Lawrence Summers has written a column for the Washington Post on the Immediate lessons from health-care reform. You'll be shocked, shocked to learn that the root cause of ObamaCare's disastrous October 1st rollout is none other than the Republican party. Oh, he concedes there are other factors. The "dismal track record of the implementation of large-scale information technology initiatives," unexpected obstacles, lack of oversight, and maybe we can throw in some unrealistic expectations. But opposition to Obama is Summers' real concern, the one that he says is a threat to democracy no less.
These are old truths that those responsible for implementing Obamacare should have heeded. Yet fairness requires recognizing the equally important, and in some ways more fundamental, factor behind the problems implementing Obamacare: the systematic effort of the president’s opponents to delegitimize and undermine the project.
To begin with, there is very little that's legitimate about ObamaCare. Resistance to ObamaCare was so intense that the healthcare reform bill was passed without a single Republican vote. The people of Massachusetts, in an all too rare showing of good sense, elected a Republican, Scott Brown, to the Senate seat once held by the sainted (in progressive circles) Ted Kennedy, himself a champion of universal healthcare entitlement. Brown campaigned on the promise that he would be the 41st Senate vote against the Obama's healthcare reform bill. When that promise carried the special election, Congress broke its own rules so that the the bill could be passed without Brown ever getting the opportunity to vote against it. "Deem and pass" was the gimmick they used.
After laying the groundwork for a decisive vote this week on the Senate's health-care bill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested Monday that she might attempt to pass the measure without having members vote on it.
Instead, Pelosi (D-Calif.) would rely on a procedural sleight of hand: The House would vote on a more popular package of fixes to the Senate bill; under the House rule for that vote, passage would signify that lawmakers "deem" the health-care bill to be passed.
This meant that the original Senate healthcare bill, passed before the special election that sent Brown to the Senate, was accepted unchanged by the House. Deeming the Senate bill passed meant that there was no separate House version to be reconciled with the Senate bill in conference committee, which meant the Senate would not have to vote on it again. Had there been such a vote, ObamaCare would have been dead. Scott Brown's vote would have given Republicans enough for a successful filibuster.
Funny how the democratic process is a threat to democracy when progressive power grabs are at stake. Noticeably missing from Summers' analysis something more threatening to democracy — the word "keep," as in "If you like your healthcare plan, you can keep your healthcare plan. Period." If Obama, as the CEO of an insurance company, made a claim so deliberately and demonstrably untrue, he would very likely be spending the rest of his life in prison. But let's leave aside the fraud part of it. Obama's dishonesty reveals his absolute certainty that the American people would never agree to this healthcare mess that was foisted upon us — solely by the Democratic party. Obama knew he had to lie about it. He knew there was no other way to get it through.
Four years ago in September — the date was September 12, 2009 — about a half million people gathered for a peaceful demonstration against the healthcare law in Washington D.C. Even though the healthcare reform law was still in the proposal stage, resistance to it was intense.
We see more Tea Party predictions coming true. in response progressives like Summers argue that opposing Obama's policies is more than just racist. It's a threat to democracy as well. Summers believes that Republicans should simply drop all opposition to it. To do otherwise unpatriotic and undemocratic.
It is disingenuous for those who stood ready to turn any regulatory detail into an attack ad to profess outrage when guidance was not provided during an election campaign. It is hypocritical for those who held up confirmations of key officials with responsibility for managing federal health-care programs and whose behavior deterred many people from coming into government to lash out at the incompetence of government management. And it is indefensible to refuse to appropriate money to carry out a program and then attack it for being under-resourced.
Talk about disingenuous. A Republican attack on ObamaCare for being underfunded? Quite the opposite, it's way overfunded from the Republican perspective. Underfunded would be the best thing about it.
There is a danger here that goes far beyond delays in access to health insurance. The risk is of a vicious cycle in which poor government performance leads, on the one hand, to overly bold promises of repair and, on the other hand, to reduced funding and support for those doing the work. This generates unmet expectations and disappointment, setting off the cycle anew. In the end, government loses the ability to deliver for citizens and citizens lose respect for government. Our democracy is the loser.
I see no threat to democracy from the recognition that government can't do everything. Citizens may lose respect government, not because of an inability to deliver but instead because government is intruding to much. The greater threat to democracy in America is ObamaCare itself and the lies that are repeated trying to justify it.
Obama’s premeditated, repeated, nationally televised lies about the “Affordable Care Act” are integral, indeed essential, to his presidency and to the workings of the US government. The outcome of two national elections depended on it.
Even more significant is his contention that he never said what he said, and that what he said was true anyhow. In interpersonal relations, such a contention is an insult that makes civility impossible; because to continue to treat with someone who makes such affronts is self-degradation of which few are capable. In political life, such an insult is a declaration of war.
The greater threat to democracy is posed by a party whose political goals are more important than the truth. That's been the Democratic party for these last twenty years.
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