03 Mar 2010 The Madness of King Barack

Statement of National Center for Public Policy Research Health Care Policy Analyst Matt Patterson on President Obama’s announcement that the health care debate is over:

“Every argument has been made.  Everything there is to say about health care has been said and just about everyone has said it.  So now is the time to make a decision about how to finally reform health care…”  – Barack Obama, March 3, 2010Did you know the health care debate is over?  No?  Well, His Majesty has kindly informed us that it is.

If that comes as news to you don’t feel bad – it will surely also come as news to the majority of Americans who vociferously oppose the President’s health care plan, as well as the Republicans who attended last week’s health care summit in good faith thinking that they were in the thick of a still roiling debate.

What the President means, of course, is that he’s heard enough.  He’s thrown the other side their pittance by hearing them out for a few hours, and now, it’s time for an “up-or-down vote.” Never mind that the people don’t want this plan.  Never mind that one of the two great American political parties gives zero consent to this radical restructuring of our entire society.  On March 3, Obama has told his allies Congress to ignore all of this, and do his bidding by shoving this preposterous and ghastly legislation down our throat.

And they will do so, with glee.

If Obama’s declaring the debate over while it still rages around him sounds familiar, it should – Al Gore upbraided the public in exactly this manner a few years ago, assuring us that Global Warming is beyond dispute and that “the debate in the scientific community is over.”  Turns out that debate wasn’t really over either, but it was easy for Warmists to make it appear that way by hiding and fudging data, and blacklisting skeptics from the major climate journals.

Obama has no such recourse.  The public knows and loathes these bills.  And if the President thinks that we are the end of this health care debate just because he declares it so, he is truly mad.  And if he signs this bill into law against the plainly and loudly expressed wishes of the American people, he will discredit his party for a generation and consign his presidency to the dustbin of history.

Indeed, the ink won’t yet be dry before a new, uglier stage of this debate would begin.  Let us hope it doesn’t come to that; let us all hope King Barack comes to his senses.

The National Center For Public Policy Research is a conservative, Constitution-respecting, free-market non-profit think-tank established in 1982.  It is supported by the voluntary gifts of over 100,000 individual recent supporters, and receives less than one percent of its revenue from corporate sources.

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