“Collapse Of Their Credibility”: GOP Desperate To Defund ObamaCare Now Because They Know Its Popularity Is About To Skyrocket
Why are the Tea Party Republicans so desperate to defund ObamaCare right now? Because they know that once it goes into effect its popularity will skyrocket.
They know that once it is fully implemented, it will be impossible to take away the many benefits of ObamaCare. It is one thing to prevent something good from being passed by Congress. It’s quite another to take something away from the voters.
The Republicans know that once it is in effect, it will be impossible to tell the millions of Americans who have a pre-existing condition that they have to return to the days when they either were denied insurance coverage or had to pay an arm and a leg to get it.
They know that once it is in effect, it will be impossible to end the affordable coverage that will soon be available to the millions who are not covered by their employers and will have access to health insurance through the health insurance exchanges – where prices have come in lower than projected.
They know that once it is in effect, it will be very difficult to end coverage for the millions who will for the first time have health insurance through expanded Medicaid.
They know that once it goes into effect, it will be very hard to convince Americans to turn the health care system back over to the big insurance companies.
Most importantly, they know that all of the many ObamaCare “horrors” they have predicted – from “death panels” to price increases to a “government takeover” – will not happen.
As a consequence, they believe that once ObamaCare is fully implemented their credibility on the subject will collapse, support for major new progressive initiatives will increase, the popularity of the President – and of Democrats in Congress – will go up, and their chances of hanging on to the House or taking the Senate in 2014 – and the White House in 2016 – will decline.
All of that is why the Tea Party Republicans are so desperate to stop ObamaCare. That’s why they will risk shutting down the government or defaulting on America’s obligations – on the chance that they can force President Obama and the Democrats to delay its implementation and allow them to live to fight another day.
They are desperate. And to achieve their narrow ideological goal, they are willing to use the same desperate measures that other marginal movements have adopted around the world: they have taken a hostage. Except their hostage is not one person – it’s 320 million people – it’s the American economy.
The success of their hostage taking strategy faces two virtually insurmountable obstacles:
First, the President has made clear that he is not willing to negotiate at all over the debt ceiling or ObamaCare.
Many of these hostage takers are the same people who would demand, categorically, that the American government should never negotiate with hostage takers, because to do so only encourages them to take more hostages and make more demands.
President Obama apparently agrees with them. He knows that if he negotiates with people who are willing to collapse the American economy just to get their way, that they will then use the same threat again and again. And he is unlikely to budge, since he is obviously unwilling to sacrifice his signature initiative — ObamaCare.
Second, many key GOP stake holders think that the Tea Party’s willingness to shut down the government or cause a default is sheer madness and would severely damage the GOP brand. Democratic pollsters Jim Carville and Stan Greenberg wrote in a memo last Wednesday:
The Republican Party has a serious brand problem, and it keeps getting worse. The GOP is viewed unbelievably negatively, and even Republicans themselves agree that it is deeply divided.
Polls show the Republican brand problem manifesting itself in the Virginia gubernatorial race, and in Senate races across the country. And if Republicans damage their brand even worse by shutting down the government, we think that they could trigger a revolt that might even imperil their House majority in 2014.
The GOP demand that President Obama and the Democrats surrender or face a government shutdown or default is like a combatant in a war demanding that the other side surrender or he’ll blow his own head off. From a purely political point of view -if it weren’t so bad for the country and economy – you’d have to say: “Go ahead, make my day.”
All the polls show that if either a shutdown or default takes place, the Republicans will take the blame by a factor of at least two to one.
And after they have taken the blame, in the end they will collapse. Even the Wall Street Journal editorial page said recently:
The evidence going back to the Newt Gingrich Congress is that no party can govern from the House, and the Republican Party can’t abide the outcry when flights are delayed, national parks close and direct deposits for military spouses stop. Sooner or later the GOP breaks.
So while the state of desperation in evidence among Tea Party Republicans at the prospect of ObamaCare going into effect — and becoming very popular — might be understandable, their desperate strategy of holding the economy hostage in order to kill it is downright suicidal.
Then again, while suicide bombers end up as victims of their own actions at the end of the day, there is no question they can inflict enormous amounts of pain and suffering on everyone else.
By: Robert Creamer, The Huffington Post Blog, September 20, 2013
“We Don’t Make Deals With Bullies”: No Yielding On Obamacare, Debt Ceiling Or Government Shutdown
Republicans in the House are like a bunch of 3-year-olds playing with matches. Their hapless leaders don’t have the sense to scold them and send them to their rooms — which means President Obama has to be the disciplinarian in this dysfunctional family.
Mature adults in the GOP should have explained reality to these tantrum-throwing tykes long ago: It simply is not within their constitutional power to make Obamacare go away. They can scream at the top of their lungs, roll around on the floor, hold their breath until they turn blue, waste everybody’s time with 41 useless votes — whatever. All they can really do is hurt themselves or others.
Yet here we are, with Speaker John Boehner (Ohio) cowed into letting his members threaten to shut down the government unless they are allowed to stay up all night watching television and eating candy. Also, unless the Senate and Obama agree to nullify health-care reform before it fully takes effect.
I happen to believe that Obamacare is a great accomplishment, providing access to medical insurance to millions of Americans who lack it and bringing the nation much closer to universal health care. It’s an imperfect law, to be sure, but it could be made much better with the kind of constructive tinkering that responsible leaders performed on Social Security and Medicare.
Even if Obamacare were tremendously flawed, however, it would be wrong to let a bunch of extremist ideologues hold the country hostage in this manner. If Republicans want to repeal the reforms, they should win the Senate and the presidency. If not, they’re welcome to pout and sulk all they want — but not to use extortion to get their way.
At issue is not just the threat of a federal shutdown, which will happen Oct. 1 unless Congress passes a continuing resolution to fund government operations. The debt ceiling has to be raised before the Treasury hits its borrowing limit, which will happen around Oct. 18. If House Republicans don’t kill or neutralize Obamacare with the funding bill, they are ready to threaten the nation — and the global economy — with a potentially catastrophic default.
The proper response — really, the only response — is to say no. And mean it.
Obama is, by nature, a reasonable and flexible man, but this time he must not yield. Even if you leave aside what delaying or defunding Obamacare would mean for his legacy — erasing his most significant domestic accomplishment — it would be irresponsible for him to bow to the GOP zealots’ demands.
The practical impact of acquiescing would be huge. Individuals who have been uninsured are anticipating access to adequate care. State governments, insurance companies and health-care providers have spent vast amounts of time and money preparing for the law to take effect. To suddenly say “never mind” would be unbelievably reckless.
The political implication of compromising with blackmailers would be an unthinkable surrender of presidential authority. The next time he says “I will do this” or “I will not do that,” why should Congress or the American people take him seriously? How could that possibly enhance Obama’s image on the world stage?
Obama has said he will not accept a budget deal that cripples Obamacare and will never negotiate on the debt ceiling. Even if the Republicans carry through with their threats — and this may happen — the president has no option but to stand his ground.
You don’t deal with bullies by making a deal to keep the peace. That only rewards and encourages them. You have to push back.
The thing is, this showdown is a sure political loser for the GOP — and smart Republicans know it. Boehner doesn’t want this fight and, in fact, should be grateful if Obama hangs tough and shows the crazies the limits of their power. Most Republicans in the Senate don’t want this fight. It’s doubtful that even a majority of House Republicans really, truly want this fight, no matter what they say publicly.
But irresponsible demagogues — I mean you, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) — have whipped the GOP base into a frenzy of unrealistic expectations. House members who balk at jumping off the cliff risk being labeled “moderate,” which is the very worst thing you can call a Republican — and the most likely thing to shorten his or her political career.
The way to end this madness is by firmly saying no. If Boehner won’t do it, Obama must.
By: Eugene Robinson, Opinion Writer, The Washington Post, September 20, 2013
“Fraticidal Rage”: Ted Cruz Turns Obamacare Defunding Plan From Disaster To Utter Fiasco
Now that the House of Representatives has passed its bill to keep the government open and rid the world of Obamcare, the full strategic disaster the Republicans have embarked upon is coming into focus. The procedure is a little confusing, but once we disentangle the steps, it quickly becomes clear that the Republicans have started a dumpster fire they have no obvious way to extinguish.
It’s important to keep in mind that a government shutdown does not, in and of itself, stop Obamacare from going forward. Most of the money for that law has been appropriated through channels (tax credits, state-based exchanges, etc.) immune to shutdown. The Obamacare-shutdown method relies on the hope that keeping the government shut down proves so annoying to the president that he (or a filibuster-proof majority in both houses) submits to abolishing his health-care reform in return for reopening the government. That is the only way shutting down the government could result in the defunding of Obamacare.
Step one of this far-fetched scheme was the passage of a “continuing resolution,” which keeps the government open, attached to abolishing Obamacare. Now it goes to the Senate. Once that bill comes up for a vote in the Senate, the majority can vote to strip away the provision defunding Obamacare. That vote can’t be filibustered. It’s a simple majority vote, and Democrats have the majority.
What Senate Republicans can do is filibuster to prevent the bill from coming to a vote at all. That’s the only recourse the Senate defunders have. And Ted Cruz is promising to do just that: “ I hope that every Senate Republican will stand together,” he says, “and oppose cloture on the bill in order to keep the House bill intact and not let Harry Reid add Obamacare funding back in.” A “committed defunder” in the Senate likewise tells David Drucker, “Reid must not be allowed to fund Obamacare with only 51 votes.”
In other words, the new stop-Obamacare plan now entails filibustering the defunders’ own bill. They can do this with just 41 votes in the Senate, if they can get them. But consider how terrible this situation is for the Republicans. If they fail, it will be because a handful of Republicans joined with Democrats to break the filibuster, betraying the defunders. This means the full force of the defund-Obamacare movement – which is itself very well funded by rabid grassroots conservatives eager to save the country from the final socialistic blow of Obamacare — will come down on the handful of Senate Republicans who hold its fate in their hands. The old plan at least let angry conservatives blame Democrats for blocking their goal of defunding Obamacare. Now the defunders can turn their rage against fellow Republicans, creating a fratricidal, revolution-eats-its-own bloodletting.
But what if it succeeds? Well, success means the government shuts down because the Senate Republican majority has successfully filibustered a vote on the House bill preventing a shutdown.
Remember, the whole Republican plan to win the shutdown fight is to pin the blame on Obama. Obama is trying to shut down the government, they are already saying, and we’re trying to keep it open. That message depends on both houses of Congress passing a law that defunds Obamacare, and Obama refusing to sign it. Then they can present themselves as having acted to keep the government open, and Obama refusing to go along merely because he doesn’t want to snatch health insurance away from 20 million people.
It’s a patently disingenuous argument that stands no chance of success. But even that patently disingenuous message relies on establishing the optics of Obama refuses to sign our bill. Now the Republican plan relies instead on maintaining a Republican filibuster in the Senate, in perpetuity, to prevent a vote on a bill to open the government. They have maneuvered themselves into the least tenable position to defend a plan that never stood a chance of succeeding in the first place.
By: Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine, September 20, 2013
“The Party of Me, Me, Me”: The Republican Push To Defund Obamacare Is Just Selfish And Vindictive
Recently, Republicans have shown that their disdain for Obamacare is stronger than their level of caring about the American people, as evidenced by their wanting to shut down the government if there is not a one-year delay in implementating this legislation.
Seriously, tenacity is one thing, but acting like a bunch of spoiled brats at the taxpayer’s expense is not what Americans sent those politicians to Washington to do. Despite 40 votes to repeal, defund, etc., the GOP shows once again that it’s the main attraction at the circus, for they must know this is all for show. The Democratic ruled Senate is not going to vote in favor of such a proposal and, clearly, the president would not sign the law if it made it to his desk.
And are we forgetting the majority of Americans who voted for the president both in his first and second runs for the White House? Doesn’t the population who wants, and for many needs, the Affordable Care Act count? I guess not.
Whether it’s egos, their careers or the inability to stand apart from their terribly fragmented party, Republicans still shows they are the party of no, the party of the rich and the party of the inability to play nice with Democrats to do what is in the best interest of all Americans.
Having said that, we here on the left have been asking: if you want to repeal and replace this piece of legislation, what are you replacing it with? Well today, that has been answered.
A group of House Republicans is going to unveil legislation providing an expanded tax break for consumers who purchase their own health coverage and increasing the government funding for high-risk pools. What the GOP has clearly forgotten is one of the reasons the Affordable Care Act was passed, was because it’s, well, …. affordable!
Has the GOP seen the rates being put forth by the big insurance companies? My husband, my two children and I pay nearly $2,000 a month for our PPO plan; and we are all healthy, thankfully.
The proposal, which was endorsed by the Republican Study Committee, provides a tax credit to people who buy coverage that is approved for sale in their state. The GOP says the American people could claim a deduction of $7,500 against both their income and payroll taxes, regardless of the cost of insurance.
But there are several big problems here. 1) Who decides what is “approved” for sale and based on what criteria? 2) You are giving the states the power of dispensing insurance, but the states can’t afford to. 3) What happens to federal programs such as Medicare, Medicaid and the numerous states that hold their hand out for their check from Uncle Sam, including some GOP-led states such as New Jersey and Florida? 4) Millions of Americans who should pay their taxes do not. Now you want more people to pay less? And you constantly talk about our deficit and how our government can’t pay its bills? 5) This program is not fair. If one person has a very low-rate plan and is healthy, they can deduct as much as someone paying triple who might not be. And lastly, 6) If Obamacare is difficult to implement and there was much criticism on the delay of this plan, how would the complexity of this proposal be any less?
The RSC claims a membership of 175 members, about three-quarters of the House Republicans. I wonder, have all 175 Republicans read what’s in it?
Let’s face it. This party is angry. They’re angry a black guy won. They’re angry the black guy got his team to draft and pass health care reform, badly needed in this country. So they want their version, their turn to “win”; that is what this is about. This is not in the best interest of the health of America’s people, nor the health of our economy. If we turn the tables on the GOP, will their plan be a “job destroyer,” as they have suggested Obamacare will be? What’s the start date of their plan? Will there be any glitches?
The bottom line is, Obamacare has been passed. To hold the country financially hostage and threaten to shut it down if the GOP doesn’t get its way and its version of a piece of legislation that is already law is not good leadership; it’s selfish. Is that what America needs in Washington today? I don’t think so.
By: Leslie Marshall, U. S. News and World Report, September 20, 2013
“The Obamacare Is Falling! The Obamacare Is Falling!”: Here Are The Reasons You Shouldn’t Believe Any Of It
As we approach the full implementation of the Affordable Care Act at the end of the year, confusion still reigns. Most Americans don’t understand what the ACA does or how it works, which is perhaps understandable. It is, after all, an exceedingly complex law, and from even before it passed there was an aggressive and well-funded campaign of misinformation meant to confuse and deceive Americans about it, a campaign that continues to this day and shows no sign of abating. To undo uncertainty and banish befuddlement, we offer answers to a few questions you might have about Obamacare.
What’s Happening When?
The next important date is October 1, when open enrollment for insurance plans on the new exchanges begins. Those who sign up will begin their new insurance on January 1, when the rest of the high-profile components of the law take effect. The individual mandate, requiring everyone to carry insurance or pay a fine, takes effect, as does the rule forbidding insurance companies from denying anyone coverage (or charging them exorbitant premiums) because of pre-existing conditions. In fact, after January 1 the entire notion of the “pre-existing condition” will become nothing but a historical curiosity, a feature of the dark past we’ve moved beyond. Insurance companies will also be forbidden from imposing annual limits on what people are covered for (an accompanying ban on lifetime limits is already in effect). Tax credits for small businesses to offer their employees insurance will be expanded, and millions of low-income Americans will be eligible to be covered through Medicaid. While we talk about January 1, 2014 as the date of full implementation, dozens of provisions have already gone into effect, from free preventive care to expanded coverage for young adults to the closing of the Medicare prescription drug “donut hole” (you can read a comprehensive implementation timeline here if you’re so inclined).
How Many States Are Expanding Medicaid?
There is probably no provision of the ACA that will have a more immediate and profound impact on as many people’s lives as the expansion of Medicaid. In the current system, each state determines how poor you have to be to become eligible for the joint federal-state program, but under the ACA anyone with an income up to 133 percent of the federal poverty level would be eligible. Unfortunately, the Supreme Court declared that states could refuse to accept the expansion, and many states dominated by Republicans couldn’t wait to say “no” to Barack Obama and to their own poor citizens who desperately need insurance, even though the federal government will be picking up almost all of the tab.
The cruel irony is that many of the states refusing the expansion are those that have the largest proportion of poor people who could benefit, and are already the stingiest with Medicaid eligibility. For instance, in Texas, a working adult with children can’t be covered in Medicaid if her income exceeds 25 percent of the poverty level. So a single mother with three children who makes over $5,888 a year is considered too wealthy to get Medicaid. In Alabama it’s 23 percent; in Louisiana it’s 24 percent. These are all states with high rates of poverty, and states where the Republican governors and legislatures have refused to accept the money the federal government is offering to expand Medicaid. In these states, if you’re a middle-income person, you’ll be able to get government subsidies through the new health-care exchanges, but if you’re poor but not quite desperately poor enough to fall below the Scroogian eligibility limits, you’ll get no help at all. These states have essentially cut off their noses to spite Barack Obama’s face, giving up billions in federal money, a reduction in uncompensated care they end up paying for, and a healthier and more productive populace, all so they can give the finger to the President.
When you look at map of which states are accepting the Medicaid expansion, with just a few exceptions it looks a lot like an electoral college map, with Republican states saying no and Democratic states saying yes:
In just the last few weeks, Michigan has decided to accept the expansion, and Pennsylvania has proposed to take the federal money but use it to give low-income citizens private insurance (the Department of Health and Human Services has to approve such a plan). That will bring the total to 25 states plus the District of Columbia accepting the expansion, with another four (Indiana, Tennessee, Ohio, and New Hampshire) still debating the issue. After the Supreme Court’s decision, many predicted that even Republican-dominated states would find the money the government is offering too good to pass up. So far it hasn’t happened, meaning millions of poor Americans who live in Republican states are out of luck. And you’ll be shocked to learn that the poor in these states, mostly in the South, are disproportionately black.
What’s Up With The Exchanges?
Setting up a health-care exchange requires time, effort, and some minimal level of concern for seeing your citizens be able to take advantage of the ACA’s benefits. So it isn’t surprising that nearly all the Republican states that said no to the Medicaid expansion also didn’t choose to bother setting up their own exchange. In the end, 17 states (including D.C.) decided to do it themselves. Another nine are partnering with the federal government on an exchange, leaving 25 states that have left the process entirely to the federal government. This certainly makes HHS’s job harder, but no one yet knows how well those federally-run exchanges will work. All of those 25 have Republican governors, legislatures, or in most cases, both.
One potential pitfall is that in many of those Republican-run states, the state government is taking active steps to sabotage the exchanges, particularly by making the work of the “navigators” as difficult as possible. These are local groups, like universities, hospitals, churches, and the like, who have gotten federal grants and training to help people find their way through the process of getting insurance through the exchange. For example, Georgia is forcing navigators to get special state licenses (the Republican state insurance commissioner pledged to do “everything in our power to be an obstructionist”); Florida has banned them from the grounds of state health facilities. It remains to be seen just how much of an impact the sabotage efforts will have.
Are My Premiums Going To Go Up?
The answer to that question can be summed up as 1) It’s complicated, and 2) It depends. If like most people you get insurance through your employer (or your spouse’s), things probably won’t change for you. Your premiums have risen steadily in recent years, and in the short term, they’ll probably continue to rise. Nevertheless, recent data show a dramatic slowdown in the rate of increase. Last year, premiums rose by 4 percent, half of the 8 percent per year average of the last decade. That mirrors a slowdown in overall health spending. In other words, that curve the ACA was designed to bend is already bending.
If you’re now on the individual market (or uninsured) and you’ll be buying insurance on the exchanges, how much you pay will depend on how old you are, where you live, what your income is, and what plan you choose. If you make less than 400 percent of the poverty level you’ll get a subsidy so that your premium doesn’t rise above a certain percentage of your income; if you want to try to figure out now what it would be, you can read this report to get an idea of what you might pay. While we can’t make any sweeping statements that apply to everybody, there will certainly be a lot of people who find that insurance is more affordable than they thought. On Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services released a report showing that because of the subsidies, 6.4 million people would be able to buy insurance through the exchanges for less than $100 a month. As one Rand Corporation study concluded, “after accounting for tax credits, average out-of-pocket premium spending in the nongroup market is estimated to decline or remain unchanged.” While there are some people who could pay more than they do now—say, young people who make too much to qualify for subsidies, used to have bare-bones insurance, and are now getting one of the more comprehensive plans available through an exchange—overall it doesn’t appear that the threats of “rate shock” will be borne out.
How Many People Are Going To Get Insurance Who Didn’t Have It Before?
This is also a difficult question to answer precisely, because there are a few unknowns. First, over time more states could accept the Medicaid expansion, increasing the number of newly insured people. Second, the fines for those who choose not to carry insurance are quite small, so some people (particularly the young, who are immortal and never get sick) could decide that it’s better to pay a fine that costs less than insurance does, but nobody knows how many of them will. Third, each state will be doing its own outreach to sign people up for the exchanges and for Medicaid; some will inevitably do a better job than others.
All of those variables make precise estimates difficult. One National Bureau of Economic Research experiment to see how uninsured people respond to the cost of getting covered concluded that “75 percent of the uninsured are projected to enroll, implying that 39 million individuals would gain coverage as a result of the law.” The Congressional Budget Office, on the other hand, projects that the ACA will reduce the ranks of the uninsured by 25 million. One thing we can say is that though tens of millions will probably become newly insured, there will still be millions of uninsured people in America. One of the main tasks in coming years will be getting that number as close to zero as we can.
Are There Going To Be Terrible Effects On The Economy?
If you’ve been paying attention to health-care news, you’ve probably seen stories featuring an employer who has 49 employees and says he’d love to hire more people, but since Obamacare’s employer mandate kicks in at 50 employees and he’d have to offer health coverage if he hired anybody else, he won’t do it. It’s quite remarkable how reporters always seem to find that business with just under 50 employees (my suspicion is that the National Federation of Independent Business, a conservative small-business group, finds them, recruits them, and passes them along to journalists). But the truth is that they’re extremely rare. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 93 percent of companies that size already offer health benefits, even before the law’s requirements kick in. And the administration has delayed the employer mandate by a year anyway.
Another charge is that employers everywhere are cutting employees’ hours below 30 per week, the level at which the mandate will eventually kick in, so they don’t qualify as full-time. While there are certainly employers who have done this, there’s little evidence it’s happening on a large scale. The number of workers just below that 30-hour cutoff is tiny to begin with and didn’t increase as the original date for the mandate approached. If employers were rushing to cut workers’ hours, those numbers would be large and growing; instead, the opposite is true.
You could condemn an employer who figures out a way to avoid giving her workers health benefits, even if not all of them are as repulsive as John Schnatter, the CEO of Papa John’s, who whined that if he had to give his employees health coverage it could raise the price of a pizza by as much as a shocking 14 cents. But one of the main things the ACA was meant to accomplish was to make those employer decisions less damaging to employees. “Job lock,” where you’re forced to keep a job you’d rather leave in order to hold on to your insurance, will be a thing of the past. And now that affordable insurance will be available to anyone regardless of whether they’ve been sick before, employers can decide to drop insurance without necessarily hurting their employees.
To see how, consider this story. Last week, Trader Joe’s announced that it would no longer be offering coverage for its employees who work less than 30 hours per week. Instead, it will give them $500 and send them to the exchanges. This seemed surprising, since Trader Joe’s is known for being an employee-friendly company. But as the company argues pretty persuasively, employees at that level are likely to get a better deal through an exchange than through their company policy when subsidies are factored in (and of course, the company will save money). We might see this pattern repeated with other employers. But would that be a bad thing? If an employee gets equivalent coverage for less money on an exchange, then they’ve effectively gotten a raise. Companies save money, which allows them to either raise salaries or hire more people. On the other hand, there is a cost to the federal budget of more people getting subsidies, but that may be a cost we’re willing to pay. It may be some time before we know how common an occurrence this is and what effect it’s having on the economy and the budget.
Is Obamacare Going To Make Doctors Quiz Me About Who I’m Sleeping With?
Here’s a good tip: if you read a story with a crazy new allegation about what the Affordable Care Act is going to do to you, there’s a good chance two things are true. First, it’s false. Second, Betsy McCaughey probably had something to do with it. She’s the woman who gave us “death panels,” and her latest bit of crazy is to try to convince you that because of Obamacare, doctors are suddenly being forced to ask you inappropriate questions about your sex life (this is a pattern you’ll become familiar with: she takes an ordinary feature of health care, like the fact that questions about sex are standard practice when taking a medical history, and makes it sound both sinister and a product of Obamacare). You can decide whether this kind of thing is just silly or pernicious and generally despicable (I lean toward the latter), but don’t be surprised if we see a whole round of new allegations like this one. Conservatives failed to stop the ACA from being passed into law, then failed to get it overturned in the Supreme Court, then failed to win the election that would have allowed them to repeal it. They will almost certainly get increasingly desperate after January 1st when the law is implemented and we don’t all suddenly find ourselves standing in breadlines wearing gray sackcloth, our spirits broken by the socialist hellhole into which we’ve descended. So who knows what they’ll come up with.
By: Paul Waldman, Contributing Editor, The American Prospect, September 20, 2013
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