26Aug2009
→
“
In this charged climate, the president and congressional Democrats should have known that there was a real risk of government overload if they pushed a big sweeping health care bill with a public option as a centerpiece and a $1 trillion price tag. The safest move would have been to lose the public option from the beginning. But if the Democrats were going to make their case for it, their only hope was to rally behind one plan, show in concrete and credible terms that it was fully paid for and then spend months educating the public about the benefits of a public option and why it is essential to achieving the president’s top goal of reducing costs.
Instead, the Democrats did the exact opposite. The president chose not to lead with his own plan, and Congress filled the vacuum with a multitude of partisan bills. This only heightened the public’s confusion and wariness. The Democrats went back and forth for weeks on how to pay for their bills and then settled on Medicare cuts as the prime cost-saver, fueling doubts about whether it would be deficit neutral as the president promised. Worst of all, the House bills, which have been the locus of public attention, were found by CBO to actually raise costs instead of lowering them. That undermined the president’s credibility and the public’s confidence in Congress’ competence.
→Dan Gerstein: Democrats have no one to blame for the health care debacle but themselves.
Instead, the Democrats did the exact opposite. The president chose not to lead with his own plan, and Congress filled the vacuum with a multitude of partisan bills. This only heightened the public’s confusion and wariness. The Democrats went back and forth for weeks on how to pay for their bills and then settled on Medicare cuts as the prime cost-saver, fueling doubts about whether it would be deficit neutral as the president promised. Worst of all, the House bills, which have been the locus of public attention, were found by CBO to actually raise costs instead of lowering them. That undermined the president’s credibility and the public’s confidence in Congress’ competence.
→Dan Gerstein: Democrats have no one to blame for the health care debacle but themselves.
