Step six:  We must reform our health care system for this too, bears on whether or not we can compete in the world.  American health costs have been exploding.  This year America will spend over $800 billion on health, and that is expected to grow to $1.6 trillion by the end of the decade.  We simply cannot afford this.  The cost of health care shows up not only in your family budget, but in the price of everything we buy and everything we sell.  When health coverage for a fellow on the assembly line costs thousands of dollars, the cost goes into the product he makes.  And you pay the bill.  Now we must make a choice.

Now some pretend we can have it both ways:  they call it play or pay.  But that expensive approach is unstable.  It will mean higher taxes, fewer jobs, and eventually, a system under complete government control.  Really, there are only two options.  And we can move toward a nationalized system, a system which will restrict patient choice in picking a doctor and force the government to ration services arbitrarily.  And what we’ll get is patients in long lines, indifferent service and a huge new tax burden.  Or we can reform our own private health-care system, which still gives us, for all its flaws, the best quality health care in the world.  Well, let’s build on our strengths.

My plan provides insurance security for all Americans while preserving and increasing the idea of choice.  We make basic health insurance affordable for all low-income people not now covered.  We do it by providing a health-insurance tax credit of up to $3750 for each low-income family.  The middle class gets help, too.  And by reforming the health insurance market, my plan assures that Americans will have access to basic health insurance even if they change jobs or develop serious health problem We must bring costs under control, preserve quality, preserve choice and reduce people’s nagging daily worry about health insurance.  My plan, the details of which I will announce shortly, does just that.

And seventh, we must get the federal deficit under control.  We now have in law, enforcable spending caps, and a requirement that we pay for the programs we create.  There are those in Congress who would ease that discipline now.  But I cannot let them do it.  And I won’t.  My plan would freeze all domestic discretionary budget authority which means “No more next year than this year”.  I will not tamper with Social Security but I would put real caps on the growth of uncontrolled spending.  And I would also freeze federal domestic government employment.  And with the help of Congress, my plan will get rid of 246 programs that don’t deserve federal funding.  Some of them have noble titles, but none of them is indispensible.  We can get rid of each and every one of them.