Mr. Obama ridiculed Republicans for apocalyptic predictions about the health care program and needled them about their campaign platform calling for repeal, repeating the “Go for it” challenge he issued in Iowa last week.
Supporting repeal, the president said, means Republicans would take away tax credits for small businesses and tell some Americans they would have to face a lifetime of debt again. “If they want to have that fight, I welcome that fight,” he said to raucous cheers, “because I don’t believe the American people are going to put the insurance industry back in the driver’s seat.”
The president, as usual, has it all wrong. A lifetime of debt is what we, and future Americans, would soon face under President Obama’s rampant deficit spending — which in two years (even without Obamacare) already surpasses two terms’ worth of deficit spending under President Bush (or any other prior president). And Obamacare is essentially a trillion-dollar giveaway to the insurance industry. If requiring all Americans to buy the insurers’ product doesn’t put insurers in the driver’s seat, then that’s only because it puts government in the driver’s seat — with insurers right beside. Either way, the American people are lucky to bum a ride in the back.
Given that 54 percent of Americans, including 59 percent of independents, want Obamacare to be repealed, and given that far more people strongly support repeal than strongly support the legislation, President Obama isn’t just taunting Republicans; he’s taunting the majority of Americans. He is starting to resemble someone who foolishly keeps poking a stick at a wild animal (perhaps a bald eagle). That story never ends well for the one with the stick, but justice is always served.
