Here is yet another way the deficit is driving policy in Washington.  I can guarantee you that the provision driving the paperwork avalanche was put in the health care law for one reason and one reason only:  the Congressional “scoring” organizations – the government bodies that compute the cost and revenue raised by proposed legislation — were willing to score it as raising money because it supposedly tightens compliance and will capture revenue that is leaking out of the system.  If you want to pass something in Washington, all you have to do is get it scored as raising money in a way that Congress can say is not a tax increase.  It doesn’t matter whether the measure actually will raise the money; it doesn’t matter how unfair or unenforceable it is, or what effect it has on small business or the economy.  In fact, we have no idea what the effect of this provision will be, except that it will hurt the economy, demoralize small business, and add to the perception that everyone in the Congress is crazy.

This is why I say that, increasingly, the debt is running national policy.  Yet the Obama Administration is, every day, digging us into a deeper and deeper hole – to the detriment of its own practical interests and objectives.  Why would people who want government to grow pursue policies which bankrupt the government?  What do they think is going to happen?  It is the triumph of ideology, inexperience, and incompetence over reality.”