By Joseph Smith
Leave it to President Obama, with one foot out the door, to sling one more verbal jab at any Republicans who have the temerity to oppose his health care law.
In a Friday afternoon presser before his vacation getaway, the president called efforts to defund and repeal ObamaCare the Republicans' "holy grail" and an "ideological fixation."
Which is not to be confused with Obama's own fixation on passing health care despite sustained opposition by more than half the country.
The president went on to set up and knock down his own straw man, as The Hill reports:
The idea that you would shut down the government unless you prevent 30 million people from getting healthcare is a bad idea...
I'm assuming they will not take that path...I have confidence that common sense, in the end, will prevail.
Defending his delay of the employer mandate, the president said that going through Congress would be the "normal thing" to do, "[b]ut we're not in a normal atmosphere around here when it comes to 'ObamaCare[.]'"
And why would that be, Mr. President?
Does it have anything to do with the backhanded manner in which the law was passed, with zero Republican votes?
Could it have anything to do with a party with the audacity to impose their idea of transformation through social engineering that has seen consistent majority opposition for more than five years?
Or does it have anything to do with the fate of a nation having been determined by a Supreme Court chief justice who is accountable to no one on this earth parsing the meaning of a tax?
Or how about the 21 new taxes that arguably amount to the biggest tax increase in our history?
Or a job-killing and innovation-stifling medical device tax that is opposed by 33 Democrat senators (whose ox is gored by that tax)?
And what of the IPAB, or Independent Payment Advisory Board, aka death panels, that even one-time Democrat presidential candidate Howard Dean recently termed a "health care rationing body" that Congress should be "getting rid of"?
Does it matter that the health care law was passed with a rigged cost estimate of less than $1 trillion, using six years of costs and ten years of taxes, and that the ten-year estimate has now reached $2.6 trillion?
What of the fact that health insurance premiums are soaring despite the president's empty promise to reduce a "typical family's premium by up to $2,500 a year"?
Take also the president blithely claiming four years ago that:
... [i]f you like your doctor, you will be able to keep your doctor. Period. If you like your health care plan, you will be able to keep your health care plan. Period. No one will take it away. No matter what.
In reality, ObamaCare is worsening an already serious shortage of doctors, many employers are likely to drop health coverage, and there has been widespread reduction of work hours to avoid providing employee health insurance.
Does it matter that the ObamaCare economy has resulted in the creation of "seven times more part-time
jobs" than full-time jobs?
Or that some insurers are packing their bags and leaving entire states?
Why have the administration's best PR efforts failed to move the dial on ObamaCare, with a recent Fox News poll showing that 63 percent of voters think the law needs to be changed, and a 57-percent majority feeling that implementation is "a joke?"
Which brings us to the extralegal machinations by the Obama administration to hide the bad news from as many unwitting Americans as possible.
Is delaying the employer mandate any indication of trouble in paradise?
How about the recent announcement that the ObamaCare bureaucracy will be using the honor system, aka "just lie" when applying for premium subsidies, because they have no way to verify the veracity of such claims?
And is it not disturbing that our infinitely wise health care administrators in Washington are unable to decide whether or not our personal data is secure until the day before the exchanges are scheduled to open?
Then again, the exchanges may not be ready on schedule anyway, even after three and a half years of preparation.
Does it matter that a Congress with an approval rating in the teens gave itself new subsidies, just before adjourning for the August recess, to avoid the higher costs the rest of us commoners will face on the ObamaCare exchanges?
And why did twenty-two House Democrats vote with Republicans last month to delay the individual mandate? Are those Democrats hoping voters won't notice who owns ObamaCare?
Does it matter, Mr. President, that while you doled out some 2,000 waivers to your friends, the rest of us bitter clingers are forced to succumb to the will of a handful of all-knowing central planners for a most basic need?
Does it matter that more than half the states have rejected building ObamaCare exchanges, and many have also rejected the ObamaCare Medicaid expansion as well?
Does the fact that states without state exchanges are "not statutorily allowed to trigger enforcement" of the employer mandate have anything to do with delaying the mandate? How about the fact that a lawsuit has been filed challenging the employer mandate on that basis?
What is it about ObamaCare that caused James P. Hoffa, president of the Teamsters Union, to warn Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi in writing that ObamaCare would "shatter not only our hard-earned health benefits, but destroy the foundation of the 40 hour work week that is the backbone of the American middle class?"
And what are we to make of Hoffa's further statement that campaigning for the health care law "has come back to haunt us?"
And speaking of haunting, does anyone in this country look forward to being scrutinized by the IRS on every aspect of his or her personal health care decisions, especially after we learn of the politicizing and privacy abuses by that agency?
Is it not disconcerting that even the IRS employees' union is seeking a way out of ObamaCare?
And why are there more than 60 lawsuits challenging the Obama administration's contraception mandate and the ObamaCare attack on religious freedom, with the likelihood that "at least one of these cases may well reach the U.S. Supreme Court in the next term?"
And, for that matter, why is religious freedom such an obstacle for our beneficent government?
The president cannot answer any of these questions. He tossed out a straw-man argument on Friday because he has no other defense.
It is time for Republicans to stand up and put an end to this charade.
American Thinker
