The late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan coined the phrase “defining deviancy down” in a 1993 article for the academic journal The American Scholar. His point was that as deviant behavior expands the public begins to redefine and even accepting it by lowering the standard for acceptable behavior.
That’s pretty much were we are with the term “paid for.”
What most people mean when they say something is paid for is that they own it free and clear. Any money borrowed to buy the item has been paid back. No one who had just borrowed thousands of dollars against future earnings to buy a car or home would say it was “paid for.” Yet that is exactly how President Obama is redefining the term.
Last week he cited four things he had to have in the health care reform bill. One of those requirements was that it had to be “paid for.”
That might assuage some of the public—perhaps concerned about the newly revised federal deficit, which rose from and estimated $7 trillion to $9 trillion (from years 2010-2019)—into thinking that health care reform would make no claims on future earnings. But that’s not what the president means. There is no budget surplus or additional funds to pay for health care reform. Thus the bill won’t be paid for in any normal sense of the term. It will all come from future earnings—just like the mortgage on a house, only indefinitely.
It’s part of an effort to persuade the public that Democrats are being fiscally responsible. They claim that any new spending must be paid for by either spending reductions elsewhere or raising taxes—a principle, incidentally, they’ve broken several times.
It’s even become part of the Washington lingo. If you want to add new spending to the federal budget, you’re supposed to find a “pay for” to offset the cost.
So when the president says health care reform must be paid for, he is defining “paid for” down. Because the legislation will impose claims on our future income to the third and fourth generations—and beyond.
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Today's TaxByte was written by Dr. Merrill Matthews, IPI Resident Scholar