Cognitive dissonance.

As the following conclusion of the Cato Institute reported in Investors Business Daily makes clear, even a $700 billion infusion of cash wouldn't cover 1% of the amount needed to fix the existing funding problems of Medicare -- an existing health program.

Even if Mr. Obama's plans for expansion of health "insurance" or coverage amounted to "only" $10 million in new expenditures, what sane person could argue that this would be a wise course of action to pursue given the crushing burden that will have to be borne by taxpayers just to keep the existing Medicare program solvent?

To seek to expand health care expenditures under this gigantic debt burden is madness.

On whom will the burden ultimately fall? Answer: on future generations of U.S. taxpayers. And on all citizens now as we witness (1) inflation take off from profligate government borrowing and (2) the American job machine run out of steam from additional taxation.

The hospital insurance portion of Medicare is now paying out more in benefits than it receives in tax revenues. By next year, outlays for all parts of the program will exceed income. The Hospital Insurance Trust Fund will be exhausted by 2019.

If nothing changes, Medicaid eventually will have $36 trillion in obligations that it won't be able to pay under the current arrangement. The funding gap in out years gets so big, Congress would have had to deposit $80 trillion in an interest-bearing account last year to meet Medicare's eventual obligations.

The $700 billion Congress spent to bail out the financial institutions wouldn't cover 1% of the amount needed to bail out Medicare, according to Cato Institute calculations.

It's hard to fathom how anyone would suggest that a government that has run a program like Medicare should increase its role in health care.

Isn't one of the first rules of human existence to stop digging when you find yourself in a hole?

Apparently, to the Democrats, there is just no tomorrow and any burden heaped on Americans is justifiable if it but expands Democrat political power over all aspects of American life.

This is what passes for integrity in American political life now. Plunging into the Alice in Wonderland thicket of pure fantasy arithmetic is good and moral if one is "compassionate."

"A 'Down Payment' On Dysfunction?" Investors Business Daily, 2/27/09.