It is stunning to me that President Obama would yet again try to push the popularly rejected Obamacare plan through Congress. Apparently, his new proposal is more of the same, leaning more toward the Senate version than the House, e.g. no public option. The tax on “Cadillac” health insurance is put off to 2018, after Obama leaves office! What a joke. Moreover, the proposal is so non specific that the CBO can’t even score the costs! From the story:
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) said Monday that it cannot score President Barack Obama’s health reform proposal because it lacks enough detail. The White House claims that the president’s proposal will reduce the budget deficit by $100 billion over the next 10 years and by about $1 trillion over the second decade by eliminating waste, fraud and abuse and cutting “government overspending.” But the CBO said it is not able to verify those claims.
The whole CBO dance has been a sham anyway. It is required to accept assumptions contained in the bill even if they are unlikely to ever come true. And once a law is enacted, Congress is free to change the law in ways that completely go against those original assumptions. But now, even that cynical game of smoke and mirrors is collapsing.
Will Obamacare pass? I have no idea. But it could be that history will show that the president foolishly broke the spine of his presidency trying to force a health care system remake down the throats of the American people after they clearly and overwhelmingly rejected that approach. You can’t refuse to listen to the people and ultimately succeed as a politician.
February 22nd, 2010 | 7:11 pm
Is this his arrogance or is it stupidity? I have no doubt that President Obama is an highly intelligent person so what does this say about how he thinks about the American public?
February 22nd, 2010 | 9:14 pm
“you can’t refuse to listen to the people and ultimately succeed as a politician”
HERE HEAR!!
February 22nd, 2010 | 10:26 pm
Why presume “the people” have any clue? Why should they be listened to?
Many of them think the Earth is a few thousand years old, have no clue what DNA is, believe in UFOs, don’t understand the carbon cycle, lack basic math skills, were fooled by the ‘evidence’ for WMDs, think drinking wine turns into a hematological elixir of an ancient man, love war and killing, seem to think consumption is a better long-term economic platform than innovation, feel “God” in their lives, and can’t even feed themselves correctly.
Obama moving forward for the necessary good of the country, rather than listening to the constant and ever-growing hum of illogical beliefs, is great. Probably won’t pass, though. With the cast of Looney Toons “leading” this country, we’re more likely to get anvils than answers.
(I don’t think the “Cadillac” tax plan exemption has any correlation with him long leaving office – it’s a concession of delay to the unions for bill passage. And why are they called Cadillac – GM has been making awful cars for decades?)
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
February 22nd, 2010 at 10:53 pm
Well, it is a free country, David. I guess we should have a plutocracy. But then, a certain crowd thinks they are better than everybody else.
February 23rd, 2010 | 9:59 am
David,
So, run roughshod over them? I would agree that people aren’t highly educated on every issue, but has the 20th century really given you any faith that a elite few can rule for the “necessary good” any better?
Maybe you haven’t met enough politicians to realize they are often uneducated on a lot of issues, depending on specialist advice (polymaths are few and far between). People are still people, whether they have a six-figure salary, public sector job or a doctorate. Beliefs matter more than sheepskins.
Like William F. Buckley said, I’d rather be ruled by the first 2000 people in the Boston phone book than the faculty of Harvard.
February 23rd, 2010 | 11:36 am
They don’t need the public option in the bill. First they’ll destroy the insurance companies ecomically, then declare a crisis and “solve” the problem with a single payer program. It takes longer that way, but they don’t have the people with them. If they destroy the health insurance companies, they’ll have people in the streets demanding single payer health care.
“Never let a crisis go to waste” has a corollary … “If you don’t have a crisis, make one”.
February 23rd, 2010 | 3:33 pm
The political calculus is that there will be a large enough left base to sustain them through at least 2012 and they will have the bonus of enacting “historic” legislation which supports abortion and introduces rationing for the old, read Zeke Emanuel style death panels. If the layering on of debt kills the economy, as it surely will, and they are voted out – why, they still have their bonus.
February 23rd, 2010 | 3:37 pm
Jesuit Ach Crisco, Smith, we ALREADY have a plutocracy. Have you looked into them? We’re dumb enough to fall for it.
Free country? What is freedom?
Free to be a slave, use marijuana, free to assault someone without punishment, free to have an abortion, free to experiment on ESCs, free to pray for children instead of treat them in the hospital, free to enter any room of any federal building, free to not deal with the insufferable religiosity that is all around me, free to slander, etc, etc?
Lebron James, for example, would be free to state he is better than me at basketball. If he does, he is completely correct. Sir Sean Connery can/could attract more women than I can. Some people are better than others; deal with it.
JustMichigan: great faux intellectualism. Nothing displays brilliance more than quoting a dead white guy who spent his life fluffing around useless word vomit and in his death demonstrated that after his long life of wasted carbon consumption, he failed to learn the difference between the dead and the living as he apparently left his perceived ‘dead’ grandson out. Oh, and Buckley supported intelligent design and rejected evolution. Genius. Nothing says great intellect like believing something as fact without any evidence and in the face of a mountain of evidence – all the while being able to offer no logically sound support for your beliefs. (whether he really believed it or was just playing up to the gullible is questionable) Actually, I don’t begrudge him, if people are/were hebetated by his ‘breathtaking inanity’, it speaks to them, not him.
February 23rd, 2010 | 7:26 pm
[...] About the president’s chafing itch to ram a health care bill down America’s throat, uber-cool bioethicist and attorney Wesley J. Smith warns, You can’t refuse to listen to the people and ultimately succeed as a politician. [...]
February 23rd, 2010 | 8:58 pm
david you need to find a girl man!
February 24th, 2010 | 9:09 am
Trollish bait and switch, David, attacking the person rather than the idea, bad form, bad form. Just because the adulterous Robert Oppenheimer tried to kill a professor by poison doesn’t negate atomic science, wouldn’t you agree?
February 24th, 2010 | 11:23 am
David:
The funny thing is that you’re against a democratic form of government because you don’t think the common people are smart enough. And yet, judging by your comments on this blog, you haven’t got the brains to run a hot dog stand.
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