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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