Warning: Today’s blog post is definitely a rant. Those of you who read this blog for the dry, rational rational tone I usually take in my writing may want to look away.

Tonight Obama gave a speech in which he declared that he would not sign a health care bill that increased the size of the deficit. It’s good to see that we finally have a President that can admit he’s made a mistake and back down from a debate.

… okay, so I’m poking fun of him. He did say he wouldn’t sign such a bill, but unless he’s just completely insane, that’s exactly what he’s planning to do.

And yes, for the record, that makes him either a liar, criminally stupid, or completely insane.

Let’s take a look at the cold reality of the situation:

According to his speech, he wants a $900 billion health care reform bill for the next 10 years. That roughly means he wants $90 or so billion a year.

According to the CBO, the plan to reduce the payroll tax exceptions (AKA “the plan that taxes health insurance”) on health benefits would raise a hair over $45 billion a year – about half of what Obama would like to spend on this bill. The rest, Obama claims, will be made up for with savings in Medicare and Medicaid.

In 2008, we spent $204 billion for Medicaid and $386 billion for Medicare, for a total of $590 billion. That means that if the President taxes your health insurance benefits and cuts the Medicare and Medicaid budgets to pay for the rest, he has to cut them by 7.6% to make everything work.

The last time Obama tried to find just $100 million in savings, he actually failed to meet his own deadline. He complained at the time that saving money was hard. Protip: Saving 0.003% of your total budget is not hard. But just in case it is, I can only imagine how difficult saving four hundred and fifty times that amount every single year is going to be.

I’m just thankful that Medicare and Medicaid costs aren’t spiraling out of control and that the system isn’t severely strained by changing demographics, longer life spans, and the rising care of health care.

Oh wait, they are? Snap. Maybe it will be harder than I think. Honestly, it sounds like a full time job to me. I think Obama might have to hire some more Czars. It’s a good thing Congress gets to approve cabinet level officials, because with all these new people coming into power a few of them might turn out to be complete whack jobs or something.

The Aristocrats.