We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France,
we shall fight on the seas and oceans,
we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be,
we shall fight on the beaches,
we shall fight on the landing grounds,
we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
we shall fight in the hills;
we shall never surrender....
Dick Morris, channeling Winston Churchill, gave the best answer to the pre-Christmas Senate vote for the health-care bill. Somewhat clumsily combining Churchill's "we shall fight them on the beaches" speech and his "never give in" speech, Morris wrote:
If they beat us in the Senate, we will fight them in conference. If they beat us in conference, we will fight them in the House. If they beat us in the House over healthcare, we will fight them over cap and trade. We will fight them over immigration and amnesty. We will fight them over the deficit. We will fight them over the debt. And we will fight them in 2010. We will fight them in the House. We will fight them for Senate seats in Connecticut, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, and Arkansas. We will fight them in Colorado and North Dakota and California and Washington State. We will fight them in Illinois and in New Jersey. We will never, never, never, never give up!
Dick Morris in the role of Winston Churchill? Now I've seen everything. But he does, in fact, have the right spirit.
The Democrats are pushing a rotten bill, and they are doing it in the most rotten, partisan way possible. So we don't have to accept it—not any of it. This is not the usual pattern for major pieces of welfare-state legislation. As everyone has been pointing out, no bill of this size with this kind of broad, far-reaching effect on the public has ever been passed without public support and without bipartisan support—some significant number of Republicans breaking ranks to vote for it. That's part of the reason why previous welfare-state expansions have become permanent: those programs enjoyed wide enough support to demoralize their opponents, who eventually accepted them as fixed features of American politics.
But this time the public is solidly opposed to the bill and it attracted only one Republican vote in the House and none in the Senate. That means that there is no reason to accept this bill as a done deal, or as a permanent fixture. If it passes, Republicans and conservatives are already talking about a campaign for repeal that would carry them through the next two elections.
Even if Republicans do very well in this November's mid-term election, it is impossible for them to gain the votes to overcome a presidential veto, so repeal of the health-care bill would have to be the main issue of the next presidential election, too. If so, all the better, because it would give advocates of liberty a clear and clean issue to vote on. As Jonah Goldberg argues, "Americans will finally be given a stark philosophical choice on a fundamental issue." He is, of course, over-estimating the extent to which Republicans will approach this issue in clear philosophical terms or on a fundamental level, but it would still be a campaign well worth supporting.
And Dick Morris points out that the Democrats' bill provides an excellent target for such a campaign.
Obama's health care bill, the poisoned Kool-Aid making its way through the Senate, will not confer any of its supposed benefits on Americans until 2013. But they will find themselves chafing at its restrictions and paying its taxes immediately after the law takes effect. Then, they will see no gain, but plenty of pain, for the next three years.
Another part of the reason why welfare-state programs become permanent is that they buy votes. The left eagerly points to the benefits that are paid out, while hoping voters will forget the costs, and some people buy the ruse and become a firm bloc of supporters for the program. But this bill starts the opposite way, putting all of its costs up front, and only buying the people's votes later on. Dick Morris explains why this was unavoidable.
This odd juxtaposition of "suffer now, benefit later" is the byproduct of the administration's sleight of hand in specifying ten years worth of cuts and taxes in the legislation, but deferring its benefits for the first four years. By comparing six years of spending with ten years of taxing, it managed to appear deficit neutral under the rules of the Congressional Budget Office. In fact, the annual revenues fall far short of covering any single year's worth of spending, adding to the deficit for each of the last six years over the next ten, but, viewing the decade as a whole, it appears deficit neutral.
Ironically, in trying to avoid stating the actual cost of this legislation, the Democrats have made sure that voters will notice those costs even more once the bill is passed—giving Republicans a great issue on which to campaign for the next three years.
The spirit of this campaign for repeal—if it becomes necessary—is best summed up in a sign spotted at one of last summer's tea party rallies: "Shove It Down Our Throats in 2009, and We'll Shove It Up Your"—and here there appears a little symbol of a Democratic donkey—"in 2010."
Before then, however, there is another form of resistance: legal and constitutional challenges to various provisions of the bill. The first target will be the individual mandate, the requirement that every individual buy health insurance or pay a government fine. This is so unprecedented and unjustifiable an intrusion into the individual's rights—a tax just for existing—that it will face legal challenges demanding to know whether Congress has any such constitutional authority. Which it doesn't—though it is an open question whether a majority of the Supreme Court will rule that way.
The legal resistance on this issue has already begun, in an unexpected form. Various state government are trying to pass their own laws—Virginia's version is described here—guaranteeing the right of every individual to buy, or not buy, any health-insurance product he chooses. It is a deliberate attempt to set up a conflict between the federal health-care bill and a state-level guarantee of the basic rights of its citizens. Now that would be an interesting legal case, wouldn't it?
All of this and more can be done if the health-care bill manages to achieve final passage through Congress this month. But we're getting ahead of ourselves a bit, because we're not done yet with options to stop the bill in Congress.
As voters come out of their Christmas break and begin paying attention to politics again, each side is trying to define the character of the final Senate bill. The right is attempting, with notable success, to define the bill in one word: corruption.
Their main focus has been on the "Cornhusker kickback." This refers to a provision slipped into the Senate bill at the last minute to secure the vote of Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska (the "cornhusker state"). Nelson insisted that the federal government agree to cover all of his state's expenses—hundreds of million of dollars—for the bill's mandate expanding eligibility for Medicaid. The deal did not extend to the other 49 states, which will have to raise state revenues to cover this increase in spending.
The campaign against the "Cornhusker kickback" achieves three things.
First, in the eyes of public, this defines the bill as corrupt and full of hidden payoffs for special interests, of which this is just one example. (For more examples, see here.) These corrupt little payoffs are incidental to the bill in one sense; if they were all removed it would still be a bad bill. But in another sense, they reveal something essential about a government takeover of health care: it is all about looting, about how one group of people can tax and regulate others in an attempt to get something for nothing. All statist programs are rife with this kind of scheming, and they have to be, because whenever wealth is seized by force, there is a battle among the looters over how to divide the spoils. The Cornhusker kickback is the most visible reminder of this fact.
Second, the fight over special favors for Nebraska (and for other states) raises a basic constitutional challenge against the health-care bill. In fact, a group of Republican state attorneys general has threatened to sue if this provision is not dropped, citing numerous violations of the Constitution. A special favor to one state certainly violates the spirit of the Constitution by creating what is, in effect, a special treaty between the federal government and a single state giving that state privileges above the other states. This is precisely what whole structure of the Constitution was originally meant to prevent: the federal government becoming an instrument for the looting of some states by others.
And here's the beautiful thing about this constitutional challenge: the Democrats can't easily fix it without upsetting the whole set of political calculations required to get the bill passed in the first place. If the federal government doesn't pay for the increased Medicaid expenses that it mandates, it will be a huge cost increase for all states, putting pressure on senators to oppose the bill. But if the federal government has to pay for these increased costs for every state, then the cost of the bill spirals upward, and Democratic leaders risk losing the votes of congressmen who want to maintain the image of being "deficit hawks."
More broadly, in order to squeak by with the votes they needed in the House and Senate, the Democrats had to go on a vote-buying spree, offering money for hospitals in some districts, exemptions for limitations on Medicare Advantage programs in other districts, special tax breaks here and federal subsidies there. Start removing those special favors, and Democratic congressmen may decide that they can no longer justify the bill as being beneficial for their constituents. Or to put it more bluntly: votes that have been bought will become un-bought.
Finally, the attack on the Cornhusker kickback focuses pressure on the man who may be the health care bill's weakest link: Ben Nelson. Over the holidays, Senator Nelson has already faced a firestorm of criticism for his vote on the health care bill. Rather than being able to boast about the pork he brought back for his home state, he had to apologize for it.
"That's not the way we operate," said Gov. Dave Heineman, a Republican who is sometimes suggested as a possible opponent for Mr. Nelson in 2012. Mr. Heineman said that as news of the Medicaid provision spread, people in Nebraska felt embarrassed at the thought that they had been made part of some political deal, even if it was to benefit them.
Any such exemption should affect all states, Mr. Heineman said, not just one. "Our citizens got angry," he said. "It was an attack on their integrity."
Polls now show Senator Nelson, "a former governor and second-term senator who won re-election in 2006 with 64 percent of the vote" running behind Governor Heineman by nearly a two-to-one margin.
Senator Nelson has been reduced to begging for mercy, pleading with the group of Republican state attorneys general to "call off the dogs" on this issue.
Oh yes, and as I'm writing this, the latest news is that the Mayo Clinic has stopped accepting new Medicare patients at some of its clinics because the federal government has cut back Medicare reimbursements to a level at which doctors and hospitals lose too much money to keep operating. Yet the health-care bill would mandate additional cutbacks in Medicare reimbursement rates.
So don't be too impressed by the fact that the health-care bill squeaked by with 60 Senate votes over the holidays. The whole thing is such a corrupt fraud, has so little public support, and has so many angles from which to attack it that it can be defeated. The bill is so bad that there is even the prospect that we can turn the left against it. So it can still be defeated this month in Congress. And if that doesn't work, it can still be defeated in the courts. And if that doesn't work, then there are a lot worse things the Republicans could do in the next two elections than to campaign on the repeal of this bill.
Winston Churchill had it right: "Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy." Never give in.—RWT
Robert Tracinski writes daily commentary at TIADaily.com. He is the editor of The Intellectual Activist (TIA) and contributor to The Freedom Fighter's Journal
we shall fight on the seas and oceans,
we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be,
we shall fight on the beaches,
we shall fight on the landing grounds,
we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
we shall fight in the hills;
we shall never surrender....
Dick Morris, channeling Winston Churchill, gave the best answer to the pre-Christmas Senate vote for the health-care bill. Somewhat clumsily combining Churchill's "we shall fight them on the beaches" speech and his "never give in" speech, Morris wrote:
If they beat us in the Senate, we will fight them in conference. If they beat us in conference, we will fight them in the House. If they beat us in the House over healthcare, we will fight them over cap and trade. We will fight them over immigration and amnesty. We will fight them over the deficit. We will fight them over the debt. And we will fight them in 2010. We will fight them in the House. We will fight them for Senate seats in Connecticut, Delaware, Pennsylvania, New York, and Arkansas. We will fight them in Colorado and North Dakota and California and Washington State. We will fight them in Illinois and in New Jersey. We will never, never, never, never give up!
Dick Morris in the role of Winston Churchill? Now I've seen everything. But he does, in fact, have the right spirit.
The Democrats are pushing a rotten bill, and they are doing it in the most rotten, partisan way possible. So we don't have to accept it—not any of it. This is not the usual pattern for major pieces of welfare-state legislation. As everyone has been pointing out, no bill of this size with this kind of broad, far-reaching effect on the public has ever been passed without public support and without bipartisan support—some significant number of Republicans breaking ranks to vote for it. That's part of the reason why previous welfare-state expansions have become permanent: those programs enjoyed wide enough support to demoralize their opponents, who eventually accepted them as fixed features of American politics.
But this time the public is solidly opposed to the bill and it attracted only one Republican vote in the House and none in the Senate. That means that there is no reason to accept this bill as a done deal, or as a permanent fixture. If it passes, Republicans and conservatives are already talking about a campaign for repeal that would carry them through the next two elections.
Even if Republicans do very well in this November's mid-term election, it is impossible for them to gain the votes to overcome a presidential veto, so repeal of the health-care bill would have to be the main issue of the next presidential election, too. If so, all the better, because it would give advocates of liberty a clear and clean issue to vote on. As Jonah Goldberg argues, "Americans will finally be given a stark philosophical choice on a fundamental issue." He is, of course, over-estimating the extent to which Republicans will approach this issue in clear philosophical terms or on a fundamental level, but it would still be a campaign well worth supporting.
And Dick Morris points out that the Democrats' bill provides an excellent target for such a campaign.
Obama's health care bill, the poisoned Kool-Aid making its way through the Senate, will not confer any of its supposed benefits on Americans until 2013. But they will find themselves chafing at its restrictions and paying its taxes immediately after the law takes effect. Then, they will see no gain, but plenty of pain, for the next three years.
Another part of the reason why welfare-state programs become permanent is that they buy votes. The left eagerly points to the benefits that are paid out, while hoping voters will forget the costs, and some people buy the ruse and become a firm bloc of supporters for the program. But this bill starts the opposite way, putting all of its costs up front, and only buying the people's votes later on. Dick Morris explains why this was unavoidable.
This odd juxtaposition of "suffer now, benefit later" is the byproduct of the administration's sleight of hand in specifying ten years worth of cuts and taxes in the legislation, but deferring its benefits for the first four years. By comparing six years of spending with ten years of taxing, it managed to appear deficit neutral under the rules of the Congressional Budget Office. In fact, the annual revenues fall far short of covering any single year's worth of spending, adding to the deficit for each of the last six years over the next ten, but, viewing the decade as a whole, it appears deficit neutral.
Ironically, in trying to avoid stating the actual cost of this legislation, the Democrats have made sure that voters will notice those costs even more once the bill is passed—giving Republicans a great issue on which to campaign for the next three years.
The spirit of this campaign for repeal—if it becomes necessary—is best summed up in a sign spotted at one of last summer's tea party rallies: "Shove It Down Our Throats in 2009, and We'll Shove It Up Your"—and here there appears a little symbol of a Democratic donkey—"in 2010."
Before then, however, there is another form of resistance: legal and constitutional challenges to various provisions of the bill. The first target will be the individual mandate, the requirement that every individual buy health insurance or pay a government fine. This is so unprecedented and unjustifiable an intrusion into the individual's rights—a tax just for existing—that it will face legal challenges demanding to know whether Congress has any such constitutional authority. Which it doesn't—though it is an open question whether a majority of the Supreme Court will rule that way.
The legal resistance on this issue has already begun, in an unexpected form. Various state government are trying to pass their own laws—Virginia's version is described here—guaranteeing the right of every individual to buy, or not buy, any health-insurance product he chooses. It is a deliberate attempt to set up a conflict between the federal health-care bill and a state-level guarantee of the basic rights of its citizens. Now that would be an interesting legal case, wouldn't it?
All of this and more can be done if the health-care bill manages to achieve final passage through Congress this month. But we're getting ahead of ourselves a bit, because we're not done yet with options to stop the bill in Congress.
As voters come out of their Christmas break and begin paying attention to politics again, each side is trying to define the character of the final Senate bill. The right is attempting, with notable success, to define the bill in one word: corruption.
Their main focus has been on the "Cornhusker kickback." This refers to a provision slipped into the Senate bill at the last minute to secure the vote of Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska (the "cornhusker state"). Nelson insisted that the federal government agree to cover all of his state's expenses—hundreds of million of dollars—for the bill's mandate expanding eligibility for Medicaid. The deal did not extend to the other 49 states, which will have to raise state revenues to cover this increase in spending.
The campaign against the "Cornhusker kickback" achieves three things.
First, in the eyes of public, this defines the bill as corrupt and full of hidden payoffs for special interests, of which this is just one example. (For more examples, see here.) These corrupt little payoffs are incidental to the bill in one sense; if they were all removed it would still be a bad bill. But in another sense, they reveal something essential about a government takeover of health care: it is all about looting, about how one group of people can tax and regulate others in an attempt to get something for nothing. All statist programs are rife with this kind of scheming, and they have to be, because whenever wealth is seized by force, there is a battle among the looters over how to divide the spoils. The Cornhusker kickback is the most visible reminder of this fact.
Second, the fight over special favors for Nebraska (and for other states) raises a basic constitutional challenge against the health-care bill. In fact, a group of Republican state attorneys general has threatened to sue if this provision is not dropped, citing numerous violations of the Constitution. A special favor to one state certainly violates the spirit of the Constitution by creating what is, in effect, a special treaty between the federal government and a single state giving that state privileges above the other states. This is precisely what whole structure of the Constitution was originally meant to prevent: the federal government becoming an instrument for the looting of some states by others.
And here's the beautiful thing about this constitutional challenge: the Democrats can't easily fix it without upsetting the whole set of political calculations required to get the bill passed in the first place. If the federal government doesn't pay for the increased Medicaid expenses that it mandates, it will be a huge cost increase for all states, putting pressure on senators to oppose the bill. But if the federal government has to pay for these increased costs for every state, then the cost of the bill spirals upward, and Democratic leaders risk losing the votes of congressmen who want to maintain the image of being "deficit hawks."
More broadly, in order to squeak by with the votes they needed in the House and Senate, the Democrats had to go on a vote-buying spree, offering money for hospitals in some districts, exemptions for limitations on Medicare Advantage programs in other districts, special tax breaks here and federal subsidies there. Start removing those special favors, and Democratic congressmen may decide that they can no longer justify the bill as being beneficial for their constituents. Or to put it more bluntly: votes that have been bought will become un-bought.
Finally, the attack on the Cornhusker kickback focuses pressure on the man who may be the health care bill's weakest link: Ben Nelson. Over the holidays, Senator Nelson has already faced a firestorm of criticism for his vote on the health care bill. Rather than being able to boast about the pork he brought back for his home state, he had to apologize for it.
"That's not the way we operate," said Gov. Dave Heineman, a Republican who is sometimes suggested as a possible opponent for Mr. Nelson in 2012. Mr. Heineman said that as news of the Medicaid provision spread, people in Nebraska felt embarrassed at the thought that they had been made part of some political deal, even if it was to benefit them.
Any such exemption should affect all states, Mr. Heineman said, not just one. "Our citizens got angry," he said. "It was an attack on their integrity."
Polls now show Senator Nelson, "a former governor and second-term senator who won re-election in 2006 with 64 percent of the vote" running behind Governor Heineman by nearly a two-to-one margin.
Senator Nelson has been reduced to begging for mercy, pleading with the group of Republican state attorneys general to "call off the dogs" on this issue.
Oh yes, and as I'm writing this, the latest news is that the Mayo Clinic has stopped accepting new Medicare patients at some of its clinics because the federal government has cut back Medicare reimbursements to a level at which doctors and hospitals lose too much money to keep operating. Yet the health-care bill would mandate additional cutbacks in Medicare reimbursement rates.
So don't be too impressed by the fact that the health-care bill squeaked by with 60 Senate votes over the holidays. The whole thing is such a corrupt fraud, has so little public support, and has so many angles from which to attack it that it can be defeated. The bill is so bad that there is even the prospect that we can turn the left against it. So it can still be defeated this month in Congress. And if that doesn't work, it can still be defeated in the courts. And if that doesn't work, then there are a lot worse things the Republicans could do in the next two elections than to campaign on the repeal of this bill.
Winston Churchill had it right: "Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy." Never give in.—RWT
Robert Tracinski writes daily commentary at TIADaily.com. He is the editor of The Intellectual Activist (TIA) and contributor to The Freedom Fighter's Journal
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