The Republicans are trying to tell us that the health-care-reform bill is a hugely expensive trespass against freedom and liberty. This obviously refers to the price tag and the individual mandate. What they don’t mention is that “Obamacare” will actually achieve several very significant goals.
1) The health-care-reform bill will help working and middle class Americans to afford quality health insurance via hundreds of billions of dollars in subsidies. For example, families of four earning $54,000 will see their insurance premiums reduced by around $10,000 per year. That’s a lot. Who in their right mind would turn down a government check for $10,000? Every year. That’s a full semester of state university tuition, among other things.
2) Contrary to the “Obama-is-spending-too-much” meme, the bill does not increase the deficit. According to the nonpartisan CBO, the bill cuts the deficit by $130 billion over ten years. Put another way, all that scaremongering about the cost of the bill is just that: scaremongering. The bill pays for itself and then some.
3) There are no enforcement mechanisms for the super-duper terrifying individual mandate. If you choose not to buy insurance when the mandate takes effect in 2014, and are consequently fined $695, there is no means of actually enforcing the payment of that penalty. No liens, levies, no jail, no Obamacare Goons swooping into your house like America-hating Kenyan ninjas. Nothing will happen to you. Nothing. So, you know, chill out about the mandate.
Why are Republicans against the stimulus? They really won’t say other than to screech about how expensive it was. But, before we go further, read the paragraph about the deficit again. The Democrats cut the deficit. And then factor into the mix that $288 billion out of the $800 billion cost of the recovery act was composed entirely of tax cuts. Tax cuts! As a matter of history and taken as a lump sum, this was the largest American middle class tax cut ever. So it’s not a stretch to suggest that the Republicans are suddenly against the largest middle-class tax cut in American history.
Despite the attempt to turn a derivation of the positive word “stimulate” into a negative, there’s very little about the stimulus that actually sucked, other than the fact that it wasn’t big enough. Beyond that, Republican voters need to ask themselves if the tax cuts were bad — or maybe was it the new roads and infrastructure that helped to create jobs, or was it the money that was spent to keep the states out of bankruptcy and police, teachers and firemen from losing their jobs? What’s awful about any of that?
What’s awful about any of that? Nothing. Right-wingers are told to be against it so they’re against it. They’d be against popcorn if those were their marching orders.
DRUDGE RETORT 