February 18, 2011
That is the only thing that readers of his column can conclude. Or, alternatively perhaps he missed the debate over health care reform during the last two years.
Brooks is very upset that President Obama is not doing more to deal with the growing national debt. If Brooks had access to budget documents he would know that the main reason for the large current budget deficits is the downturn caused by the collapse of the housing bubble.
If he is upset about these deficits he should be angry at the people who failed to warn of the dangers of the housing bubble. Certainly Mr. Brooks belongs on that list since he has a semi-weekly column that often deals with economic issues.
If Brooks had access to budget documents he would also know that the main driver of the deficit over the longer term is health care costs. If the United States paid the same amount per person for health care as any other wealthy country we would have huge budget surpluses, not budget deficits.
One of the goals of health care reform was to reduce the rate of growth of health care costs, which would also lower the deficit in the long-term. Brooks seems to be unaware of this aspect of the debate.
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