Arnold Kling reaffirms his membership in the Anti-Universal Coverage Club.

Amid the current debate over expanding the State Children’s Health Insurance Program — as well as every other attempt to expand federal control over America’s health care sector — opponents accuse proponents of incrementally moving America toward a government-run system. The strategy seems to be:

First, we let government programs, the tax code, and special-interest-driven regulation slowly kill private markets. Second, we have government take over each area as it collapses: first health care for the elderly, then the poor, then the kids, then the near-elderly. Lather, rinse, and repeat until government controls it all.

Left-wing politicians pursue this strategy because they know American voters won’t swallow socialized medicine all at once. (Just look at what happened to the Clinton health plan.) And they don’t speak openly about it, because they know voters are less likely to swallow SCHIP expansion if they see where it’s headed. 

That’s why it was so refreshing to read what Ezra Klein blogged while attending the YearlyKos convention last weekend:

At the health care panel, Kathleen Stoll, from Families USA, says, “some of you may think of me as an incrementalist. I prefer to think of myself as a sneaky sequentialist.”

I think I prefer the term “sneaky sequentialism” too. “Incrementalism” doesn’t necessarily suggest an ultimate destination. “Sequentialism” suggests there is a destination, and a mind consciously devising a plan to get us there.

In an upcoming briefing paper on SCHIP, I note how that program fits the Left’s sequentialist strategy, and identify Families USA among the “Baptists” who seek to expand SCHIP because that would move us toward total government control of the health care sector.

Supporters of limited government often say that there is no such thing as a bad tax cut, but it also is true that some tax cuts are better than others (for instance, see here for a comparison of the sub-par 2001 tax cuts and the supply-side 2003 rate reductions). If policy makers want to boost economic performance, they should concentrate on reducing marginal tax rates on additional economic activity. By this standard, the tax cuts advocated by the new French President generally are not well designed. He is seeking to cap the total income tax burden at 50 percent rather than 60 percent, but this change affects the total tax bill and may not have much impact on the decision to engage in additional productive behavior. A better approach would be to lower the top tax rate. Likewise, Sarkozy wants to increase wealth tax exemptions, but this approach is inferior to a rate reduction (or, better yet, repeal of the tax). He also has a gimmicky plan for tax cuts on overtime and a scheme for mortgage payments. The good news is that there will be tax cuts in France. The bad news is that they could have been better designed. Tax​-news​.com reports

Chief among Sarkozy’s reforms are measures creating more exemptions to France’s wealth tax, which has often been cited as a key reason why France lags behind its competitors in terms of investment and economic growth, and a 50% cap on individual income tax, down from 60%. The reforms would also cut tax on overtime — encouraging more French workers to work beyond the previously politically sacred 35 hour week, part of plans to make the domestic labour market more flexible and business-friendly — and tax cuts on mortgage interest payments. …It is hoped that Sarkozy’s tax and economic reforms will tempt back the hundreds of thousands of French citizens who have left the country seeking less punitive tax regimes. Popular destinations for the estimated 500,000 French tax exiles include Belgium, Switzerland, the UK and the US. …studies show that it is not just the rich and famous who have seemingly grown weary with France’s high taxes, with families and investors fleeing in increasing numbers. Research by French Senator Philippe Marini, cited by Bloomberg, claims that households fleeing the fortune tax have climbed to a record 649 in 2005 from 370 in 1997. Another study by the Economic Analysis Council concluded that approximately 10,000 business directors have fled France in the past 15 years, taking as much as US$137 billion in capital to invest elsewhere.

I’ve been at a conference in Hawaii for a few days, so I don’t know if anyone called Mitt Romney to the mat for this extraordinary statement he made during the most recent GOP presidential candidates’ debate (quoth The New York Times):

But Mr. Romney took aim at Mr. Giuliani’s recent proposal to offer people $15,000 in tax deductions to help them buy health insurance. “We have to have our citizens insured, and we’re not going to do that by tax exemptions, because the people that don’t have insurance aren’t paying taxes,” he said.

I think Romney is wrong when he says, “We have to have our citizens insured.” But at least that point is debatable.

Did Romney actually say, “we’re not going to do that by tax exemptions”? Are you kidding me? Not only does Romney’s own Massachusetts health plan use tax breaks to expand health coverage — that’s all it uses. That law requires employers to offer a type of health plan (a Section 125 “cafeteria plan”) that extends the federal tax exclusion for employer-sponsored health insurance to the “employee portion” of the premiums. The whole point of the “Connector” is to extend that exclusion to health plans your employer doesn’t offer, and to make sure workers don’t lose the exclusion when they change jobs. Even the controversial requirement that all residents purchase coverage is an attempt to use a tax break to expand coverage. If you buy coverage, you get the personal exemption from the Commonwealth’s income tax. If you don’t buy coverage, no exemption for you.

And what’s this about the uninsured not paying taxes? The Census Bureau reports that 17 million of the people it counts as uninsured had household incomes over $50,000 per year. The Tax Foundation suggests that over half of the uninsured pay either income or payroll taxes, meaning that Romney is not even half-right.

(If Romney wants universal coverage, and tax breaks won’t accomplish that, how’s he gonna do it? More government spending?)

President Bush and congressional Democrats are fighting over many of the annual spending bills, leading some to predict a government shutdown when the new fiscal year starts October 1. This prospect horrifies the political class, but Investor’s Business Daily explains why it would be a good idea to close many government departments:

Here’s a suggestion: Many government departments, agencies and offices should be closed for good. …In 1800, the government needed a mere 3,000 employees and $1 million a year to do its job. In those days, lawmakers knew well the meaning of “limited.” Today, federal civilian employees number nearly 2 million. Another 10 million or more are federal contractors or grant recipients. The yearly budget of this runaway train is soaring toward $3 trillion. …Start with the Education Department, created in 1979 by the Carter administration despite the fact there is no constitutional authorization for its existence. In addition to its meddling, the department is spending nearly $70 billion a year in taxpayers’ dollars. By all accounts, public education in this country is worse off than it was when the Education Department opened. It’s hard to make an argument that those 5,000 employees are contributing anything. Next on the block should be the Energy Department, another monster wrought by Jimmy Carter, this one in 1977. There’s no real job this department… Like food, shelter and clothing, energy is a commodity that can and should be traded on an open market. There is no need to make a federal case out of it, particularly one that employees 17,000 people. All Cabinet-level departments — even Defense, which could cut waste — should at least have their budgets drained of excess. On a smaller scale, the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities should go. Funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting should be zeroed out.

Investor’s Business Daily comments on Hillary Clinton’s proposal for a national school to train “public servants.” But does America need a West Point for bureaucrats? The IBD editorial touches on some of the obvious shortcomings of the scheme, but it also is worth noting that such a school sounds frighteningly similar to France’s infamous l’Ecole d’Administration, the elitist institution that produced a long string of statist politicians such as Jacques Chirac:

Sen. Hillary Clinton says she wants to establish a national academy that will train public servants. Why do re-education camps come to mind? … Somehow we doubt there will be many lectures in making government smaller, deregulating business, cutting taxes or increasing individual freedom. Is there a chance that this “new generation” attending the academy will hear a single voice that isn’t hailing the glories of the nanny state? Will students being groomed for public service ever hear the names Hayek, von Mises or Friedman during their studies? … Government at all levels is already overflowing with bureaucrats who suck up taxpayers’ money and produce little, if anything, of economic value. More often, the bureaucracy actually gets in the way of economic progress.

Joining the Anti-Universal Coverage Club this week is a list of organizations that have formed a new group called The Health Care Freedom Coalition. Here are a few lines from their agenda:

Most Democratic presidential candidates, one Republican presidential candidate, many business trade associations, and unions have endorsed “universal health insurance” as the solution to our nation’s health care problems.

With 46 million Americans who don’t have health insurance, these politicians and special interest groups have concluded that covering everyone will magically make health care affordable.

“Universal health insurance” is a myth. The only way to make health care “affordable” under a “universal health insurance” scheme is through price controls and limiting access. Any proposal claiming to provide “universal coverage” is nothing more than a system that must rely on private and/​or public entities to administer government-run health care. 

Emphasis added. The Health Care Freedom Coalition includes:

• 60 Plus
• Alabama Policy Institute
• American Conservative Union
• American Shareholders Association
• Americans for Prosperity and AFP Foundation
• Americans for Tax Reform
• Center for Freedom and Prosperity
• Christus Medicus Foundation
• Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy Alternatives
• Consumers for Health Care Choices
• Council for Affordable Health Insurance
• Fairness Foundation
• FreedomWorks
• Grassroot Institute of Hawaii
• Illinois Policy Institute
• Indiana Family Institute
• Medical Savings Insurance Company
• Mississippi Center for Public Policy
• National Center for Policy Analysis
• National Taxpayers Union
• Pacific Research Institute
• Public Interest Institute
• Rio Grande Foundation
• Small Business Entrepreneurship Council
• The James Madison Institute
• Washington Policy Institute

Not joining the Anti-Universal Coverage Club this week are the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, which approved legislation to expand government health insurance to people who don’t need government assistance, and the Galen Institute’s Grace-Marie Turner, who reiterated in her weekly newsletter:

The question isn’t whether children should or should not have health insurance. The question is how do we achieve that goal.