Compromise, Obama Style
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010Many words will be spoken about President Obama’s health care legislation. Robert Gibbs undoubtedly will argue that it represents real compromise. It isn’t. Charles Krauthammer explained why during last night’s roundtable:
KRAUTHAMMER: The plan that the President unveiled today is really a travesty masquerading as an outreach to the Republicans. First of all, it has nothing about tort reform, which is an important element. We know why because Howard Dean has said that the Democrats don’t want to anger the trial lawyers and tort reform has been estimated by the Massachusetts Medical Society that doctors who practice defensive medicine, a quarter of all tests, procedures and referrals…
BAIER: The President says that he’s willing to talk about tort reform.
KRAUTHAMMER: If you have a 2,600 page bill and you have nothing in it on tort reform, you’re not serious about it. Secondly, from the start, there’s nothing in it that nationalizes the market and purchasing across state lines. What the President does here is he tries to reconcile House and Senate differences but he does it by throwing more money at every difference. For example, the Nebraska Kickback, which is a federal giveaway on Medicaid for only Nebraska, every state now has it.
The editors at the Wall Street Journal have weighed in on President Obama’s unwillingness to compromise, too:
A mere three days before President Obama’s supposedly bipartisan health-care summit, the White House yesterday released a new blueprint that Democrats say they will ram through Congress with or without Republican support. So after election defeats in Virginia, New Jersey and even Massachusetts, and amid overwhelming public opposition, Democrats have decided to give the voters what they don’t want anyway.
Ah, the glory of “progressive” governance and democratic consent.
“The President’s Proposal,” as the 11-page White House document is headlined, is in one sense a notable achievement: It manages to take the worst of both the House and Senate bills and combine them into something more destructive. It includes more taxes, more subsidies and even less cost control than the Senate bill. And it purports to fix the special-interest favors in the Senate bill not by eliminating them—but by expanding them to everyone. (more…)