Does the public really care about the price tag of government spending?

Pratt on TexasFor the Texas Scorecard, Salvador Ayala, wrote:

“Radical leftist politicians, like Sen. Bernie Sanders (D—VT), regularly laud the idea of single-payer healthcare, or “Medicare For All.” But a new report by the Mercatus Center at George Mason University finds that the cost of such a federal program would be astronomical.

“That study shows that implementing Medicare For All nationally would cost more than $32 trillion over the first 10 years. The plan would replace all private health insurance that Americans currently receive, and all state level health care spending, with federal control and distribution. …The amount of money required to support a single-payer system could not be generated even if current tax revenues were doubled.”

After detailing how in several states the backers of these Medicare For All programs ended up pulling their own bills, Ayala wrote: “There’s a reason public support for single-payer drops off when respondents are shown the price tag.”

Does the public actually care about the price tag?

But I question that. Does the public actually care about the price tag? In almost every community people who should know better push, as well as vote for, large bond debt issues every few years, never allowing debt to paid off, for non-essential things while also raising property taxes and fees.

Once in a while the public gets fed up and votes for a reformer but after realizing that fighting the momentum of the spend, spend, spend crowd is messy, enough of those voters back off and let the more debt and more taxes crowd win.

It is cynical I know, but I think it is demonstrably true that a huge number of our neighbors would sell out their own family’s future for shiny baubles and trinkets if told it was good for the children or downtown or economic development or some other faddish phrase.

There just are not that many capital “C” Citizens anymore who accept the responsibility of true self-government.

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