Date: 2009-12-11
Speaker: DANIEL E. LUNGREN (republican)
Chamber: H
State: Cali

fornia. I believe its not only on wheelchairs. As someone who recently. well. 2 years ago. had a new hip replacement. I understand that I was lucky I had it then because under this bill. a hip replacement. like a wheelchair. would be considered a piece of medical equipment and there would be a tax placed on that. So for the privilege of being injured in some way and then receiving medical attention requiring a piece of medical equipment. you get the indignity of having a tax placed on you. Now I dont know what kind of a tax you call that. Its not a comfort tax. Its not a sin tax. Do you remember when we used to call these taxes on cigarettes and alcohol "sin tax" because they were supposedly aimed at vices that people had? But it makes very little sense. And here is the other thing. I had the teletown hall the other night. and one of the people on the line said. well. why dont you just have a government program and why not just do it through the Medicaid system. expand it for other people to have it in the Medicaid system. And I said to her. well. how would we pay for it? Well. we just pay for it through taxes. And so I was reminded of that great quote by the French economist. Frederic Bastiat. who said many years ago that the state is that great fictitious entity by which everyone seeks to live at the expense of everyone else. Now what he was saying is when we create in our argumentation the idea of "state" without understanding what were talking about. it is easy to say. well. the state can take care of it. or well just tax for it. where the suggestion is that somehow that comes from somewhere else. And if you got it down to the real individual level and say. at what point do I have a right to say to you that I can reach into your pocket and take money from your pocket to pay for something I want done? Now I think we would all agree that there are those who cant help themselves. that we want to create some sort of safety net. But if the idea that we are going to have larger and larger percentages of the population have their needs or wants taken care of by the government because it doesnt cost them anything. at some point in time. we are going to reach that point of which Margaret Thatcher spoke. when she said. the problem with socialism is pretty soon you run out of other peoples money. And its even more than that. because if you corrupt our system such that people forget to. well. people no longer understand how you generate wealth. rather than just redistribute wealth. you essentially create less wealth. you essentially put limitations that otherwise would not exist on creating new wealth that then can be utilized for individuals and their lives and. yes. to support government. I think that is what we have to continue to remind ourselves. not necessarily remind our constituents. but remind ourselves because we are here making these decisions. that just as Ronald Reagan said. freedom is never free. meaning that we always have to have a commitment towards freedom on a military sense and people that would sacrifice. freedom is not automatically free in our own country. We have to fight for it all the time. and we have to remind ourselves sometimes that maybe we have to ask more of ourselves individually. in our own families. in our churches and in our voluntary associations to do more. And we ask more of ourselves and less of government. and then determine exactly those areas where we help people who truly cant help themselves and make sure that we have a true undergirding of our society to help those people. But dont basically damage the capacity of the American people to use their genius. use their creativity and use their dedication to try and utilize the talents God gave them.