One of the secrets of Washington is that members of Congress do no work on the people's business.  I mean this literally.

They work hard at getting re-elected (no sarcasm).  And it is hard and time-consuming work.  You can dress it up as dinners and champagne, but anybody who has been a road warrior knows that it leaves you wrung out at the end of the day.

This was OK when we had the Founders' America – a limited government of enumerated powers.  Then there were few issues.  Important issues, but few.  There was less politicking because the distance between government and constituencies was much greater.

But with the administrative state, Congress is called upon to settle detailed problems.  Members hand that off as much as they can to the bureaucracy, resulting in an unlimited government of undefined powers, but they still run up against the hard edge of details more frequently than they would like to.

This accounts for absolutely no work being done on a successor bill to Obamacare in the last seven years (meant figuratively, but correctly).  A few notes here and there.  Some wish lists.  But no confronting the enormous problem generated by Obamacare taking over the medical system.

Alas, once this is done, there is no going back to the status quo ante.  There is a ratchet in entitlements that the liberals well know and use.  Now that, for instance, pre-existing conditions are covered – and I get the desire for that – there is no reason for anybody to buy insurance.  Get it when they roll you in on a gurney.

That is the reason for the mandate.  Obama is a multiple personality.  However, one of those personalities – let's say 20% of the time – is the president of the United States in recognizable form.  It was in that mode that he rammed through the mandate.

There basically is no alternative to it.  There is no point in ranting about the free market because there is not a free market in medicine.  Depending on circumstances, the customer is happy with a secondary car – a used car – if that fits his means.  But who is going to raise his hand to give up the heart operation or to get a second-rate one?  Nobody.

The great sin was opening this Pandora's box by taking over the medical system.  But if you do that, the mandate is critical.  That is only one problem with "repealing" Obamacare.  At the least, doing so requires hard, hard work; long, long hours; false trails; dead ends.  Nobody in Washington among elected officials will do that kind of work.  Heck, they won't even read the bills when somebody else does it!  Lobbyists, or more correctly, lobbying organizations will do it, which is why they are so central, and, yes, so critical to the process.

It is no surprise that today's bill is a camel – and a camel that will not be able to cross the desert.