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PrintJanuary 5, 2011
Out with Pelosi
Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) is relegated to Minority Leader, ending her four-year reign of "very serious violence to the national debt and deficit."
Remarkably, in her "no regrets" news conference yesterday Speaker Pelosi said
If everyone in America was very, very pleased with his or her health insurance and had no complaints and had access to quality, affordable health care in our country, it still would have been necessary for us to pass the health-care reform bill because we could not sustain the system.
Incredible. It is, in essence, an admission that she and her party were hell bent on wrecking U.S. healthcare and nothing was going to stop them. This from the woman who snidely responded, "Are you serious? Are you serious?" when asked by a reporter about the constitutionality of ObamaCare.
By "sustain" above, Rep. Pelosi means "control", harkening back to one of her comrade's socialist slips regarding ObamaCare. In March 2010, Rep. John Dingell (D-MI) defended the legislation by saying "it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people."
In yesterday's news conference, Rep. Pelosi crowed that she looks forward and doesn't "look back." The Left never looks back, as Jamie Glazov wrote, because to do so would mean having to face the consequences of their ideology. Rep. Pelosi also claimed deficit reduction had been a high priority (the debt swelled by over 60% during her term as Speaker) and that repealing ObamaCare would "do very serious violence to the national debt and deficit."
In a report titled "Health Care Reform Is Likely To Widen Federal Budget Deficits, Not Reduce Them" a former director of the Congressional Budget Office concluded
The official Congressional Budget Office analysis indicates modest deficit reduction over the next ten years and beyond. We examine the underpinnings of the CBO's projection and conclude that it is built on a shaky foundation of omitted costs, premiums shifted from other entitlements, and politically dubious spending cuts and revenue increases. A more comprehensive and realistic projection suggests that the new reform law will raise the deficit by more than $500 billion during the first ten years and by nearly $1.5 trillion in the following decade.
Others have concluded similarly. Regardless, the government's record on estimating the cost of healthcare programs shows that "true costs are often significantly understated."
In an excellent Wall Street Journal editorial, Kimberley Strassel described ObamaCare as an unvetted "steaming pile of a statute," a "slapdash political product" that is now proving to be "an historic embarrassment in its legal shoddiness." ObamaCare is "a largely unread, 2,700-page fiend -- crafted in secret, fed on deal-making, birthed on late-night votes." A blurb on Mark Levin's website summarizing his show of last evening puts it well:
"We now see how it is easier to create a law such as ObamaCare than it is to repeal it. Destroying liberty is much easier than spreading it. With the new Republican Congress being sworn in on Wednesday, they must take on ObamaCare and stop the attack on capitalism and the private sectors."
Speaker-to-be Boehner has said a vote to repeal it could come as early as next week. And the lawsuits by the states are advancing.
