Reid Gets to 60

Barring some last minute surprise, the Democrats will pass health care reform legislation. I didn't think they would be able to do it. It looks like I was wrong. Whatever else one may think about the process and the policy, it represents a remarkable act of courage.

What explains this sudden, unlooked for courage? Very simply, the Democrats were cornered animals on this issue. One thing they told themselves was that they would suffer more by not passing a bill than by passing one that aroused great opposition. I think that is very questionable, and I don't think the Democrats really believe it. They are well aware that public opinion has shifted against them, so they reckoned that this might be their one chance to shift health care policy to the left. If they are damned either way, might as well go for broke.

But consider the odds in this gamble. There is a reason that none of the details of reform were discussed much during the recent presidential election. If Barack Obama had told people what the Democrats would do about health care, with the White House and a veto proof majority in Congress, John McCain would now be living at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Likewise the entire Senate drama has been one of hiding the true nature of the Senate bill. We are told that it will cost under a trillion over ten years, that it will reduce the deficit. The President continues to say that it is something we must do to control health care costs. In fact, the ten year cost will be closer to two trillion, once the benefits kick in. Unless the Democrats have really become new creatures, most of the offsets and spending cuts in the bill will fail to materialize, as the CBO has warned. It will increase the deficit by substantial amounts. The nation will end up spending more rather than less on health care.

The public opposes the reform by upwards to sixty percent. Maybe most of us will be presently surprised when large amounts of decision making powers shift from patients and doctors and the private sector generally to the Department of Health and Human Services. Of course, Reid's sleight of hand ensures that the new revenues kick in immediately whereas the benefits and therefore the costs begin in earnest only three years later. That is what it took to make the first ten years look affordable.

But I think that it is the expanding costs and size of government, rather than specific concerns about health care policies, that are behind the public opposition to reform. A year from now, the deficit and public debt aren't going to look any better. To the contrary, it will be clear that the Administration has no plan or prospects for getting the debt under control.

Dan Balz, writing in the Washington Post, has some interesting facts about the popularity of Democrats in Congress.

No Congress is ever loved, but the assessments of this Congress are striking in their negativity. In the most recent NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll, only 7 percent rated the performance of Congress above average, and 34 percent called it one of the worst.

But this one is better:

Thirty-eight percent said their member of Congress deserves to be reelected, and 49 percent said it is time to give a new person a chance. That is identical to the percentage who said to give a new person a chance a month before the 1994 GOP landslide and slightly above the number a month before the 2006 Democratic takeover.

Why won't that anti-Washington sentiment fall equally on Republicans and Democrats? Because it rarely does. Republicans are hardly secure or popular, but Democrats are in control. If the public is ready for change again in November, Democrats will feel the brunt of that anger.

The Democrats now have exclusive ownership of the health care reform legislation. If, next November, voters think of it along with massive deficits, that will be very bad for the party in power. If job growth is still lackluster…

Comments

[juciero20]

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[William]

If the Democrats are successful in reconciling the bills and pass this "historic achievement", they will likely suffer an even more historic loss in 2010 when the GOP runs on a platform of overturning it.

What support for this remains appears to be from those that aren't really paying attention. When the costs kick in and the supposed benefits don't, the dissatisfaction with Congress will be overwhelming.

The Democrats are succeeding in uniting the public, if only against their leadership.

[George Mason]

The Argus-Leader today has articles detailing the failings of the Indian Health Service. Being the Argus, they missed the relevance, that what they witnessed on the reservations, is government health care. This is what the entire population of our country can look forward to being the ultimate reality after the Democrats have run private health insurers and private health care out of business. What you see on the reservations is what you get in countries with socialized medicine. The Argus of course provided the standard liberal response, "throw more money at it." As with Medicare and Medicaid, we have been throwing ever increasing sums of money at programs that eat up ever increasing sums in bureacracy and keep accelerating towards bankruptcy.