Reform

As Republicans contemplate what sort of budget they should propose (real budget solutions, not continuing resolutions), it's important to realize that they are in a somewhat enviable position: What is clearly best for the country is also likely best for them politically.

The incentive structure of our present health care system is fundamentally flawed, and the legislation signed by President Obama will exacerbate the problem. It will increase what we spend on health care, or lead to rationing, or both. Perhaps most important, it will undermine the self-reliance and character of the American people. 

Congress has always had its flaws. All too often, the road to the enactment of legislation has been fraught with corruption, stupidity, threats, bribes, and other sordid practices.

But as bad as that is, what transpired during the passage of health care reform was different and even worse. The process by which this bill was passed didn’t just feature corruption and violate traditional ethics. It revealed a president and a congressional leadership that in concert have shown more callous contempt than any in history for the will of the American people, the safeguards against the tyranny of the majority built into the Constitution, and the parliamentary rules by which Congress operates. And there’s every indication that, if need be, the same will be true of cap and trade, immigration reform, or whatever else Obama, Pelosi, and Reid may deem the next morsel they plan to cram down the recalcitrant throat of the American public.

Now that Rasmussen shows that, yes, Americans really do want Obamacare to be repealed, one hopes that Republicans will shelve their pessimism and advance this crucial and winning agenda with confidence. But now is also the time for the GOP to make sure that its slogan is clarifying, rather than obscuring its goal.

President Obama missed a host of opportunities to remedy Washington’s fever of polarization during the health care debate. Instead of forging a bipartisan coalition and ratcheting back the campaign-style rhetoric, he agreed to a one-party strategy and consistently demonized his opponents with over the top rhetoric.

Mr. Obama also falsely raised citizens’ expectations that one bill or a new government program could remedy all that ails us. Government is no wonder drug.  It cannot deliver all the life altering promises on the president’s wish list.

Now that President Obama has signed his health care bill into law, people are saying that the overhaul will do this or will do that. But given the pains to which the Democrats went to structuring the legislation so as to avoid presenting its true ($2 trillion-plus) ten-year costs to the American people, it's really more accurate to continue to say that the legislation would do this or that. For the Democrats won't ever get to implement their health care overhaul in any meaningful way unless President Obama wins reelection, or unless enough Obamacare-supporting Democrats remain in Congress to thwart the following five-word agenda: Repeal, and then real reform.

Nancy Pelosi said this morning that yet another health-care bill proposal will be ready "in days." It will come from the White House and will be smaller than either the House or Senate bills. Melody Barnes, a domestic policy adviser in the White House, said the new bill "borrows" from conversations during the bipartisan summit last week:

Yesterday, several outlets reported that the Democrats would "almost certainly" forgo the official conference process to get a health-care bill passed, opting instead to negotiate largely behind closed doors. Now, C-SPAN and other media outlets are criticizing the plan's lack of transparency.