When it
comes to the President’s leadership ability concerning the Affordable Care Act,
or rather lack thereof, let’s look at the record. The White House, particularly
Press Secretary Jay Carney, likes to boast that “The Affordable Care Act was
passed by Congress, signed by the President, upheld by the Supreme Court, and
affirmed by the American people with the President’s reelection”. Looking at
the facts, that argument holds no water, but plenty of bull…
The ACA was not passed by Congress. It was passed by
Democrats. That’s an important distinction that the left conveniently forgets.
Every Democrat voted for it, and zero Republicans voted for it. “Congress” implies
some minimal degree of bipartisan support. Obama, Carney and the like refuse to
admit that the ACA and all of its failures rest squarely on the shoulders of
Democrats. It’s one thing for a Democratically controlled Congress to pass a
bill, but it’s another for a Democratically controlled Congress to pass a bill
with 0 Republican votes. Back then they championed the “Democratic”
achievement. Now it was “passed by Congress”. Funny how the rhetoric changes
with the wind…
The bill was also passed through a process known as
reconciliation. The Senate rule on reconciliation allows a budget bill to come
to a vote with debate being limited to 20 hours. It’s explicitly meant for
budget matters, not for full-scale overhauls of 1/6 of our economy, otherwise
known as our healthcare system. Knowing that extended debate could only hurt
the chances that the ACA would pass Democrats invoked reconciliation to push
their precious bill through (because as we’ve seen, the more we learn about
Obamacare the more we find out how detrimental it will be…remember Nancy
Pelosi’s telling remark, “We have to pass this bill to find out what’s in it”).
In violating the rules of reconciliation, the Senate Democrats showed their
hand. They were not confident enough in the merits of their own bill to let it
be submitted to free and open debate. Rather than let the bill speak for
itself, Democrats decided to use political sleight of hand to force the bill
upon us. They decided one of two things: either 1. We are too stupid to
understand their “highly enlightened” thinking behind the bill, or 2. We would
understand it just fine, and see it for the destructive force that it truly is.
In either case, they knew they couldn’t let the American people see the ACA put
under the microscope before it was made law. More than 3 years later, it’s all
too clear exactly why that was the case…
Now, while the ACA was certainly not a budget bill, few
would argue that it was not a revenue bill, meaning that it was meant to raise
revenues for a particular purpose. In this case, the bill seeks to raise
revenue for the subsidizing of health insurance premiums (I can’t stress enough
that the “Affordable Care Act” has nothing to do with CARE, but everything to
do with destroying health INSURANCE). They will take the premiums paid by all
who enter the exchanges, as well as the tax penalties paid by those who don’t
get insurance (more on that shortly) and use it to pay for the expenses of the
sick and elderly. That’s called raising revenue. No matter how you slice it,
one of the ACA’s most explicit goals is to raise revenue, and as such, the law
cannot be constitutional. Here’s why…
Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution states:
“All
Bills for raising Revenue shall originate in the House of Representatives; but
the Senate may propose or concur with Amendments as on other Bills.”
In other words, if the bill intends to raise revenues, for
any purpose, it must originate in the House of Representatives. The Democrats
found a way to circumvent the Constitution on this too. Many Americans are
completely unaware that the ACA was introduced in the House as the
"Service Members Home Ownership Tax Act of 2009". That bill passed
the House by a vote of 416 to 0, for obvious reasons considering the title.
Harry Reid and Senate Democrats then gutted the bill, “amended” it (more like
completely replaced it) with what we now know as the ACA, and passed it on a
straight party line vote. The bill then passed the House on another party line
vote, soon to be signed by Barack Obama. So, rather than having the bill
originate in the house, the Democrats erased one bill and replaced it with
another under the guise of an “amendment”. Then the DEMOCRATS passed it, not
Congress as a whole. So on the one hand, you have a complete corruption of the
legislative process in the perversion of the amendment process, and on the
other you have a revenue bill originating in the Senate, which is expressly
prohibited by the Constitution. Long story short (I know, too late), the ACA
did receive the necessary number of votes required to be considered “passed,”
but the manner in which this bill passed was a corruption of the constitution
and our legislative principles. Boasting that “Obamacare passed Congress” is
the same as boasting that the Reds won the 1919 World Series. Manipulating
rules and procedures which exist to deter and prevent corruption and tyranny,
to achieve a corrupt, tyrannical goal, is no more acceptable than breaking the
rules outright. Our laws exist to maintain order, and if we are to use the
rules that govern how our laws are written and passed, we are opening ourselves
up to whatever tyranny may wish to attack us.
The
second point that Obama and his team rattle off about the “support” behind the
ACA is that the bill was signed in to law by the President. Some might go after
this one by spouting off about birth certificates or residency or the fact that
Obama attended school in Indonesia at a time during which you had to be a
citizen to attend school there and dual citizenships were not allowed…but I’m not
going to do that. I’ll just skip ahead to point 3: the Supreme Court argument.
There are plenty of arguments for and against the Constitutionality of the ACA.
In fact, I made one above regarding the origination clause. However, for the
sake of this argument we will “accept” the Supreme Court’s decision.
The
Supreme Court ruled in 2012 that the ACA’s individual mandate is
constitutional, because the penalty incurred by those who do not get health
insurance is, in all actuality, a tax. Now, to accept that decision, you have
to accept that President Obama broke yet another major promise that got him
elected, namely that “Your taxes will not go up”. You must also accept that the
administration lied to the public about the nature of the ACA’s individual mandate.
We were told that we would all have access to better, more affordable
healthcare. Aside from the fact that the ACA does NOTHING to address health
CARE quality or costs, but instead makes health INSURANCE LESS available and
LESS affordable, there is the tiny little detail left out of the speeches, the
YouTube videos and the Andy Griffith commercials: The ACA would raise your
taxes if you decided the plans available on the exchanges were not a good fit
for you and your family. They also downplayed the fact that the ACA depends on
millions and millions of young, healthy Americans signing up. They assumed that
by repeating “affordable, affordable, affordable” the young and healthy would
come running and begging to sign up. Now that we know that’s not a reality,
especially now that Harvard has released a study finding that less than 30% of
people 18 to 29 years old plan to sign up, it has become quite clear that
millions and millions of young Americans will now see their taxes go up. They
may think they can avoid the President's expensive health plans by opting not
to sign up, but come tax time they'll find out what many of us have known for
more than 3 years. Had they been told of this possibility during the shadily
shortened Senate debates in 2010, or had they been told of this in the wake of
the ruling instead of being duped with the subsequent dismissal of the “tax” portion
of the written decision by the mainstream media, they may have voted
differently in November of 2012, and the ACA may not have done so much of the
damage we’ve already seen. But this administration doesn’t operate in the light
of day. They hold up false banners of “transparency” behind which they conceal
their true motives and intentions. They spent months and months trumpeting the
ACA as no-strings-attached-affordable-healthcare, and when the Supreme court
made its ruling, shedding light on the very much attached strings, Obama and
his team ran from its damning truth, touting it as a win while ignoring the
fact that the people they were claiming to help would be robbed of all choice
in the matter of their healthcare, and forced to pay new taxes if they tried to
get out of it. This may seem like a small offense compared to the "You can
keep your plan, you can keep your doctor" lies, but it's an important tell
for this administration's true intentions. It's one of numerous instances of
politics before substance that Obama and his team regularly engage in. In this
case, with Obama and the Democrats claiming victory with the SCOTUS decision, while
ignoring what that decision meant to the people, we see a recurring motif of
this administration: jumping to declare political victory while refusing to
acknowledge the existence of very real, unintended, unforeseen (by the
ideologues hell bent on Marxizing the US) consequences of their policies. They
set their eyes on the ultimate progressive prize of universal healthcare, and
donned impenetrable blinders that let them ignore every negative effect their
legacy legislation would have on the American people as they raced toward
political victory. They were never in this to help Americans. They were in it
to get the holy grail of Marxism, the sword in the stone of Socialism, the
gateway to the liberal progressive utopia- universal healthcare. If they truly cared
about helping people rather than making them dependent upon government, they
would have considered Republican proposals in 2010. Instead, Obama adopted the
mantra “Elections have consequences, and I won”. After 8 years of railing every
word out of Bush’s mouth, Obama and the Democrats suddenly believe our republic
is built upon everyone doing what the President says without delay or dissent.
Had they taken the time to consider the consequences of the ACA, intended and
unintended, this law would not have passed. But as always, Obama and his
disciples put politics and ideology ahead of fact and the good of the people.
That will be his true legacy, mark my words.
Finally,
there's the "affirmation" of reelection. Some argue that the
President didn't run on Obamacare and that Romney didn’t run hard enough
against it. I submit that neither is true and neither is false. We all know the President lied when he repeated over and over, "If you like your plan, you can keep it. If you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor". That in itself is a huge reason for the president's reelection. A reelection based on lies is not something to be proud of, and it's certainly not "proof" that Americans support the ACA. If you sold billions of dollars worth hamburgers by calling them fat free, when they were actually quite the opposite, you could hardly claim that people love your hamburgers based on the number sold. That's exactly what Obama, Carney et. al. are doing when they boast that the President's reelection affirms support for Obamacare. It's an outright lie, an they know it.
From my vantage point I
saw 2 different campaigns. I saw a campaign of facts, where Romney did an
awesome job (not perfect), and could have beaten Obama handily. And I also saw
the Obama media campaign that cherry picked what most Americans saw, and also
how they interpreted what they saw. There were instances of journalists hiding
facts and going to bat for the president to be sure. Who could forget Candy
Crowley defending the President in the third debate, right? But what truly
defined the media's role in Obama's reelection was not what they did or may
have done. It was by far what they did not do: vet and scrutinize the president
and his policies like a free press in a free nation should.
The
press spent 8 years tearing Bush apart. From the moment Gore oh so reluctantly
conceded Florida, the hounds were at the ready. I spent a lot of time
disagreeing with them, but given the choice between an overly analytical,
excessively negative press and a press that laps up & regurgitates
everything the White House says, I'll take the former every damn time. If the
press is eager to mow the president down for even the slightest offense,
tyranny has no hope of advancement. But if the press resigns itself to nothing
more than an obedient extension of the state, tyranny can slither in and
overcome us in a heartbeat. That is what happened in the case of Obamacare and
the 2012 election folks. If the press had done its job like it did during the
Bush administration, Obama wouldn't have made it past the '08 primary, let
alone into a second term. They betrayed the very essence of journalism by
picking sides rather than reporting the facts and letting the people decide. The
American media joined the liberal progressive movement in an attempt to
forcibly abolish the principles of American liberty and replace them with the
communist manifesto. They disparaged everything that a free press should stand
for, and they did so with neither care no remorse. Yes, America reelected a
self-professed wealth redistributor, but again, the Reds also won the game 1919
World Series. It's much easier to win when key players decide to throw the
game.
Our
government, our media and even our schools have been infiltrated by people who
believe:
1. That
ends justify means
2. That
they know what's best for us because we're too stupid to know for ourselves
3. That
liberty is dangerous and fairness is the key to utopian existence
4. That
human nature can be altered by legislation, taxation and the barrel of a gun,
and
5. That
they have the legal and moral authority to fundamentally change the foundation
of our republic, regardless of constitutional constraints, and with or without
the support of the people.
A
hundred years ago we would have called these people tyrants. Today, they're
liberals, or progressives. Whatever you want to call them, the fact remains
that they are reshaping America for the worse. They are doing exactly what the
founders tried to prevent anyone from doing, and we are standing here letting
it happen. Obamacare, the underhanded, backdoor way it was passed, the lack of
investigation from the media, all of the lies, cover ups and power grabbing
executive actions, the lack of accountability and the sheer corruption
surrounding every step of the process tell a very grim tale that ends badly for
everyone. I love my country, and I want her to survive. I want everyone to be
successful. I want everyone to have what they need and want. But I believe they
key to that end lies in empowering individuals to help themselves, and in turn
help others to do the same. Obama and his followers believe the key is
shackling all of us to the government, and letting them determine our wants,
needs, abilities and everything else from cradle to grave. As long he Obama is
President, and as long as we let him get away with advancing his Marxist
agenda, America will continue to devolve into nothing more than another failed
attempt at a free republic, quite possibly the last one ever attempted on this
Earth.
I leave
you with this:
A true
leader is the man at the front of the battalion, sword drawn, charging forward
at the enemy. The power thirsty coward sits idle and apathetic atop his horse,
behind the battalion, commanding them to charge. Ask yourself: Which man is
Obama?
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