Obama Has The Answers, Not Everyday Americans

The gist of Obama's speech last night is that he and Congress have the answers, it doesn't matter what Americans in general want, or for that matter, what Americans in particular want.

"Millions of Americans are just a pink slip away from losing their health insurance, and one serious illness away from losing all their savings... And in spite of all this, our medical bills are growing at over twice the rate of inflation..."


That's President Clinton, sixteen years ago almost to the day, in a speech about a complex health-care plan built on government expansion, with billions in hidden costs. Last night, a President--who was only 32 then--is now in the White House, out to prove that nothing has changed in the minds of the Democratic leadership since the Clinton debacle.

Nothing has changed with the Democratic leadership in the past 16 years. Clinton's plan failed because it was far too bureaucratic and added layers of red-tape on health care, and was too expensive to pay for under the then existing tax structure. HR 3200 and its equivalents show that nothing has changed since then. They are far and away too complicated (average 1000+ pages), and all add an average of $1,000,000,000,000.00 to the yearly deficit. This is money that will have to paid back, if not by us, then by our grand children and great grand children...on down several generations.

As it is, Congress is going to have to RAISE the debt ceiling from $12,500,000,000,000.00 to $15,000,000,000,000.00 (I prefer using numbers to words, as they have a greater impact, everyone know what 1,000,000,000 looks like but $1trillion?) just in order to keep from cutting back on services that we can't afford to pay for now. But I digress.

Last night, President Obama's response to sixteen years (and one angry August recess) worth of bi-partisan doubt was to double down and bet even more political capital on the same approach. It's as if he expected Americans to tune in, and suddenly realize their mistake

Democrats haven't realized that over the past 16 years, the same percentage of American's without insurance hasn't changed, it's 15.3% total, but that counts people who CHOOSE NOT to have health insurance as well as those who are covered under various other sources S-Chip, Medicare, Medicaid. So the 45 million American who don't have health insurance are really actually about 15 million people. That sounds like a huge number of people, but when you consider that there about 360 million people legally in this country, you realize that it's less than 5% without access to health insurance.

Yet the Democrats want to destroy and take control of the entire system of health care in what is in reality a blatant attempt to gain far more control over American's lives than has hitherto been the case.

And the lines are wearing thin. The President (yes, Obama this time) told Congress that "our collective failure to meet this challenge--year after year, decade after decade--has led us to a breaking point." Has it really? When President Clinton conjured similar fears about pink slips and millions losing coverage to Congress in 1993, 15.3% of Americans were uninsured. In 2007, the percentage of Americans without insurance was...15.3%. A solution to this problem is needed, but the fact that it hasn't grown worse is a sign that Congress has time to think, and little reason to panic.

President Obama's speech to America from a Congressional pulpit has made it perfectly clear that he not only didn't listen to the national debate on health care that he himself set in motion, but doesn't care what the nation desires. Just shut up, we in Congress and this Administration know what we're doing, and YOU don't, we're smarter than you are...move along...nothing to see. Just do as we say, not as we do