Posted on 02/23/2010 12:17:57 PM PST by SeekAndFind
In keeping with his new spirit of compromise, Pres. Barack Obama has offered a health-care bill staking out middle ground between House and Senate Democrats.
At $950 billion, it’s more expensive than the Senate bill, but cheaper than the House bill, and mixes and matches sundry tax proposals. Obama has again proved himself a committed bipartisan leader — if liberals from the House and liberals from the Senate are considered political parties.
Obama’s true post-Massachusetts strategy now comes into focus. It wasn’t to engage in good faith with Republicans, who will be handy props at the upcoming health-care “summit.” It wasn’t to “pivot to jobs.” It was to wait until the shock of losing Ted Kennedy’s Senate seat faded enough that he could keep doing what he’d done previously.
Democrats are now in pursuit of a “catastrophic success” — to borrow George W. Bush’s phrase for the Iraq War — on health care. They figure that both House and Senate Democrats have already taken defining votes for unpopular health-care bills, that November is inevitably going to be ugly, so they might as well reach again for the goal that has eluded them since Truman.
It’s the Samson Option, with a twist. In his last extremity, Samson pulled down the pillars of the temple of Dagon to destroy himself and his Philistine enemies. Democrats will rain destruction on their own hapless, vulnerable members, a category that grows by the day. These swing-district Democrats, once hailed as the “majority makers” by Nancy Pelosi, have a new role as the suicidal front ranks of Pelosi’s Last Charge.
Top Democrats have talked themselves into believing that only passing health-care reform will save them. This is the latest woefully mistaken interpretation of Bill Clinton’s experience in 1994, whereby Clinton supposedly suffered most from failing to pass his ungainly, unpopular health-care reform. If only he’d succeeded in changing the health-care system in ways people opposed, he’d have been showered with huzzahs by a grateful nation.
Democrats have the usual dynamics of democratic consent reversed, a little like the Queen of Hearts who pronounces “sentence first, verdict afterwards” in Alice in Wonderland. Having failed to persuade the public of the merits of their bill, Democrats will try to pass it anyway on sheer legislative muscle — including the exploitation of filibuster-bypassing “reconciliation” rules in the Senate — and convince people what a good idea it was afterwards.
They think Obama will be better able to make the case for the bill once it passes. This assumes that once the bill is written into law over their vehement objections, Republicans will quietly leave the field and stop noting the tax increases, Medicare cuts and the overall cost, i.e., “winning the message war.”
All this is threadbare political rationalization. The real reason for passing the bill is simpler and, in its way, more admirable: unalloyed ideological commitment. Democrats have a theological belief that a quasi-government takeover of health care is the only way to create an equitable system covering nearly everyone. Why should they let public opinion or a mere historic rebuke in Massachusetts get in their way? Their antecedent is House Republicans’ persisting in the impeachment of Clinton even after getting beaten in the 1998 congressional elections. Sometimes a party won’t take “no” for an answer.
And, really, what else can Democrats do? “Pivot to jobs”? The job market is outside the short-term control of anyone, and Obama’s only jobs policy is yet more politically poisonous deficit spending. Unless he was going to take a powder this year or compromise with Republicans, which doesn’t interest him or his party, he had to try health care — once more, with feeling.
Nancy Pelosi should commission a poet as talented as Tennyson to memorialize the impending charge of her former majority makers: “Boldly they rode and well, into the jaws of Death, into the mouth of Hell.”
— Rich Lowry is editor of National Review
Us Freepers knew that from day one.
“And, really, what else can Democrats do? “Pivot to jobs”?”
They have no intention of stimulating jobs in the private sector only the public where the employee can be counted on to reliably vote Dhim.
Heres another thought. Say they pass a bill. They will immediately turn around and use that to get people that would otherwise be unmotivated to go to the polls by saying,”if the Pubbies win,they’ll take away your healthcare.” Nothing they do is ever without the goal of maintaining power. Nothing. Not ever.
The have 8 months until 8 Senators leave (up to 10) and they will neuter Obama. This is the time for Communism, if they can ram environmental bills, healthcare and banking baloney, it is irreversable.
The Statists want power, not helping people succeed.
The term...scorched earth... comes to mind.
.
That must make it 'centrist'...
They don’t care. Once in place it will be very hard to undo. To the left, this is their religion. They are willing to fall on the sword for the advancement of their faith.
SET THEIR LOCAL AND DC LINES ON FIRE!
Sen. Scot Brown's number is 202-224-5443
Capitol Hill switchboard is 202-224-3121
Lots of local demwit phone numbers on this thread.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2408217/posts
Rename, repackage, rewrite it a tad smaller, and sell another pig in a poke.
Tennessee has joined several other states in trying to pass a Health Care Freedom Act. NO COLAs for granny, retired Military or retired fed employees. BIG NEW fees for Tricare for Life retired over 65 Military's secondary health ins. (DOD bill already passed, delayed but goes into effect 2011)
http://www.navytimes.com/news/2009/10/military_tricarefees_blocked_100709w/
New Dem mantra: Woof, woof eat dog food granny....ala let them eat cake.
Friday, February 19, 2010
Obama says slight fix will extend Social Security
http://townhall.com/news/us/2010/02/19/obama_says_slight_fix_will_extend_social_security
Health Care Rationing for Seniors Another Problem in New Obama Plan
http://www.lifenews.com/bio3058.html
TRI CARE FOR LIFE This from a google search:
http://economicspolitics.blogspot.com/2009/05/tricare-for-life-is-obama-trying-to.html
This option would help reduce the costs of TFL, as well as costs for Medicare, by introducing minimum out-of pocket requirements for beneficiaries. Under this option, TFL would not cover any of the first $525 of an enrollee’s cost-sharing liabilities for calendar year 2011 and would limit coverage to 50 percent of the next $4,725 in Medicare cost sharing that the beneficiary incurred. (Because all further cost sharing would be covered by TFL, enrollees could not pay more than $2,888 in cost sharing in that year.)
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/99xx/doc9925/12-18-HealthOptions.pdf
http://www.vawatchdog.org/09/hcva09/hcva110609-1.htm
Bill Would Restrict Veterans’ Health Care Options 11/06/09
Buyer and McKeon Offer Amendments to Protect Veterans and TRICARE Beneficiaries
Congress plans to block Tricare fee increases
http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/10/military_tricarefees_blocked_100709w
By Rick Maze - Staff writer, Oct 7, 2009
Tricare fee increases imposed last week by the Defense Department will be repealed by a provision of the compromise 2010 defense authorization bill unveiled Wednesday by House and Senate negotiators.
Snip
The fee increases were announced on Sept. 30 and took effect on Oct. 1, but the defense bill, HR 2647, includes a provision barring any fee increases until the start of fiscal 2011.
Snip
Retired Army Maj. Gen. Bill Matz, president of the National Association for Uniformed Services, said the announcement of fee increases was shocking considering that the Obama administration promised earlier this year to hold off on any new fee Tricare fee increases until fiscal 2011.
“President Obama and DoD assured NAUS and the entire military family earlier this year that there would rightly be no increases in any Tricare fees” in fiscal 2010, Matz said. “We took them at their word, and I can’t believe that a co-pay increase like this was allowed to go forward,” he added.
Bambi doesn't keep his promises...so buyer beware.
Not necessarily "admirable", Rich.
Gag me with a spoon, Rich Lowry!
HF
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