A few days ago, President Obama said the Democrats stand on the precipice of a health reform bill. Truer words were never spoken, at least by him. What is Harry Reid doing ? The theory seems to be to pass something, no matter what it is, so that Democrats can claim success.At one time we had two bills, the Senate version and the House version. Now, no one knows what is in this bill. It is simply amazing. His hurry to pass something may come from his realization that, as time to understand the bill passes, the public likes it less and less. No one knows what it will cost because the CBO has been given false data to analyze.
For some time, I’ve suspected the answer is that congressional Democrats have very carefully tailored their individual and employer mandates to avoid CBO’s definition of what shall be counted in the federal budget. Democrats are still smarting over the CBO’s decision in 1994. By revealing the full cost of the Clinton plan, the CBO helped to kill the bill.
Since then, keeping the cost of their private-sector mandates out of the federal budget has been Job One for Democratic health wonks. While head of the CBO, Obama’s budget director Peter Orszag altered the CBO’s orientation to make it more open and collaborative. One of the things about which the CBO has been more open is the criteria it uses to determine whether to include mandated private-sector spending in the federal budget.
Why is this being done ?
Our federalist system, the separation of powers, our bicameral national legislature, six-year terms for senators, staggered Senate elections, and the Senate’s procedural rules all exist precisely to prevent what Reid is trying to do: ram a sweeping piece of legislation through Congress without due consideration.
This is the fascist way.
Jonah Goldberg’s book, Liberal Fascism enraged the left well before the election of Barack Obama. It might be time to read it again. If you doubt these people are fascists, here is their suggestion for political opponents. If you are a Congressman who does not vote for the favored bill, you should be expelled from Congress. One party rule.
The problem is that it won’t work. The Democrats would be even worse off if they pass it than if it fails.
If Democrats need to appeal to Independents and moderates to hold their majorities, then passing this bill is a terrible idea. The most recent polling shows that 81% of Republicans and 69% of Independents oppose the healthcare plan (with 74% of Republicans and 57% of Independents strongly opposing it). With majorities of Independents strongly opposed to the bill, it’s really hard to imagine any boost in Democratic turnout from passing the plan being enough to surpass the ensuing backlash from Republicans and Independents.
It isn’t even clear that there will be a boost in Democratic turnout. The latest version of the Senate bill holds little appeal for progressives.
Maybe this will teach them that we are not ready for fascism yet.
Tags: Congress, Democrats, economy, financial, health care, Obama, politics
We seem to be in a political tsunami we can hardly sense: the TARP bill with its back door deals and attendant spending, the stimulus spending, Obama’s fat budget, this health care bill, all of them so large and feeding a deficit of cosmic proportions plus the verbiage of the bills themselves that justify anything and nothing. Book of Revelation stuff.
It really does seem to be an assault on the constitutional system we have had for two centuries. Remember that Argentina had the world’s largest gold reserves in 1939. It took Peron 20 years to make it a pauper nation through fascism.
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