Everyone has been watching the lame ducks waddle into Congress with trepidation. What will these “zombie representatives” do? Those who were voted out of office in the midterm elections will be tempted to use this final session of Congress to write themselves into the history books with taxpayer-funded ink. Alex Pappas at the Daily Caller quotes the apprehensive Phil Kerpen, vice-president of Americans for Prosperity, warning a Capitol Hill rally: “If they get their way on spending, we are going to get a trillion dollar omnibus spending bill that funds Obamacare, funds the EPA, funds everything that we want to stop.”
Tea Party minutemen have been putting pressure on freshmen Republicans… perhaps a bit too much pressure, in the case of the Tea Party Patriots, who gave out the private email addresses and phone numbers of incoming representatives. They can’t do much about the lame-duck session except make themselves visible, and hope to impress those in Congress who still hold their offices. As long as they’re camping out on Capitol Hill, perhaps they could slip a little suggestion under the House and Senate doors:
Repeal ObamaCare. Now.
Americans are tired of shivering fearfully in the shadow of these lame-duck sessions, with one hand clapped over their wallets. Congressional representatives of both parties always say they want to do what’s right for America. Ladies and gentlemen, here is your chance. Many of you are the walking dead, beyond the vengeance of voters. Why not spend the time doing right by the people for a change, instead of trying to pick the locks on the Treasury? Many of you will soon find yourselves in the private sector. It would be in your interests to start thinking seriously about its health.
ObamaCare is the single greatest job killer since the Great Depression. It destroyed thousands of jobs at insurance companies within days of passage. It has prompted huge layoffs at companies such as AT&T, Caterpillar, and John Deere. It prices temporary and part-time labor out of the market. The high costs of benefits and compliance are suppressing job creation, especially at the entry level, where opportunity is desperately needed for low-income workers and the long-term unemployed. A liberal group, the Center for American Progress, produced a model that showed ObamaCare could destroy up to 700,000 jobs by 2019. Even this grim projection included some rosy assumptions. Like every leftist, Barack Obama thought he could repeal the laws of supply and demand… and like every one of the failures who preceded him around the globe, he was wrong.
Obama’s ruinous health-care bill is also driving the cost of health insurance up. The AARP recently informed employees it would have to hike their insurance costs by 8 percent. Boeing told its people to expect higher premiums back in October. Verizon announced it would have to either cut benefits or raise premiums. States have approved rate hikes of up to 20% for Blue Cross and Blue Shield. If your insurance was cheap up till now, ObamaCare lards it up with mandates that could price it out of your reach. If your insurance was really good, ObamaCare taxes the living daylights out of it. As the President promised, “If you like your plan, you can keep your plan…” after his misbegotten legislation ruins it.
Our representatives have declared a bipartisan war on earmarks. Earmarks were the electrodes that shocked ObamaCare into life, giving it the strength to break its restraints and fasten its hands on our throats. The bill was full of Cornhusker Kickbacks and Louisiana Purchases. Taxpayer money was spent lavishly to buy the votes of reluctant Democrats, who negotiated hard bargains for their “principles.” There would be no better way to demonstrate a commitment against earmarks than killing a rotten law that could not exist without them.
Both parties claim to be concerned about the deficit. ObamaCare is a deficit mushroom cloud. It was sold with ridiculous lies about its long-term costs, but the Congressional Budget Office eventually came clean and pegged the cost at over $800 billion in the first decade… and I think Ms. Rosy Assumptions worked on that report, too. Its true cost must be understood in the context of a depressed economy, and the likely response to its long-term failure, which will be even more depressing government control. The almighty State will never address the crash of such a massive program by returning any of your liberty.
It’s hard to remember any law that failed as quickly, and comprehensively, as ObamaCare. The government has already issued one hundred and eleven exemptions from this marvelous work of genius… including exemptions for the unions and activist groups that inflicted it upon the rest of us. It’s no longer possible to pretend this ugly power grab was a “solution” to health insurance “problems.”
It shouldn’t be hard to kill something that is already bleeding from a hundred and eleven wounds. Passing ObamaCare was an incredible dereliction of duty by the previous Congress. Let them do the right thing, and clean up their mess on the way out the door. If they won’t, let every voter in America remember that they could have. We already know the next Congress will begin starving the beast to death, to the applause of a relieved American public. We would prefer a quick and painless mercy killing, immediately. Those who saw their jobs devoured by the slain monster can celebrate by sending out resumes.
