Gov’t party never ends
By Michael Graham | Wednesday, April 18, 2012 | http://www.bostonherald.com | Op-Ed
To paraphrase those General Services Administration party animals during their $823,000 bash in Las Vegas: “What happens in Obama- care stays in Obamacare.”
The White House spent much of last week attacking a Washington Post article that laid out why the so-called “Affordable Care Act” is — contrary to the president’s promises — going to add billions to our debt. There was much back and forth about “double counting Medicare savings” and “accepted accounting practices,” blah, blah, blah.
Unfortunately I couldn’t hear most of this debate because it was drowned out by laughter over the GSA and Secret Service scandals. Vegas clown shows and Car- tageña hookers? That’s news!
In fact, they’re all part of the same story, a story I would headline: “What Did You Expect? You Asked The Government To Do It.”
Outraged by $4 shrimp, $19 “artisanal cheese” service, $50-per-person breakfasts and $75,000 “team-building” bicycle games? Who isn’t?
Uh . . . the GSA, that’s who. And that’s the problem.
The job of the GSA, the government’s landlord, is to prevent ridiculous spending. They, in turn, spent millions holding parties to celebrate the great job they thought they were doing.
“I want this conference to really make a statement,” GSA regional boss Jeffrey Neely reportedly said. And he got it.
But if you think “the statement” is, “These specific GSA employees are bad,” you’ve missed the point: This is how most people spend money . . . when they’re spending other people’s money.
As Neely himself emailed:
“We typically host a nice happy hour in my suite one night . . . I know. I am bad. But as [his wife] deb and I say often, why not enjoy it while we have it and while we can. Aint going to last forever.”
Neely was right: No $179K government gig that includes taxpayer-funded hot tubs and expensive electronic gifts for the kids can last forever. And Neely’s reaction — “get it while the gettin’s good” — is a completely normal human reaction.
The Founding Fathers understood this (though what they would have made of $7,000 in sushi, I have no idea). That’s why they made government small, gave it as little as possible to do, and divided it so one branch could keep an eye on the other.
Which brings us back to Obamacare, and what it will really cost. In Massachusetts, the Romneycare version is already hundreds of millions over original projections, while also giving us the highest per-person medical costs and driving up insurance premiums.
At the national level, a study predicts $1.1 trillion in new federal spending and $340 billion added to the deficit over 10 years. The White House disagrees.
But this partisan debate is a misdirected joke because it leaves out the Neely factor. Once you put control of the health care system into the hands of hundreds of GSA-wannabes and government YouTube rap stars, costs are going to explode.
Who doesn’t know this? Surely all the people advocating for Obamacare have to be aware of this unchangeable truth. So how can they argue with a straight face that the same people who run the GSA, the Pentagon and/or the EBT system are going to cut our costs and save us money?
Once Obamacare is fully enacted, there will be a Jeffrey Neely in charge of your family’s health care and its costs. It could even be the same Neely. Do you know what happened a few months ago when this GSA spending spree came to light?
Neely got a $9,000 bonus.
Like they say in Vegas: “Jackpot!”
Michael Graham hosts an afternoon drive time talk show on 96.9 WTKK.
18 April, 2012
10 April, 2012
Obama v. SCOTUS
By Charles Krauthammer, Published: April 5
“I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”
— Barack Obama, on the constitutional challenge to his health-care law, April 2
“Unprecedented”? Judicial review has been the centerpiece of the American constitutional system since Marbury v. Madison in 1803. “Strong majority”? The House has 435 members. In March 2010, Democrats held a 75-seat majority. Obamacare passed by seven votes.
In his next-day walk back, the president implied that he was merely talking about the normal “restraint and deference” the courts owe the legislative branch. This concern would be touching if it weren’t coming from the leader of a party so deeply devoted to the ultimate judicial usurpation — Roe v. Wade, which struck down the abortion laws of 46 states — that fealty to it is the party’s litmus test for service on the Supreme Court.
With Obamacare remaking one-sixth of the economy, it would be unusual for the Supreme Court to overturn legislation so broad and sweeping. On the other hand, it is far more unusual to pass such a fundamentally transformative law on such a narrow, partisan basis.
Obamacare passed the Congress without a single vote from the opposition party — in contradistinction to Social Security, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid, similarly grand legislation, all of which enjoyed substantial bipartisan support. In the Senate, moreover, Obamacare squeaked by through a parliamentary maneuver called reconciliation that was never intended for anything so sweeping. The fundamental deviation from custom and practice is not the legal challenge to Obamacare but the very manner of its enactment.
The president’s preemptive attack on the court was in direct reaction to Obamacare’s three days of oral argument. It was a shock. After years of contemptuously dismissing the very idea of a legal challenge, Democrats suddenly realized there actually is a serious constitutional argument to be made against Obamacare — and they are losing it.
Here were highly sophisticated conservative thinkers — lawyers and justices — making the case for limited government, and liberals weren’t even prepared for the obvious constitutional question: If Congress can force the individual into a private contract by authority of the commerce clause, what can it not force the individual to do? Without a limiting principle, the central premise of our constitutional system — a government of enumerated powers — evaporates. What, then, is the limiting principle?
Liberals were quick to blame the administration’s bumbling solicitor general, Donald Verrilli, for blowing the answer. But Clarence Darrow couldn’t have given it. There is none.
Justice Stephen Breyer tried to rescue the hapless Verrilli by suggesting that by virtue of being born, one enters into the “market for health care.” To which plaintiffs’ lawyer Michael Carvin devastatingly replied: If birth means entering the market, Congress is omnipotent, authorized by the commerce clause to regulate “every human activity from cradle to grave.”
Q.E.D.
Having lost the argument, what to do? Bully. The New York Times loftily warned the Supreme Court that it would forfeit its legitimacy if it ruled against Obamacare because with the “five Republican-appointed justices supporting the challenge led by 26 Republican governors, the court will mark itself as driven by politics.”
Really? The administration’s case for the constitutionality of Obamacare was so thoroughly demolished in oral argument that one liberal observer called it “a train wreck.” It is perfectly natural, therefore, that a majority of the court should side with the argument that had so clearly prevailed on its merits. That’s not partisanship. That’s logic. Partisanship is four Democrat-appointed justices giving lock-step support to a law passed by a Democratic Congress and a Democratic president — after the case for its constitutionality had been reduced to rubble.
Democrats are reeling. Obama was so taken aback, he hasn’t even drawn up contingency plans should his cherished reform be struck down. Liberals still cannot grasp what’s happened — the mild revival of constitutionalism in a country they’ve grown so used to ordering about regardless. When asked about Obamacare’s constitutionality, Nancy Pelosi famously replied: “Are you serious?” She was genuinely puzzled.
As was Rep. Phil Hare (D-Ill.). As Michael Barone notes, when Hare was similarly challenged at a 2010 town hall, he replied: “I don’t worry about the Constitution.” Hare is now retired, having been shortly thereafter defeated for reelection by the more constitutionally attuned owner of an East Moline pizza shop.
By Charles Krauthammer, Published: April 5
“I’m confident that the Supreme Court will not take what would be an unprecedented, extraordinary step of overturning a law that was passed by a strong majority of a democratically elected Congress.”
— Barack Obama, on the constitutional challenge to his health-care law, April 2
“Unprecedented”? Judicial review has been the centerpiece of the American constitutional system since Marbury v. Madison in 1803. “Strong majority”? The House has 435 members. In March 2010, Democrats held a 75-seat majority. Obamacare passed by seven votes.
In his next-day walk back, the president implied that he was merely talking about the normal “restraint and deference” the courts owe the legislative branch. This concern would be touching if it weren’t coming from the leader of a party so deeply devoted to the ultimate judicial usurpation — Roe v. Wade, which struck down the abortion laws of 46 states — that fealty to it is the party’s litmus test for service on the Supreme Court.
With Obamacare remaking one-sixth of the economy, it would be unusual for the Supreme Court to overturn legislation so broad and sweeping. On the other hand, it is far more unusual to pass such a fundamentally transformative law on such a narrow, partisan basis.
Obamacare passed the Congress without a single vote from the opposition party — in contradistinction to Social Security, the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare and Medicaid, similarly grand legislation, all of which enjoyed substantial bipartisan support. In the Senate, moreover, Obamacare squeaked by through a parliamentary maneuver called reconciliation that was never intended for anything so sweeping. The fundamental deviation from custom and practice is not the legal challenge to Obamacare but the very manner of its enactment.
The president’s preemptive attack on the court was in direct reaction to Obamacare’s three days of oral argument. It was a shock. After years of contemptuously dismissing the very idea of a legal challenge, Democrats suddenly realized there actually is a serious constitutional argument to be made against Obamacare — and they are losing it.
Here were highly sophisticated conservative thinkers — lawyers and justices — making the case for limited government, and liberals weren’t even prepared for the obvious constitutional question: If Congress can force the individual into a private contract by authority of the commerce clause, what can it not force the individual to do? Without a limiting principle, the central premise of our constitutional system — a government of enumerated powers — evaporates. What, then, is the limiting principle?
Liberals were quick to blame the administration’s bumbling solicitor general, Donald Verrilli, for blowing the answer. But Clarence Darrow couldn’t have given it. There is none.
Justice Stephen Breyer tried to rescue the hapless Verrilli by suggesting that by virtue of being born, one enters into the “market for health care.” To which plaintiffs’ lawyer Michael Carvin devastatingly replied: If birth means entering the market, Congress is omnipotent, authorized by the commerce clause to regulate “every human activity from cradle to grave.”
Q.E.D.
Having lost the argument, what to do? Bully. The New York Times loftily warned the Supreme Court that it would forfeit its legitimacy if it ruled against Obamacare because with the “five Republican-appointed justices supporting the challenge led by 26 Republican governors, the court will mark itself as driven by politics.”
Really? The administration’s case for the constitutionality of Obamacare was so thoroughly demolished in oral argument that one liberal observer called it “a train wreck.” It is perfectly natural, therefore, that a majority of the court should side with the argument that had so clearly prevailed on its merits. That’s not partisanship. That’s logic. Partisanship is four Democrat-appointed justices giving lock-step support to a law passed by a Democratic Congress and a Democratic president — after the case for its constitutionality had been reduced to rubble.
Democrats are reeling. Obama was so taken aback, he hasn’t even drawn up contingency plans should his cherished reform be struck down. Liberals still cannot grasp what’s happened — the mild revival of constitutionalism in a country they’ve grown so used to ordering about regardless. When asked about Obamacare’s constitutionality, Nancy Pelosi famously replied: “Are you serious?” She was genuinely puzzled.
As was Rep. Phil Hare (D-Ill.). As Michael Barone notes, when Hare was similarly challenged at a 2010 town hall, he replied: “I don’t worry about the Constitution.” Hare is now retired, having been shortly thereafter defeated for reelection by the more constitutionally attuned owner of an East Moline pizza shop.
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