Three Things the New Congress Should Do

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The Democrats keep their razor-thin control of the Senate. As of this writing, it looks like the Republicans will gain razor-thin control of the House. Welcome to gridlock city.

But let’s suppose, miracle of miracles, that the new Congress is briefly willing to forego its hyper-partisanship and its hyper-cronyism and consider three things that would actually make life less burdensome for the great unwashed. The question before us then is this: are there three schlub-friendly legislative acts that can…

• Be implemented without more taxpayer money and federal bureaucrats
• Pass a simple majority in the House
• Overcome the 60-vote filibuster in the Senate
• And get President Biden’s signature

I propose that there are. See if you agree.

The Stop Screwing Students Act

The college business model is a joke. It allows far too many students who are either undisciplined or cognitively weak to enroll in higher education, it offers far too many degree programs that are economically useless, and it saddles every student it’s allegedly trying to help with far too many courses and amenities that are utterly frivolous.

And the only reason this joke of a business model persists is because the people embracing it (i.e., college administrators, professors, coaches, etc.) aren’t penalized for embracing it. After all, why would the stewards of higher education replace their nonsense-laden 40-course bachelor’s degree with a no-nonsense 15-course bachelor’s degree—and forego all the revenue generated by those 25 frivolous courses—when the wreckage wrought by their nonsense-laden 40-course bachelor’s degree is born entirely by students, parents, and taxpayers?

The following two provisions are all that’s needed for the Stop Screwing Students Act to put a stake in the heart of higher education’s current business model:

1. All student loans taken out after the passage of this act can be discharged in bankruptcy.
2. All student loans taken out after the passage of this act must have a co-signer, and that co-signer can only be the college that’s educating the student borrower.

The Fair Medical Billing Act

About a year ago, I saw a dermatologist for a routine exam. I had no idea what it would cost. Mrs. Groovy, who makes all doctor appointments in the Groovy household, asked, but the appointment-making person had no idea.

So I saw the dermatologist and everything was fine. No skin cancer. And then I waited for my bill. And waited, and waited. After ten months, I finally got the bill. It was very reasonable by today’s standards. One hundred and eighty-five bucks. But that’s because I had insurance. If I didn’t have insurance, and the in-network dermatologist wasn’t restricted to a contracted price negotiated by my insurer, my exam would have cost much more.

But is this any way to run a business? Keep patients in the dark about prices and then bill them ten months later?

The medical-industrial complex’s billing practices are an abomination. Price opacity, license to hammer the uninsured, and drip billing are three of the most soul-crushing and anti-consumer policies I can think of. Our medical professionals should be ashamed of themselves. But they’re not. And because they’re not, I propose the Fair Medical Billing Act. Here are the three provisions of that act:

1. The complete bill for medical services must be sent to the patient within 30 days after the medical services have been rendered. The patient is not liable for any bill that comes after the 30-day deadline.
2. All medical providers must be completely transparent with their prices. And their pricing information must reflect the total cost of care. They can’t play games and say a knee replacement costs $5,000 and then bill the patient $10,000 because that quoted knee-replacement price didn’t include the “add-ons” of operating room lights, scalpel sterilization, anesthesia, sutures, post-operation pain killers, administrative overhead, and a smorgasbord of made-up fees (i.e., the nurse-holds-your-hand fee and the orderly-provides-jocular-banter-as-he-rolls-you-to-the-operating-room fee).
3. Medical providers can’t discriminate between the insured and the uninsured. If a hospital charges $1,500 to fix a simple arm fracture of an insured patient, it must charge $1,500 to fix a simple arm fracture of an uninsured patient. The cost of providing care doesn’t suddenly become more expensive when a patient lacks health insurance.

The Politician Fiscal Accountability Act

Is Senator-Elect John Fetterman fit for office? Of course, he is. Sure, he’s recovering from a stroke and has difficulty processing information and articulating his thoughts. But how much cognitive prowess does any senator or representative need when his or her core legislative responsibilities are as follows:

1. Spend as much taxpayer money as necessary to buy the required amount of campaign contributions from the donor class.
2. Spend as much taxpayer money as necessary to buy the required number of votes from the great unwashed.
3. Don’t give a rat’s ass about the national debt.

Now, combine these core legislative responsibilities with the relentless push to define acceptability down—our Woke Overlords have groomed the typical American to be very tolerant of shit schools, shit news, shit entertainment, shit food, shit health, shit relationships, shit neighborhoods, and shit people—and it’s safe to say that anyone with an IQ above 70 can be an outstanding “legislator” in today’s Washington, DC.

I can’t imagine that most of our Congresspeople are satisfied with their core legislative responsibilities. Yes, there are surely a few Congresspeople who are sociopaths and don’t mind whoring for campaign donations and votes. But the vast majority of our Congresspeople didn’t enter politics to prostitute themselves. They entered politics to govern, to make America and its people better.

If we ever hope to make “American Exceptionalism” a thing again, we’re going to need statesmen at the helm of government, not whores. But statesmen, sadly, can’t survive in an environment that rewards donation buying and vote buying and punishes statesmanship. In such an environment, the bad politicians drive out the good politicians. After all, who’s more likely to garner donations and votes, the politician who promises to hand out government subsidies and welfare like candy, or the politician who promises to safeguard the public purse and wean the public off its debilitating fondness for “free” stuff?

One way to give statesman-minded politicians a chance is to base congressional pay on how well Congress and the president manage federal spending. If they manage federal spending well and are mindful of both current and future taxpayers, they’re rewarded handsomely. If, on the other hand, they manage federal spending poorly and engage in a lot of donation buying and vote buying, they’re severely punished.

Here are the only three provisions the Politician Fiscal Accountability Act would need to make whoring for national office a pyrrhic victory:

1. If federal spending during the fiscal year is equal to or less than 15 percent of GDP, the president and every member of Congress shall get a $5 million bonus.
2. If federal spending during the fiscal year is greater than 15 percent of GDP, and this amount of spending doesn’t produce a deficit, the president and every member of Congress shall be paid their normal salaries for the next fiscal year.
3. Finally, if federal spending during the fiscal year is greater than 15 percent of GDP, and this amount of spending produces a deficit, the president and every member of Congress shall forfeit their salaries, their side-hustle income (i.e., speaking fees, book contracts, phony-baloney jobs for spouses, etc.), and their ability to raise campaign donations for the next fiscal year.

Final Thoughts

Okay, groovy freedomist, that’s all I got. What say you? I think the above proposals would stand a fair chance of passing if congressional leadership actually proposed them. But it will never happen. When it comes to doing something for the little guy and upending the status quo, politicians on both sides of the aisle “ain’t worth a warm bucket of spit.” So the Democrats and Republicans in the next Congress will play to the base interests of their respective bases and use most of their political capital trying to embarrass the other side. And in the end, nothing will change. There will be no reckoning for the college-industrial complex, no reckoning for the medical-industrial complex, and no reckoning for the trollop-industrial complex. And the three Ds of a failing society—deficits, dependency, and degeneracy—will continue unabated.