes. Does the author suggest a solution ? No. I have a solution. Increase funding for the SSA (it has been cut in recent years resulting in fewer employees). This means more people involved in checking up on fraud. As with the IRS we know that more agents means less fraud and more dollars going into the Treasury. More police..fewer crimes. It is money well spent IF you want to weed out the crooks.
What the author does not address is any solution to the issue of fraud. (Plus, he refers to Americans who have worked for a living and now need some help as “parasites”.) These are people who HAVE been working and are no longer able to. Since I no longer work and am collecting SS I guess I would also fall into that category. So be it.
I don’t disagree that we need to eliminate fraud from these social welfare programs. But I wonder why the GOP (and many Dems as well) never seem to call for the elimination of welfare programs for corporations? That is where the real budget busting waste and fraud is.
Here is a link you might find interesting. It is a study by the Cato Institute (which can hardly be considered “liberal” I would assume.) It summarizes a report on corporate welfare, which dwarfs social spending. Also has a link in the article to the lengthy study itself.
http://www.cato.org/publications/policy-analysis/corporate-welfare-federal-budget
I also disagree with corporate subsidies. They pervert the free market. However I also disagree with both bigger government and more bureaucrats. The result of this is usually an even bigger government and even more bureaucrats.
Bigger government is not necessarily bad. Or even true. More IRS agents means more revenue collected (We lose between 350 and 500 billion per year in tax evasion.) The projected budget deficit for 2016 is about 475 billion. The lowest since the recession. Wouldn’t it make sense to add agents (we only have about 20,000 for a population of 300,000,000) to investigate and root out fraud? If we collected every legal tax dollar we would have NO DEFICIT. None ! As a practical matter it makes sense to me to collect all taxes.
I also don’t buy the “big government” argument because the data does not support it. Under Reagan in his last years in office we had about 3,000,000 employees in the executive branch carrying out the functions of the various departments. The number declined under Clinton to 2.7 million and has been stable ever since, through both the Bush and Obama terms. About 2.7 million people out of 300 million Americans.
The problem today, of course, is that we have fewer employees than 1988 but a much larger population. (250 million in 1988, about 315 million today) So the size of government has actually been decreasing since Reagan left off. And less than 1% of the population is employed by the federal executive branch. That is why I say the “big government is the problem” idea is not valid.
Some of the websites I used for data collection.
http://www.opm.gov/policy-data-oversight/data-analysis-documentation/federal-employment-reports/historical-tables/total-government-employment-since-1962/
http://www.multpl.com/united-states-population/table
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_evasion_in_the_United_States
“The bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.”
― Oscar Wilde
And with that, I shall leave this blog post thread.