What I Don't Want to Pay For

Some conservatives are blocking the health reform bill because some government money might be used for abortions. It’s a short-sighted position, not least because statistics show that countries that offer guaranteed health care that includes coverage for abortions have a much lower rate of abortion than we do here. That means that giving people universal health coverage does more to reduce abortions than not giving them that coverage because they might use that coverage for abortions.

But all of this has gotten me thinking about what I don’t want my tax dollars to be used for. For example, Viagra. Hey, if women can pay for their own abortions, men can pay for their own erections. Bet that wouldn’t get through Congress.

A few other things I’d rather not support:

• Pre-emptive war
• Faith-based anything
• Medicare charges that are way out of line, just because they can be
• Hundred-dollar hammers for the military
• Fancy offices for government officials
• Bailouts for financial institutions that pay bonuses to their employees, no matter how well they perform
• Social security for multi-millionaires
• Subsidies to big agribusiness
• Earmarks like the infamous “bridge to nowhere”

I’m sure this list would be much longer if I knew how all of the dollars that disappear from my paycheck are spent on my behalf.

In Search of the Quick Fix

I’m continually surprised by how short people’s memories are. Watching the "commentators" on Fox as they opine about (and misrepresent) the economic mess, the health care debate, and the president’s deliberations on sending more troops to Afghanistan, I wonder how it is that a lot of my fellow citizens have come to believe that all of our problems should be resolved—or nearly so—by now, one year into Mr. Obama’s term.

Americans believe in the quick fix. From reality TV shows about transformations seemingly wrought overnight with plastic surgery to commercials from pharmaceutical companies that promise relief from intractable conditions to beauty creams that tout instant results, we’ve become a culture of impatience and false expectations.

If you’ve ever had major surgery—of any kind—you know it’s not a cakewalk. The healing process can be long and quite painful. A friend of mine had shoulder surgery this summer; his doctor told him that it could be up to a year before he’ll be completely pain-free. That's reality.

On a long plane flight this summer, I watched an episode of “Make Me a Supermodel” (yes, I know), in which a beautiful young woman with very bad teeth spent 24 hours getting her teeth fixed—drilling, grinding, implants, the whole thing—and was expected to (and did) walk the runway a few hours later, without complaint or apparent discomfort. That’s just not how it generally goes, as anyone who’s had dental surgery can attest.

It took decades to bring the country to its knees economically and culturally. The girlfriends’ rule of thumb for getting over a bad relationship is that it should take up to as much as half as long as the relationship lasted. With that math, we should not expect to be back on our feet for at least 4 years, if we just count the W/Cheney years. And some of our problems go back a lot farther than that.

The people on all sides who are saying that Mr. Obama “hasn’t done anything” don’t seem to understand that fixing problems of this magnitude—and so many of them at once—is an excruciatingly slow and complex process. And it’s not like he’s the only guy in the room. There are a lot of other people involved: one political party that is mostly engaged in making sure that things stay as they are until the midterm elections, one party that squabbles within itself endlessly about everything, and a whole lot of people in the middle who are looking for a quick and painless fix.

It's going to take time. Some things are still going to get worse before they get better. So, fasten your seat belts. And adjust your expectations accordingly.