Political Leaders Lack an Understanding of Government‘s Role 
By Tom Licata

"But government employees pay taxes too, don’t they?"  OK, I thought, she’s got a point.  All we have to do is hire 500 more state workers; our state coffers will be flush with income tax revenue and all other kinds of "multiplier effect" activity.  Our state’s budget problem solved.  Case closed.

This exchange went on between Rep. Janet Ancel and me at a January 5 House Ways and Means Committee Hearing.  As a member of Vermonters for Economic Health (VEH), I was invited to give a presentation on the state of our economy. A link to this (economically disturbing) VEH PowerPoint presentation can be found on this page. (Here is the direct link)

Rep. Ancel’s "but government employees pay taxes too, don’t they" remark was in response to a chart showing Vermont’s private sector job growth shrinking while government and non-profit sectors growing.  I pointed out the lack of sustainability of this and Rep. Ancel pointed out these government employees pay taxes, too.

I’d had enough.  Palpable was not only a lack of economic urgency by Committee members, but a lack of understanding government‘s role.  It is with this back drop that I decided to testify at the January 12 Joint House Hearing on Health Care Reform.  Here is that testimony:

Health care is not a privilege.  Nor is it a right.  It is a need.  A fundamental human need.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness - - That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men..."

Powerful words from our Founders. Words that have been forgotten.  Words that have been dismissed.

Government is not the grantor of rights.  It is its securer.  Its protector.  As so eloquently outlined by Thomas Jefferson.

In one of America's bloodiest events, some 600,000 Americans gave their lives in securing these rights.

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves," so said Abraham Lincoln. President Lincoln understood our nation's strength emanated from our freedoms; from these "unalienable Rights."

Unalienable Rights cannot be transferred or forfeited to anyone or any one Government, for they are "endowed by our Creator," the natural result of our humanity.  A right conferred by government to one person is simultaneously a right denied to another.

Preservation of freedom balanced against this fundamental human need of health care is the task.  A task not unlike that found in Vermont's 1778 motto of "Freedom and Unity."

Government single-payer health care is anathema to the freedoms found in both our nation's Constitution and its Declaration of Independence.

Competition through interstate commerce, tort reform and amending the tax-favored employer-based system would spur the necessary innovation and balance the needs of a free society with that of meeting this most fundamental of human needs.

Thank you.

Tom Licata is the founder of Vermonters for Economic Health