By Andrew Cline on 12.21.09 @ 6:08AM
On health care, our president doesn't sweat the details.
The Senate health care "reform" bill that now has 60 votes and
could pass by the end of this week is 2,074 pages long. And
President Obama claims to know what's in it. Sort of.
Urging hold-out Democrats to back the bill, on Dec. 15, the
president said, "You talk to every health care economist out
there and they will tell you that whatever ideas are -- whatever
ideas exist in terms of bending the cost curve and starting to
reduce costs for families, businesses, and government, those
elements are in this bill."
The ideas are in there. Whatever they are.
Moments later, Obama urged senators to not sweat the details and
just pass the bill.
"The final bill won't include everything that everybody wants. No
bill can do that. But what I told my former colleagues today is
that we simply cannot allow differences over individual elements
of this plan to prevent us from meeting our responsibility to
solve a longstanding and urgent problem for the American people.
They are waiting for us to act."
Actually, the American people are screaming for Washington not to
act. Only one national poll taken this month shows a majority of
Americans in support of the Democrats' health care reform plan,
according to Pollster.com. Most show strong opposition.
The latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, conducted
last week, shows 32 percent of Americans in favor, 47 percent
opposed. The latest Washington Post/ABC
News poll, reported the day after President Obama claimed that
the American people were looking to Washington for action, showed
that 53 percent disapprove of Obama's handling of health care, 44
percent approve. More than half, 51 percent, opposed the
Democrats' health care reform plans, and 44 percent supported
them.
Obama's damn-the-details, just-pass-anything approach has lost
the support of the nation. Americans would rather Washington slow
down and do health care reform right than pass some half-baked
scheme.
But Obama doesn't care. He insists on passing something --
anything -- before the 2010 elections, when he might lose the
votes he needs to pass a plan that grants Washington enormous new
powers and lays the groundwork for a single-payer system.
Republicans ought to be pointing out the dangers in rushing
legislation into law. They can start with the story of last
week's spending bill. As Fox News has reported, the bill was
supposed to allow Amtrak passengers to carry guns on the trains,
as long as the guns were locked in a box. But that section was
incorrectly worded. The law, which Obama signed last week,
requires gun-carrying passengers to be locked in a box for
the duration of their trip. (Yes, you read that right.)
There are 2,074 pages in Harry Reid's health care bill. What
surprises await? There's no telling. The Democrats want to pass
it within five days. Could you finish a 2,074 page bill, written
by lawyers, in five days, and understand it? Can your senator?
This bill will entirely remake a sixth of the U.S. economy. It
will, as Obama said last week, "touch the lives of nearly every
American." The consequences of getting it wrong are tremendous.
And yet the president says, don't worry about the details, just
pass it. Comforting, isn't it?
topics:
Health Care, Barack Obama, Public Opinion
