Repeal and Replace — but First Reveal by Jennifer Rubin of Commentary
Politico reports:
The health care reform bill signed into law by President Barack Obama Tuesday requires members of Congress and their office staffs to buy insurance through the state-run exchanges it creates — but it may exempt staffers who work for congressional committees or for party leaders in the House and Senate.
Staffers and members on both sides of the aisle call it an “inequity” and an “outrage” — a loophole that exempts the staffers most involved in writing and passing the bill from one of its key requirements.
Well, it’s certainly not the worst thing about ObamaCare, but it sure is emblematic of the secret self-dealing and the grab bag of surprises tucked in the nooks and crannies of the thousands of pages of legislation. There are racial preferences, taxes galore, mandates on restaurants, and more yet to be fully revealed. In a bill this enormous, with this much arm-twisting and backroom dealing (by the way, all those Stupak-Pelosi meetings weren’t put on C-SPAN, were they?), it will take days and weeks to find out, as Nancy Pelosi put it in a moment of candor, what’s actually in it!
This does give a boost to the new Republican mantra “repeal and replace!” Part of the “repeal” effort will be the uncovering of all the special deals and a proper explanation of the impact on the deficit (calculated to go up $6B this year), the Medicare cuts (about $100B this year), and the regimen of taxes and mandates that await us if in fact the bill is fully implemented. Democrats want to talk about all the wonders contained in the monstrous bill? I think that’s a fine idea. It’s about time everyone understood what they all voted for.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/blogs/index.php/rubin/264696
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