Jack Hunter: Bipartisan Blame for Obamacare

[Winehole23]

Bipartisan Blame for Obamacare

March 22nd, 2010

by Jack Hunter


Imagine Congress trying to pass an expensive and unpopular healthcare bill by twisting arms, cutting backroom deals, refusing transparency and politicians mysteriously changing their votes, only to finally pass the controversial legislation at the last hour by a paper thin margin.

This is what happened in 2003 when the “Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement and Modernization Act” was passed by a Republican controlled Congress with the minimum 216 votes and was signed into law by President George W. Bush. It was the largest government healthcare en lement expansion to date, estimated at about $400 billion, but has exceeded over half a trillion since. Said Bush, “These reforms are the act of a vibrant and compassionate government.”


Our “vibrant and compassionate government” acted in full force again this week, as the so-called “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act” was passed by a Democrat controlled Congress, where arms were twisted, backroom deals were cut, there was little transparency, politicians mysteriously changed their votes and the controversial legislation passed at the last hour by a paper thin margin. At a price tag of nearly a trillion dollars, the Democrats claimed it was a great moral victory while the Republicans cried foul, or as House Minority Leader John Boehner thundered, “Can you say it was done openly with transparency and accountability, without backroom deals and struck behind closed doors, hidden from the people? no you can’t!”


Boehner’s right, but it was the House Minority Leader and his Republican Party that helped push through Bush’s Medicare expansion, a piece of legislation passed by cutting backroom deals behind closed doors and hidden from the people. Beginning with a national debt of a little over $5 trillion in 2000, the debt doubled in eight years, rising to over $10 trillion when Bush left office. Said Boehner in the wake of the passage of Democrats healthcare scheme Sunday night, “shame on us.” He was right to use the word “us.”


With an America still in s shock over what went down on Capitol Hill this week, some might be asking “why is Jack Hunter wasting time in attacking the Republicans? We need to stop the Democrats!” No, we need to stop big government, period. And it would be a huge mistake to now blindly embrace the big government party of yesterday in order to stop the big government party of today. On Monday, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee immediately claimed that the healthcare vote on Sunday proved that there was a major difference between the two parties. Bull. What the healthcare vote proved was that Republicans now have an issue to run on in 2010 and 2012 and they know it. What it does not prove is that if victorious, Republicans would behave any different than when they were expanding government healthcare and doubling the national debt while Bush was in office.


Sunday’s vote will no doubt boost attendance at the tea party rallies scheduled for Tax Day, April 15th and beyond, but in the wake of the Democrats’ healthcare power grab, the tea party folks must work harder than ever to maintain their movement’s independence. Tea partiers should support individual Republicans who have continuously proven their fiscal conservatism, like Jim DeMint or Ron Paul, they should support 10th amendment efforts to nullify Obamacare, they should challenge the cons utionality of the healthcare bill, and they should keep calling their senators and congressman, holding rallies and raising . What they should not do is turn into blind Republican partisans, a historically self-defeating condition that so many GOP leaders, talk radio hosts and other mainstream right-wingers now seem so anxious for conservatives to return to. Tea parties and town hall protests have not been comfortable environments for Republicans like John Boehner, and rightfully so. As bad as Obama and the Democrats are, now is not the time to make big government Republicans more comfortable out of fear of the other party.

Fear of Bill Clinton and his Democratic Party led to the “Republican Revolution of ‘94,” but that grassroots anger eventually subsided, settling into the same old blind partisanship which led to George W. Bush, who went on to expand government far more than Clinton. Like his predecessors, Obama’s Democratic Party will always promote big government, but only an opposition party serious about limiting federal power and spending can feasibly and finally put an end to their madness. When in power the Republicans have not been serious, and the Democrats healthcare power grab this week was simply an extension of the groundwork laid by the GOP in 2003, when Bush’s party expanded Medicare in the same shady, bullying and costly manner. Asks The American Conservative’s Daniel McCarthy, “how long it will be before Republicans are campaigning as defenders of Obamacare, just as they campaign now as defenders of the Department of Education and other programs they once pledged to abolish?”


Indeed. And how long will it be before Obamacare becomes just like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security, yet another en lement Americans cannot afford yet Republicans will not oppose? One could say “time will tell,” but time has already told. With Obamacare, Democrats were the villains, but Republicans were not the heroes. This is a lesson conservatives cannot afford to forget.

[Winehole23]

Jude Wanniski’s Two Santa Claus theory, written in 1974, was a Republican strategy designed to beat the Democrats who seemed most successful when promising and delivering on big spending en lement programs. He analogized this to Democrats acting like one giant Santa Claus. When Republicans tried to match the Democrats largesse, they traditionally lost elections. So, what was the solution?



In order to beat them at their own game, Wanniski called for Republicans to act twice as beneficient, just like Two Santa Clauses, when they got into power. He recommended they promise even bigger spending government programs like the medicare prescription bill, AND cutting taxes like the insane Bush-cuts even while invading and occupying whatever the country du jour was. Wanniski also said that when they were out of power, Republicans needed to complain to high heaven about the deficits run up by Democrats. Fear of having to defend this hypocrisy was not an issue to Jude Wanniski nor is it an issue to today’s Republicans who feel free to say and do just about anything as long as it gets them some air time or an interview on The Fox News division of the party’s overall propaganda machine .



When Clinton became President, he ins uted pay as you go in part to head off Republican opposition to deficit spending. When George Bush followed him, the Two Santa Clauses came to town. One of them spent like a drunken sailor, ran up huge deficits, and promoted at least two wars without funding them. The other, cut taxes for the wealthy in order to gain political contributions for the next election cycle. It was the perfect fulfillment of the Two Santa Claus theory.



Before any more talk of reforming anything, we need to reform our campaign financing system that demands ever larger campaign contributions from the greatest predatory capitalists, monopolies and oligarchs of our day reciprocated by political gift giving when in power as a quid pro quo followed by the greatest most insane hypocrisy when not in power. Otherwise, the Democratic version of Wanniski may arrive on the scene promoting his own Three Santa Claus theory.

And as Kurt Vonnegut would say, “And so it goes.”

[boutons_deux]

"we need to reform our campaign financing system"

the only people who can write/change laws are the legislators that are owned (sooner or later, but ALWAYS) by capitalist/corporate money.

The Repug-packed radical/extremist/activist SCOTUS has already overturned 100 years of (ineffective) precedent in keeping corps' $$ out of politics.

America is irretrievably lost.

Even Nazi/Communist/Socialist/Marxist/Terrorist Magic Negro had to compromise with the corporations and give them taxpayers' 100s of $Bs to get his health care reform.

Capitalists and corps run the American corporatocracy.

All talk about reform is futile masturbation.

[whottt]

The Repug-packed radical/extremist/activist SCOTUS has already overturned 100 years of (ineffective) precedent in keeping corps' $$ out of politics.

If it was ineffective them what good was it?

[Winehole23]

America is irretrievably lost.

ing is forever, thank God.

All talk about reform is futile masturbation.

Probably. It's nice to think about it, tho.

[boutons_deux]

"f it was ineffective them what good was it"

hardly any good at all. SCOTUS simply removed any need for pretense that corps $$$ not be influential, when in fact corporate money is, has been actually decisive.

" ing is forever"

Your naiveté is touching. Keep on voting, fool, it really makes a difference.

[Winehole23]

If you're sophisticated, I'm pretty sure I don't want to be one.

[Winehole23]

No bites on the Two Santa Claus theory?

[boutons_deux]

"If you're sophisticated, I'm pretty sure I don't want to be one."

your literate, evidence-based counter-examples obliterate me.

[EVAY]

Well, it seems tome that both articles are pretty hard to refute.

I mean, the facts are what they are, and as many of us have pointed out time and again in this forum, Republicans are no better than democrats at being fiscally responsible, regardless of their campaign rhetoric.

[Winehole23]

your literate, evidence-based counter-examples obliterate me.

My argument was aesthetic in the first place, a matter of taste; why insist it be rational?

[Winehole23]

Why make it all about me when we can discuss Santa Claus and the war on Christmas instead?