In “Health law puts GOP in a bind” [May 8, A1], members of conservative think tanks bemoan the fact that once the federal government grants entitlements such as health care it becomes almost impossible to take them away. One says, “It builds constituencies, you have powerful special interests whose jobs suddenly depend on it, and the left fights intensely to protect government power once they’ve established it.”
I find this ironic, in that conservatives have no problem supporting their favorite sacred cows, such as military contractors and Wall Street. I could just as easily point out that federal-government support of these groups is equally difficult to do away with because “it builds constituencies, you have powerful special interests whose jobs depend on it, and the right fights intensely to protect government power once they’ve established it.”
Lawrence McCrone, Bellevue
