Like desperate last-minute Christmas shoppers who would grab any gift at any price, the U.S. Senate rushed through a hasty and ill-conceived rewrite of healthcare legislation on Christmas Eve. It was a holiday party—a total party line vote.
President Obama’s message to senators seemed focused more on party loyal and an appeal to desires for glory than on what Americans want or need. Plus the spirit of “What's in it for me?” rather than the unselfish spirit of Christmas.
With public support collapsing all about them — 61 percent in opposition, according to CNN’s December polling — many Democrats seemed motivated by a feeling that they’ve gone too far to turn back now, even if it’s in the wrong direction.
They could invoke Benjamin Franklin’s aphorism: “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
Franklin, however, had a much nobler purpose in mind: independence from government tyranny.
The ultimate language remains a mystery to many, concealed in two thousand pages of wrapping. The governors of New York and California, after digging to the bottom, crying foul over billions in new costs that will further wreck their already imperiled state budgets.
With or without a so-called “public option,” it’s certain that the bill will displace millions of Americans from their private insurance, put Washington in charge of all healthcare and insurance, and expand the number of people who depend on taxpayers to pay for their coverage.
Bureaucrats such as the new “health choices commissioner” would be granted czar-like powers to impose what would function as a federally controlled, single-payer system. That power would extend over everyone, even those who think they still have private insurance.
“It’s now or never” summed up the White House message as President Obama asks his fellow Democrats to disregard the public opposition and pass Obamacare anyway. White House operatives told Politico this is the “last chance” and “last train leaving the station” as Christmas approached.
The appeal to unity and glory is an echo of the argument Obama used to rally final votes for the House version of the legislation. As ABC News said about that House meeting, Obama used an argument based on political calculation: "At the end of his speech, Obama got a rousing ovation for saying, "I am absolutely confident that, when I sign this bill in the Rose Garden, each and every one of you will be able to look back and say, 'This was my finest moment in politics.'"
This appeal to political vanity is very different from the claims the president makes about his proposals in public meetings. So it’s no wonder that Obama has abandoned his campaign pledge to conduct healthcare negotiations publicly and on C-SPAN. Now the House and Senate versions of the bill will be reconciled behind closed doors (but with the White House well-represented).
Obama had said in 2008, "I'm going to have all the negotiations around a big table. We'll have doctors and nurses and hospital administrators. Insurance companies, drug companies — they'll get a seat at the table, they just won't be able to buy every chair. But what we will do is, we'll have the negotiations televised on C-SPAN."
Those who want to commit political suicide will suffer the consequences at the hands of the voters. The problem is that damage won’t end there. Dramatic new costs will be imposed on 160 million Americans who already have health insurance. Unfair adverse consequences will abound, such as a $3,000 penalty on businesses that hire low-income workers. It will be costlier than ever to create new jobs or to buy insurance (except for those who are granted new government subsidies at the expense of taxpayers).
Rather than appealing to party loyalty and political vanity, even many on the left are calling for President Obama and Congress to slow down and start over. But they so far show no signs of doing that.
(Ernest Istook, who was a congressman from Oklahoma for 14 years, now is a distinguished fellow at The Heritage Foundation.)
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