California Conservative

In 2008, Big Business crawled in bed with the Obama campaign, figuring that if they played nice, they’d get preferential treatment when President Obama started implementing his radical agenda. They quickly found out that they weren’t getting preferential treatment. they quickly realized that they weren’t dinner guests but that they were THE MENU. Based on this AP article, they’re making a clean break from the Obama administration:

Major business groups say President Barack Obama’s health care overhaul is a job killer, and they’re launching a multimillion-dollar ad campaign to take that message to voters.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and groups ranging from contractors to retailers said Tuesday the Democratic health care bills would raise their expenses, while failing to control health care costs.

Advertisements will start airing nationwide Wednesday on cable television and shift in a few days to 17 states, targeting moderate and conservative Democrats whose votes are critical to passing the bill in the House. The campaign is estimated to cost between $4 million and $10 million, with the insurance industry paying part of the cost.

This is a potentially major development. These organizations will likely run ads in districts inhabited by supposedly moderate Democrats. Anyone who’s read this blog knows that I think these so-called Democratic moderates are spineless. Pressuring them will change their opinions because they are spineless. This time, though, the pushback will come from people who want health care defeated.

The Democrats’ health care reform legislation isn’t reform. It’s just bigger government control. That’s a major problem. Here’s what Doug Schoen and Scott Rasmussen wrote about Obamacare’s difficulties:

When the president responds that the plan is deficit neutral, he runs into a pair of basic problems. The first is that voters think reducing spending is more important than reducing the deficit. So a plan that is deficit neutral with a big spending hike is not going to be well received.

But the bigger problem is that people simply don’t trust the official projections. People in Washington may live and die by the pronouncements of the Congressional Budget Office, but 81% of voters say it’s likely the plan will end up costing more than projected. Only 10% say the official numbers are likely to be on target.

As a result, 66% of voters believe passage of the president’s plan will lead to higher deficits and 78% say it’s at least somewhat likely to mean higher middle-class taxes. Even within the president’s own political party there are concerns on these fronts.

When I spoke with Norm Coleman in November about health care, he made the point that Republicans were making a mistake talking only about CBO scores. Here’s what he said:

Norm: we sound like detached accountants. And debt is a new phenomena-when the word trillion got into the lexicon, things changed. We need to let folks know that it’s going to cost them more, it’s going to raise their taxes, and it’s going to crush their kids future…and for what???? to solve part of a problem?

Instead of talking about CBO scoring, Norm said we’d be better off arguing about the cost of the Democrats’ health care legislation, both in terms of cost to the federal budget and to families. Mssrs. Schoen and Rasmussen’s polling proves that that’s the right approach.

Deficit neutrality doesn’t move voters. PERIOD. END OF SENTENCE. The American people know that it isn’t difficult to make something look fiscally responsible. All that’s needed is a ton of major tax increases to offset the outrageous spending contained in the Democrats’ health care bill.

Another argument I’d be making is that states like Minnesota and Indiana have already figured out how to bring health care and health insurance costs down without increasing taxes or growing bureaucracy or bankrupting the country.

It’s worth noting that President Obama, Speaker Pelosi and Leader Reid have stopped talking about deficit neutrality. They’ve stopped arguing about how many uninsured will be covered. They’ve certainly stayed away from talking about the Republicans’ superior reforms.

Now that businesses see the risk ObamaCare imposes on them, they’ve switched sides in this debate. I’m certain that President Obama will criticize the special interests for attempting to stop health care reform. There’s just a couple problems with that theory.

First, the Democrats’ legislation isn’t reform. Second, the American people are attempting to shut this debate down. If not for the Democrats’ insistence, the bill would’ve died and businesses would’ve started hiring again.

Technorati Tags: Ad Buys, Businesses, Obamacare, President Obama, Deficits, Taxes, Spending, Speaker Pelosi, Harry Reid, Democrats, Polling, Op-ed

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 10th, 2010 at 8:34 am and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Democrats, Election 2010, Health Care, Obama, Op-Ed, Pelosi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.