PrintSeptember 11, 2009
Why Obama Won't 'Hit the Reset Button' on Health Care
In spite of unexpected public opposition, President Barack Obama continues to unflinchingly "guarantee" that he will "reform" healthcare this year. Recently, he said the Democrats will get it "done one way or another," hinting of the nuclear option. By invoking arcane rules in the Senate, the President could force through a bill with only 51 votes, instead of the required 60. Such a partisan, bully-move would eliminate the need for dissenting Democrats -- not Republicans, as the administration frames it and the media dutifully reports.
Although Obama has ample Democrat majorities, he can't even secure the necessary Democrat votes -- hence, his nationally televised exhibition to Congress.
But why continue to insistent upon getting healthcare "reform" done this year? People are concerned about jobs, not healthcare remaking. In view of the President's falling poll numbers, why not back down and rethink the matter? -- especially considering that the cat is out of the bag with respect to the healthcare "plan." The plans are a mess consisting of over one thousand pages of incomprehensible, bureaucracy-creating madness which would be interpreted by unaccountable, Obama-appointed bureaucrats.
The fiscally responsible among us are questioning Obama's timing and refusal to back off. In the aftermath of the Democrat's failed $787 billion Ponzi scheme the administration now says, "The deficit over the 10-year period to come, will be $9 trillion.... That's up from the $7 trillion estimate a few months back when they released their budget in February."
What's a couple trillion here and there in Obama's economy? Similar to the hoped-for job stimulating effect of the so-called "stimulus plan," I guess they "guessed wrong" again.
Even Joe Knows Better
After having created unprecedented and unimaginable debt in record time, Obama is still behind the wheel of his steamroller, demanding the revamping of the entire healthcare system. No point in dealing with issues that would actually cut insurance costs like tort (medical malpractice lawsuits) reform and competition-killing government regulation. In context of Obamanomics, an unnecessarily prolonged recession and the accumulation of shameful debt, CNN's John King recently asked Sen. Joe Lieberman the following:
Is it time for the president to hit the reset button? Forget sweeping health care reform this year, do three or four incremental things that are less costly, prove that you're bringing the cost curve down and then go after the more difficult and more expensive issues?
"In a word, yes," replied Sen. Lieberman. Even a commonsense liberal, who might otherwise support government-run healthcare, can see the political danger:
In other words, we're in a recession. People are very worried about their jobs, about the economic future. They've watched us add to the debt of this country. We're projected to run a $1.8 trillion deficit this year, September 30th, more than $1 trillion next year. You mentioned the 10-year numbers. People are nervous. I think the protests coming out at the public meetings around the country this month are as much to do with that larger environment as they are with questions about health care reform.
Lieberman continued:
I think it's a real mistake to try to jam through the total health insurance reform, health care reform plan that the public is either opposed to or of very, very passionate mixed minds about. It's just not good for the system. Frankly, it won't be good for the Obama presidency.
All who oppose full-blown entitlement healthcare ought to be happy that President Obama decided to show his hand so early into his presidency -- by "jamming through" a thousand pages of unread "stimulus" law behind closed doors. Without taking a breath or blinking an eye, it was onward to cap and trade and healthcare overhaul. Frankly, I don't think Obama can help himself. The combination of inexperience, radical ideology and a messianic complex is exposing the real Barack Obama. He might be able to keep his college grades (and many other documents from his past) concealed, but he cannot seem to conceal his intention to radically (and instantly) remake the country at all costs.
The inexperience of Candidate Obama, of which the double-minded Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton forewarned, together with inexhaustible media fawning, is producing the current phenomenon. The staunch radicalism of Obama might have otherwise been tempered, but Obama was made to feel as though he were invincible. Thankfully, his first project was not government-controlled healthcare. If it had been, a still-mesmerized public may have awakened to a hard-to-swallow healthcare prescription.
The ‘Obama Code'
University of California, Berkeley, linguistics professor, George Lakoff, helps us to understand why Obama would press on full steam ahead with healthcare remaking in the midst of an economic recession. In his piece, The Obama Code, Lakoff explained back in February that people were missing the "sea change that Obama is bringing about" because they hadn't perceived his "moral vision."
President Obama "tends to express his moral vision indirectly," says Lakoff, and he does so via his moral and linguistic code. The conservative-leaning country would not have accepted Obama's moral vision if it had been communicated directly. Thus, moral relativism allows Obama to say one thing while believing and doing the opposite. That's why Obama could say, "I believe it makes more sense to build on what works and fix what doesn't, rather than try to build an entirely new system from scratch," with a straight face, in his Sept. 9 address to Congress.
The otherwise insane idea of proposing more entitlement in the face of multi-trillion dollar deficits makes perfect sense once one understands the Obama code. Lakoff notes:
The President is using his enormous skills as a communicator to express a moral system. As he has said, budgets are moral documents. His economic program is tied to his moral system and is discussed in the Code, as are just about all of his other policies.
Did you catch the key phrase? President Obama's "economic program is tied to his moral system." Obama's entire moral system was summed up inadvertently and succinctly on the 2008 campaign trail. The Joe the Plumber encounter was one of the rare moments in which Obama came off script and spoke directly. Obama blurted out his infamous line about "spreading the wealth around," and his explanation to Joe Wurzelbacher was framed in simplistic terms of Marxist morality: "It's good for everybody." Similarly, Lakoff adds:
Crises are times of opportunity. Budgets are moral statements. President Obama has put these ideas together. His economic program is a moral program and conversely. Why the quartet of leading economic issues--education, energy, health, banking? Because they are at the heart of government's moral mission of protection and empowerment, and correspondingly, they are what is needed to act on empathy, social and personal responsibility, and making the future better. The economic crisis is also an opportunity. It requires him to spend hundreds of billions of dollars on the right things to do.
There you have it. Regardless of the debt and destruction Obama inflicts upon the country the idealistic president believes he is doing the right thing.
At this point, I believe the Obama code has been cracked. But come hell or high water he will press on. Only the upcoming congressional and presidential elections will ultimately stop Obama from imposing his moral system on the country.
Monte Kuligowski is an attorney who can be reached at montekuligowski@gmail.com
