Trolling at the NRO is frustrating because it takes so long for comments to appear. On the other hand, I should admit that I was wrong In an earlier post when I suggested that my comments would be replied to by excessively nasty and low-class remarks.
Charles Krauthammer wrote a post about the Affordable Care Act in which he begins re-telling the easily and repeatedly debunked lie about the 1.76 trillion cost estimate from the CBO. Then he gives the old slippery slope warning, suggesting that if the Supreme Court approves Obamacare, there won’t be any limits on federal power. Finally, he writes about Catholic organizations being forced to pay for contraception, which they’re not actually being forced to do, as an unprecedented denial of religious freedom, when actually it’s tame compared to oppression that the Supreme Court has approved of in the past.
I wrote a reply, but it probably won’t appear until tonight or tomorrow.
The 1.76 trillion figure is part of a calculation that has been taken out of context from a report (pdf) in which it’s very clearly not being used as a final estimate. One conservative lied about it and it spread through the internet at an amazing clip. Mr. Krauthammer undercut his usual low standards by repeating a lie that not only has been debunked by multiple organizations, is pretty easy for anyone to debunk on their own. The report isn’t too hard to read. The report actually says, on the first page, that the CBO’s new estimate is lower than previous estimates for the same period of time. But when not using the same time period, which is what happens each year when the CBO produces it’s ten-year projections, the cost will rise as more of the ACA is implemented. This is a well known fact but Mr. Krauthammer sounds the alarm as if he’s just uncovered a secret plot. But 1.76 trillion is false even with the new, increased estimate.
The health care mandate is in keeping with current powers of the federal government. A commenter on National Review suggested that if Obamacare passes then everyone over 18 should be mandated to purchase a gun. I don’t know if the commenter is aware that a similar mandate was passed during the presidency of George Washington. Washington’s mandate was never challenged in the Supreme Court but 1942, the Supreme Court ruled that the federal government can use the commerce clause to put limits on wheat production even if the production is for private use. More recently, the court overrode state law by outlawing marijuana for medicinal purposes, and Justice Antonin Scalia supported the power of the commerce clause in that case. Charles Krauthammer wants to know, if the mandate passes, is there anything the commerce clause doesn’t allow the federal government to do? George Washington’s mandate was never challenged and the two cases I just mentioned are far more overreaching than the health care mandate, so whatever the federal government can and can’t do now, it won’t change with approval of the health care mandate.
The recent accommodation for Catholic institutions means that those institutions will not directly pay for contraception. If it’s unconstitutional for Catholic organizations to be forced to pay indirectly for something they don’t believe in, than all taxes are unconstitutional because they may be used indirectly to pay for things that citizens don’t agree with, such as war, subsidies for farms which produce pork, and even Medicare, since some people don’t believe in medicine.
Mr. Krauthammer writes,
Today, it’s the Catholic Church whose free-exercise powers are under assault from this cascade of diktats sanctioned by — indeed required by — Obamacare. Tomorrow it will be the turn of other institutions of civil society that dare stand between unfettered state and atomized citizen.
But the federal government has a long history of trampling over religious beliefs when doing so supports a national agenda. One good example, also supported by conservative Justice Scalia, is the religious use of controlled substances, which the Supreme Court has determined can be disallowed. Mr. Krauthammer has access to high level archival databases. Surely has access to wikipedia.
Conservatives, including Mitt Romney, New Gingrich, and the leadership of the Heritage Foundation all supported the individual mandate before defeating the mandate became something that could used to damage the Democratic party. That’s another inconvenient fact that Mr. Krauthammer has to ignore in order to paint Democrats as Socialists for their support of Obamacare.
A nobody like I can be forgiven for acting like a passive element and mindlessly repeating lies that are bouncing around the internet. Someone with Mr. Krauthammer’s resources should know better.
BnmnG 