Let’s say you wanted to redo your kitchen. You get your estimates from the contractors and decide that the $20,000 tab is a bit out of your reach. Now let’s say your brother-in-law kicks in a couple of grand toward the effort. How would you feel if, after you started the project, he began telling you where to put the cabinets, what colors he liked, what appliances to buy, and what dining set he preferred? You’d probably feel that his monetary contribution didn’t entitle him to that much say in how things were to be done. (You probably wouldn’t use those words either.)
Now let’s suppose you owned a bank or a car company or an insurance company, and you got into financial difficulty. You decided that you might have to file for bancruptcy protection, but the Federal Government steps in and says “there’s no need for that, instead we’ll bail you out.” So they give you a bundle of money. It all sounds great until government bureaucrats start to tell you how to run what you used to think was your own business.
That’s where we are with the Obama administration. They seem to believe that by channeling money to various private entities, they acquire the right to call the shots.
The difference is that your brother-in-law probably gave you his own money. In contrast, the government doesn’t have any money of its own and has to borrow it from the Chinese, or your children or grandchildren, or just take it from taxpayers.
If the newly passed “Health Care” bill is allowed to become law, it won’t be your brother-in-law calling the shots, it’ll be Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services and former executive director and chief lobbyist for the Kansas Trial Lawyers Association.
© Dwight Boud 2010
TheMiddleofSomewhere 