The entire Obamacare saga has been the most dishonest, reckless, and foolish bit of legislating I think I have ever witnessed. It is a mess, and it seems quite obvious that our leaders don’t care that it is a mess. The problem—and particularly, Harry Reid’ s part in it—was summarized quite nicely over at Commentary by Jennifer Rubin. From her blog entry:
Sen. Harry Reid threw a long bomb in an act of desperation. Recognizing that there was no deal on the public option, Reid resuscitated an old liberal gambit expanding Medicare...At week’s end, a flurry of objections and criticism from senators, the Medicare actuary, editorial pages, previously supportive business groups, doctors, and hospitals together with shockingly negative polling on ObamaCare suggest that we may have finally reached a point when “doing nothing” (at least for a while) makes immense political sense for lawmakers...
In a sense, Reid clarified what many suspected was going on. The Democrats had ceased trying to craft a workable bill and had decided to pass something, anything, and fix it later. By choosing an approach so obviously hare-brained, however, Reid deprived his party of the pretense that they were engaged in serious lawmaking.
I still think it will pass in some form. But it will be a mess in desperate need of cleaning—and there will be a political price to pay.
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