Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Coincidentally, he's also grown tired of cleaning his teeth with a fire hose

It's the pronouncement you've been waiting for -- a water carrier is getting tired of carrying Barack Obama's water:
It's getting difficult and slinking toward impossible to defend the Affordable Care Act. The latest blow to Democratic candidates, liberal activists, and naïve columnists like me came Monday from the White House, which announced yet another delay in the Obamacare implementation.
That's the authentic voice of Ron Fournier, longtime AP writer now at the National Journal. And he's bitter, just bitter:
Defending the ACA became painfully harder when online insurance markets were launched from a multi-million-dollar website that didn't work, when autopsies on the administration's actions revealed an epidemic of incompetence that began in the Oval Office and ended with no accountability.

Then officials started fudging numbers and massaging facts to promote implementation, nothing illegal or even extraordinary for this era of spin. But they did more damage to the credibility of ACA advocates.
Emphasis mine. And there you have the key -- don't make Ron Fournier look bad, people! But he's not done:
Finally, there are the ACA rule changes—at least a dozen major adjustments, without congressional approval. J. Mark Iwry, deputy assistant Treasury secretary for health policy, said the administration has broad "authority to grant transition relief" under a section of the Internal Revenue Code that directs the Treasury secretary to "prescribe all needful rules and regulations for the enforcement" of tax obligations, according to The New York Times.

Yes, Obamacare is a tax.
And how! But there's more, much more:
Advocates for a strong executive branch, including me, have given the White House a pass on its rule-making authority, because implementing such a complicated law requires flexibility. But the law may be getting stretched to the point of breaking. Think of the ACA as a game of Jenga: Adjust one piece and the rest are affected; adjust too many and it falls.
I'll try to put this as gently as possible, because we all hate having our noses rubbed in it. You can't defend the indefensible and maintain credibility. I'd have more sympathy for Fournier's dilemma if he weren't capable of writing something like this:
Put me in the frustrated category. I want the ACA to work because I want health insurance provided to the millions without it, for both the moral and economic benefits. I want the ACA to work because, as Charles Lane wrote for The Washington Post, the link between work and insurance needs to be broken. I want the ACA to work because the GOP has not offered a serious alternative that can pass Congress.

Unfortunately, the president and his team are making their good intentions almost indefensible.
Allow me to translate -- the GOP does not control the Senate, so Harry Reid can kill any proposal he wants to, which means that any alternative the GOP proposes is, by definition, not serious. I would suggest that Harry Reid isn't "Congress," but that would be churlish, I suppose.

Let's make it easy for the tortured soul of Ron Fournier -- we'll all stipulate that Ron has good intentions. The president and his team? Not so much. And yes Ron, you get the Stephen Furst Award (as always, NSFW):


And remember this as well -- the solution to Flounder's dilemma, as proposed in this eternally wise clip, is to commit insurance fraud.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

He's not mad at Obama. He's mad at reality. "Why doesn't it work?" It does, Ron. And if you live long enough, I'm sure you'll enjoy the gulag just fine.

w.B.

Mr. D said...

He was expecting an earth-shattering kaboom!

3john2 said...

Where's the kaboom?

Gino said...

to be fair, Obama did promise rainbows and unicorns in every home.
Ron should be mad, and has every right to be.