What the (Bleep) Just Happened?

by Monica Crowley

  As Standard & Poor’s put it: “We view President Obama’s and Congressman Ryan’s proposals as the starting point of a process aimed at broader engagement, which could result in substantial and lasting U.S. government fiscal consolidation. That said, we see the path to agreement as challenging because the gap between the parties remains wide.” (Emphasis added.)

  The president’s open hostility to a mature debt-reduction plan while offering no mature plan of his own was the final straw for Standard & Poor’s. Of course, Team Obama immediately set about to shoot the messenger, claiming the ratings agency’s numbers were off and that they could not be trusted because they had missed the big blowups at Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Enron, and WorldCom. Furthermore, just days after the downgrade, the Holder Justice Department leaked to the New York Times that it was conducting an investigation into whether Standard & Poor’s improperly rated scores of mortgage-backed securities in the years before the financial crisis. The Times story took pains to say that the investigation had been begun before the credit downgrade, but the leak came almost immediately afterward. The Department of Justice tossed Moody’s into the investigation as well, for good measure.

  The problem with the downgrade, however, wasn’t the messenger but the message: it’s the spending, stupid! Unsustainable entitlement programs have grown over many decades and across many presidents and Congresses. But the biggest chance to begin correcting the problem was during the 2011 debt-ceiling debate, and both sides ran for the hills. This downgrade should make everyone feel a bit impotent. It’s like going to bed with Ralph Fiennes and waking up the next morning with former Labor secretary Robert Reich … that is, if you can actually locate him under the covers. One minute, you’re getting frisky with the hot star of The English Patient, and the next, you find yourself drowning in Munchkinland. Now, THAT’S a downgrade.

  Right on cue, some of our largest foreign creditors scolded our fiscal irresponsibility. Russian prime minister Vladimir Putin called the United States a “parasite,” saying, “They are living beyond their means and shifting a part of the weight of their problems to the world economy.” The Chinese government chimed in as well, using the official Xinhua news service to say that Beijing had “every right” to demand that Washington safeguard Chinese dollar assets and to call for the United States to “come to terms with the painful fact that the good old days when it could just borrow its way out of messes of its own making are finally gone.... To cure its addiction to debt, the United States has to re-establish the common sense principle that one should live within its means.” Savor the irony: the Chinese communists and the Russian pseudo-communists are lecturing us about our spending and debt levels, and the commies are right.

  Immediately following the commie pile-on, the Euro-schoolmarms at the World Economic Forum gave the United States a second downgrade. They dropped America further down their global ranking of the world’s most competitive economies. We are now number five, behind Switzerland, Singapore, Sweden, and Finland. While praising us for our productivity, highly sophisticated and innovative companies, and flexible labor market, the forum called us out for “a number of escalating weaknesses” such as astronomical government debt.

  The commies get it. The Euro-socialists get it. But Obama and the kooks? Oh, they get it, all right. I thought there was only a finite number of ways to describe Obama as a leftist, but what do you call a guy who’s sitting to the left of the Communist Chinese and the socialist governments of Europe?

  The Government in Your Eyeball, Ear Canal, Toe Fungus, and Places Where the Sun Don’t Shine, a.k.a. ObamaCare

  * * *

  CHRISTMAS EVE, 2009

  WASHINGTON, DC

  ’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the House

  Not a Democrat was stirring, not even Nancy Pelosi, the louse.

  The health care bill was hung by the chimney with care,

  In hopes that Senate Democrats soon would be there.

  The American people were nestled all snug in their beds,

  While visions of defeating ObamaCare danced in their heads.

  But Pelosi in her kerchief, and Harry Reid in his cap,

  Hoped their caucus wouldn’t bolt home for a long winter’s nap.

  When out on the Hill there arose such a clatter,

  Reid sprang from his bed to see what was the matter.

  Away to his office he flew like a flash,

  And threw himself on the bill, which was done slapdash.

  All 2,000 pages looked like the new-fallen snow.

  “What’s really in the bill? No one will ever know!”

  When, his wondering eyes filled with mist

  At the eye-rolling sight of eight tiny extortionists,

  Reid jumped up, so lively and quick,

  He knew in a moment their payoffs must click.

  More rapid than eagles his bribers they came,

  And he whistled, and shouted, and called them by name!

  “Now Landrieu! Now Lincoln! Now Lieberman and Nelson!

  On Dodd! On Feingold! On Sanders and Levin!

  Here’s your payoff! Now go do the deed!

  And vote for this sucker in our hour of need!”

  He told them that his back was to the wall,

  And he told them, “Now go! And dash away all!”

  So back to their states the extortionists flew,

  With their hundreds of millions, and other goodies, too.

  And then, in a twinkling, Reid heard on the roof

  Pollsters showing him the extent of his goof.

  As he drew in his head, and was turning around,

  Down the chimney President Obama came with a bound.

  Having done no heavy lifting, he looked rested and ready

  To sign this monstrous bill, even without Teddy.

  A bundle of political threats he had flung on his back,

  And he looked so smug, the thug, as he opened his pack.

  His eyes, how they twinkled! His dimples, how merry!

  His cheeks were like roses, his nose like a cherry!

  His droll little mouth was drawn up like a bow,

  He knew his fellow Dems; he knew how it’d go.

  He was thin and skinny, not at all a jolly elf,

  And Reid laughed when he saw him, in spite of himself!

  A wink of his eye and a twist of his head

  Soon told Reid he had nothing to dread.

  Obama spoke not a word, which was unusual for him,

  Ready to sign a bill that will make health care more grim.

  “Higher premiums! Fewer doctors! Higher taxes and fees!

  And this bill’s just the beginning—oh, what a tease!”

  He sprang to his feet and bid Reid good-bye,

  And went back to the White House in the bat of an eye.

  But Reid heard him exclaim, and it sounded like a prayer:

  “Happy Christmas to all, and to all ruined health care!”

  (With my apologies to Clement Clarke Moore)

  On December 24, 2009, Senate Democrats gave the American people the political equivalent of a fruitcake. As the Democratic Grinches prepared to vote on their version of the widely despised, destructive, and chaotic health care bill, they tried to spice up their fruitcake with distortions, distractions, and flat-out lies. With over 60 percent of the American people opposing their incoherent mess of a plan, the Democrats tried desperately to convince us that we would love this particular fruitcake. Unlike other fruitcakes, however, the health care fruitcake could not be regifted to someone else.

  The Democrats reveled in their Heat Miser health care politics, oblivious to the reality that they were melting themselves out of majority control of the House and a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate. Had you been naughty or nice? It didn’t matter, because the Democrats were going to stick you with a new multitrillion-dollar assault on your freedoms anyway. Nothing says “Merry Christmas” like the government mugging you and leaving you broke, beate
n, and bloodied on the street. But no worries! ObamaCare covers government beat-downs.

  According to Obama’s Declaration of Dependence, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness … and oh yeah, government-run health care.” That last part must have slipped Thomas Jefferson’s mind. Nurse Barry couldn’t wait to slap on some rubber gloves and get his feel for all of our body parts. He couldn’t wait to dig, prod, and poke at our humanity while he humiliated us. Prostate check! Here comes Nurse Barry! Hysterectomy! Here comes Nurse Barry! So you think you have a hernia? Turn your head and cough for Nurse Barry!

  The crown jewel of the kooks’ redistributive state has always been socialized medicine, for one simple reason: if the government controls your health care, the government controls you. And if the best health care system in the world were disassembled and then made to resemble so many other atrocious health care systems, yet another part of America’s greatness would be diluted down to unexceptionalism. This is why Obama and the kooks spent their first year and a half hysterically dashing through the health care weeds when most Americans were crying out for jobs and economic growth. In fact, the kooks quickly passed the $862 billion “stimulus,” declared their work on the economy done, and turned immediately to the most important item on their socialist checklist. They moved fast and with near-complete disregard for public opinion. And they made sure that their redistributive superstructure was built on a direct infringement of your personal liberty: an unprecedented legal mandate to buy a good or service as a basic condition of living in the United States. The “individual mandate” to purchase health insurance or face an IRS-enforced fine is so constitutionally dubious that it made its way to the Supreme Court. The kooks, however, knew exactly what they were doing: launching the Mother of All Redistributionist Programs that would fundamentally change the very character of America while reducing America itself.

  Health care “reform,” as they called it, was about neither reform nor health care.

  For decades, leftists had tried to get it done, from Theodore Roosevelt through Hillary Clinton, but they failed each time for a variety of reasons. They were able to get more limited redistributive programs through that dealt with certain aspects of health care, such as Medicare and Medicaid. But they had been unable to get a massive overhaul of health care in place for every American—until Obama and the kooks took control. They realized they had a short window of opportunity to achieve this most ambitious “spread the wealth around” plan at last, and they didn’t waste a second. Nurse Barry was in a rush and didn’t have time to either debate the merits of the bill or change the nation’s bedpan. His plan was to impose socialist medicine as fast as possible, while he dumped that bedpan on our heads.

  The health care engineers never lost sight of what ObamaCare was really all about: government power and control. It was an epic seizure of freedom from the individual that was then concentrated in the hands of the state. On the most personal, intimate questions of your body and health, faceless government bureaucrats armed with slide rules would be making those decisions for you. Never mind that in every industrialized nation in which socialized medicine has been implemented, from Great Britain to Canada, horror stories abound of bankrupting costs, patient neglect, life-threatening waiting times, and rationing and above-average mortality rates. To the kooks, it was never about actually delivering better, more cost-efficient health care. It was always about seizing the ultimate power over you while maneuvering the health care system into one that served “social and economic justice.” Consider a revealing kook inconsistency: for decades, pro-abortion leftists have used the battle cry, “Get government out of women’s wombs!” Now, however, they want government to be in your womb, nasal cavity, and large intestine. Before you could say, “Holy British health care system, Batman!,” Nancy Pelosi would be taking your pulse while Harry Reid ran your blood work.

  The redistributionists are also keenly aware of the addictive power of entitlements, which are the political equivalent of heroin. When people are given a hit of the entitlement drug, they become dependent on it. And with ever more people dependent, the kooks could then enjoy a built-in justification for growing the program, the spending, and the government to support it. This is how entitlements become self-perpetuating. People start out as normal, mild-mannered citizens … like Bruce Banner. Give those same people entitlements, and watch what happens when you try to take them away. They each turn into the Incredible Socialist Hulk, as they crash through walls, throw cars, and watch Fox News in a fit of rage. The kooks rammed through the ObamaCare entitlement in order to get you to go from your first hit to mainlining ObamaCare in no time flat.

  The kooks’ ideal vision was a single-payer system, in which the government essentially runs every aspect of health care. In the past, political realities had made it impossible to achieve single payer, but the leftists never gave up hope. In 2003, then Illinois state senator Barack Obama laid out his deepest health care wish: “I happen to be a proponent of a single payer universal health care program.... But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately. Because first we have to take back the White House, we have to take back the Senate, and we have to take back the House.”

  Alas: the kooks’ purest ambitions laid bare. They may have dressed them up or even disguised them occasionally, but they never made them much of a mystery. In reality, however, single payer proved a bridge too far even for some Democrats, whose resistance was based less on ideological opposition than political fear; most Americans rejected the very idea of a socialist-style single-payer system, and Democrats facing reelection in 2010 and 2012 did not want to have to vote for one. So even though the Democrats controlled big congressional majorities and the White House, getting to single payer was not to be, at least not immediately.

  The redistributionists then changed their game plan. They designed a health care scheme that was as close to single payer as was politically possible, and they stacked the deck so single payer would ultimately be the end result.

  A parade of leftists lined up to broadcast that very fact. When ObamaCare was passed in its final form in late March 2010, Senator Tom Harkin said, “I think of this bill as a starter home. It’s not the mansion of our dreams, but it has a solid foundation.” He also added, “By passing this legislation, we will achieve a progressive prize that has eluded Congresses and presidents going back to Teddy Roosevelt.” The then-Speaker Nancy Pelosi also chimed in, “Once we kick through this door, there’ll be more legislation to follow.” Obama himself said to Democratic representative Dennis Kucinich, “We’ve gotta start somewhere.” In other words, “Patience, my fellow kooks! We’ve just nationalized health care. Savor the moment.”

  From the start, the Democrats were united on the objective if not always on process. They could never utter aloud the true objective of ObamaCare, so they stuck to a script that would sound palatable to the general public. They attempted to sell socialized medicine as the policy equivalent of Superman: It will contain and lower costs! It will bring down premiums! It will be deficit neutral! It will eventually even save the government money! It will get us to universal coverage! It will improve quality of and access to care! If you like your current health insurance, you can keep it! It is not a government takeover! It will leap over tall buildings in a single bound! The truth: pick which grandparent you like most, because the other one has to go!

  Perhaps they even believed this fantasyland drivel. But they also knew that with their big congressional majorities and the Big Kookuna in the White House, they didn’t really need a public buy-in to pass the plan. If the American people came around to support it, great. If they didn’t, well, tough.

  Obama was obsessed with getting it done but not as obsessed with micromanaging how it got done. He was no Lyndon Johnson, who relished getting in the faces of members of Congress unti
l they gave him what he wanted. Obama preferred a more absentee-father approach. Instead of pounding members every minute of the day over the intricacies of ObamaCare, Big Daddy would let them sort it all out while he hit the links or shot some hoops. Get it done, and call me when it’s ready, kids!

  With Obama taking a “hoop dreams” strategy to health care, the heavy lifting of the actual bill-writing was left to congressional Democrats, who then allowed kook special interests to run wild with influence over the bill. Groups such as the George Soros–funded Center for American Progress and MoveOn.org, ACORN, the Tides Foundation and its associated Apollo Alliance, and big labor unions such as the AFL-CIO (American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations) and SEIU (Service Employees International Union) teed up their laundry lists of demands, which the leftists happily included in the final product.

  Furthermore, Team Obama worked all kinds of clandestine payoff deals with hospital groups, pharmaceutical companies, the AARP (American Association of Retired People), and unions, among others, to get them on board. The details of those deals were kept under wraps, lest the public see the billions of dollars in giveaways and promises as well as the corruption of this support-buying scheme. Before long, all of the kook interest groups and the bought-off unions and industries were singing from the same ObamaCare hymnal.

  At that point, they became like the woman in a famous story about Winston Churchill. At a dinner party one night, a drunk Churchill asked an attractive lady whether she would sleep with him for a million pounds. “Maybe,” she said coyly. Churchill then said, “Would you sleep with me for one pound?” “Of course not!” the woman replied indignantly. “What kind of woman do you think I am?” “Madam, we’ve already established what kind of woman you are,” said Churchill. “Now we’re just negotiating the price.”