For critics of the Democrats’ $849 billion health care bill, this may be the ultimate irony: millions of dollars set aside so the government can help teach citizens how to handle their own money better.
The funding is part of a broader, $375 million program aimed at promoting responsible lifestyles — a five-year plan to fund state efforts to educate adolescents on abstinence, contraception and other “adult preparation subjects” such as healthy relationships, increased child-parent communication and “financial literacy.”
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You can imagine how Sen. Jim DeMint feels.
“The federal government is never going to encourage personal responsibility and never has,” the South Carolina Republican said. “Personal responsibility is a good principle — but not the government doing it.”
In a document circulating in the hopes of defeating the measure — and the health care bill in general — aides to Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) say: “The federal government, which is now $12 trillion in debt and riddled with hundreds of billions of dollars of waste, management, duplication and ineffective programs, has little credibility educating Americans about financial responsibility.”
Supporters say it’s critical to teach young people how to manage their money better and that it’s unfair to characterize the program as the federal government “lecturing” citizens on fiscal responsibility, particularly because the programs would ultimately be run by states and communities. And they say that Republicans themselves used similar language when the GOP-controlled Congress created a financial literacy commission in 2003.
“Financial literacy is one of the biggest problems we have in this country,” said Sen. Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.). “Look at what happened in our stock markets, look at what happened in our economy with mortgages; people are indebting themselves into something more than what they can afford.”
Critics say the same thing about the government, of course.
The nation’s borrowing is about to surpass the statutory limit of $12.1 trillion, and Congress will have to increase that limit, probably well beyond $13 trillion, to ensure the country meets its obligations to creditors overseas.
Congress has been forced to cobble together a gigantic omnibus appropriations bill to keep the government from shutting down. In addition, a hodgepodge of different tax breaks is set to expire before the end of the year unless Congress prevents that from happening with last-minute extenders legislation.
Congress’s own money troubles are nothing new; these fiscal problems and massive bills to keep government operating happen under both Democratic and Republican control of Congress — and the debt limit was increased seven times under President George W. Bush.