SCULLY: You know the numbers, $1.7 trillion debt, a national deficit of $11 trillion. At what point do we run out of money?
OBAMA: Well, we are out of money now. We are operating in deep deficits, not caused by any decisions we’ve made on health care so far. This is a consequence of the crisis that we’ve seen and in fact our failure to make some good decisions on health care over the last several decades.
So we’ve got a short-term problem, which is we had to spend a lot of money to salvage our financial system, we had to deal with the auto companies, a huge recession which drains tax revenue at the same time it’s putting more pressure on governments to provide unemployment insurance or make sure that food stamps are available for people who have been laid off.
So we have a short-term problem and we also have a long-term problem. The short-term problem is dwarfed by the long-term problem. And the long-term problem is Medicaid and Medicare. If we don’t reduce long-term health care inflation substantially, we can’t get control of the deficit.
The reason we are out of money isn’t so much the cost of health care (only as it relates to how much the government is spending right now as they keep adding people to the system) but the drop in revenues and outrageous spending by Congress. We are in a jobs recession, that’s why we don’t have any money. People are collecting unemployment and not earning a salary that can be taxed. Unemployment has hit record levels and he doesn’t even mention it. And he and his fellow Democrats in Congress aren’t doing a thing to elevate that. Until Congress does something to make the environment more attractive to businesses (tax breaks, etc.), there won’t be any money no matter how much he rations health care.
And what he can save from rationing health care can’t even begin to pay for the huge amounts he’s giving away to his cronies, the unions. We can’t afford the billions of dollars he’s giving to GM and yet, they’ll be getting more. He admits that we are out of money and yet they’ll be getting their $30 billion.
We are out of money and yet he’s willing to ring up trillions of dollars in debt, year after year for the foreseeable future. No amount of health care rationing can close those deficits.
Video of the interview is here.
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