THE WORST EDITORIAL EVER?

Via FaceBook I was sent this Wall Street Journal article titled, "The Worst Bill Ever." It could have easily been titled, "Worst Piece of Partisan Hackery Ever." Here's my short response:

What an intellectually dishonest piece. The article takes a few Frank Luntz quotables, focuses on taxes, throws in Nancy Pelosi for good measure, and says nothing about how we got to the point where 44,000 die from having no insurance each year, or how bad things will get if nothing is done. What about the CBO estimate that says HR 3962 will save money over time? Who really penned this? The insurance industry?

Look, I'm not going to be happy with the final version of HR 3692. It's a mess. I suspect the health care-insurance industry understands something is going to pass, so they've gotten some of their industry-bought members of Congress to insert a few poison pills, which will water down the effectiveness of the public option, fatten industry wallets, and generally make no one happy with the outcome. There's a reason sausage making and legislation are not something to be watched by commoners.

Still, for the WSJ to suggest that HR 3692 is the worst piece of legislation is simply absurd. This is especially the case since their editorial board essentially gave the Bush administration a pass on his legislative agenda, which helped drive our economy into the ground and doubled our national debt.

Let's take just a couple of the absurdities that come from what may well be "The Worst Editorial Ever" (my comments in bold) ...

"... as ObamaCare so dramatically expands government control of health care that eventually all medicine will be rationed via politics."

- Republicans going back to the scare-mongering is not good analysis. These kind of statements simply don't stand up to scrutiny, especially since America's elderly, it's military, and government employees (like our members of Congress) seem to enjoy their government "controlled" healthcare. So do those who work in the private sector, but are presently subsidized by the U.S. taxpayer.

"The goal is to ram through whatever income-redistribution scheme they can ..."

- Short Response: Did the WSJ object to President Bush's "income-redistribution scheme" when he took projected trillion dollar surpluses and shifted them over to America's wealthiest class, who then took the money and gambled and speculated in a casino market they had created?
- Long Response: Read my book.

"... Democrats have dumped any pretense of genuine bipartisan "reform" and moved into the realm of pure power politics"

- My response to this is, So What. The Party of No has demonstrated little beyond their capacity to do Rush Limbaugh's bidding, and to help make sure that President Obama and the Democratically controlled Congress fails, at all costs.

"The Congressional Budget Office figures the House program will cost $1.055 trillion over a decade, which while far above the $829 billion net cost that Mrs. Pelosi fed to credulous reporters is still a low-ball estimate"

- The WSJ editorial famously left out that the same CBO estimate also said that "H.R. 3962 would result in a net reduction in federal budget deficits of $104 billion over the 2010–2019 period."

"... ObamaCare will be lucky to cost under $2 trillion over 10 years; it will grow more after that."

- Curiously missing are projected cost estimates if nothing is done. By 2052 America will be spending almost 50 cents of every dollar we earn on health care if we do nothing.


There's more, much more. But you get the picture. The point is, the Wall Street Journal is not an honest player in this debate.

- Mark