>Congress Should Stop Subsidizing Warren Buffett’s Health Care, Not Increase His Taxes
Kathryn Nix and Bob MoffitDecember 7, 2011 at 9:17 am(4)
Reports have surfaced that conservatives in Congress may propose further increasing income adjustment in Medicare to lessen the program’s insolvency. This is a great idea. While the left continues to argue for higher taxes for the likes of Warren Buffett to maintain the status quo of a costly, failing Medicare program, it makes more sense that Congress should simply stop subsidizing them.
As Congress continues to pursue solutions to the entitlement spending crisis, one question that must be answered is whether the United States should even have universal federal entitlements to begin with. Considering the wreckage of the nation’s finances, the answer is clearly no. It’s not only that we cannot afford it, but the very creation of popular dependency on government itself threatens prosperity.
For wealthier Americans like Buffett, the policy options are clear. The Obama Administration and its allies in Congress are obsessed with imposing higher taxes on them, regardless of the impact on investment in the economy and despite the fact that they already pay the bulk of federal income taxes. The intent behind this course of action is to maintain, largely unchanged, the existing federal entitlement regime.
The alternative is to introduce reform that uses market forces to control costs, part of which would be to reduce or eliminate taxpayer subsidies for entitlement benefits for upper-income Americans while letting more Americans of all income classes keep more of their own money.