Daniel Halper
The Weekly Standard
The Republican National Committee is wishing Obamacare–President Obama’s signature health care overhaul legislation–a “happy birthday” with this banner, hanging from the RNC office here in Washington:
“We didn’t forget you,” the RNC says, making an obvious jab at President Obama.
President Obama signed the law two years ago today, but due to the unpopularity of the project, he is not delivering a speech today to commemorate the event.
“The president does speak about health care on occasion and will continue to do that, but he is focused on a forward agenda right now, and working with Congress and doing the things he can through executive action to grow the economy and create jobs,” explained White House spokesman Jay Carney when asked why Obama wouldn’t publicly commemorate the event.
Charles Krauthammer says we’ll be hearing a lot more about Obamacare going forward. “Obamacare dominated the 2010 midterms, driving its Democratic authors to a historic electoral shellacking. But since then, the issue has slipped quietly underground,” Krauthammer writes in today’s column.
“Now it’s back, summoned to the national stage by the confluence of three disparate events: the release of new Congressional Budget Office cost estimates, the approach of Supreme Court hearings on the law’s constitutionality and the issuance of a compulsory contraception mandate.”
Krauthammer concludes: “Rarely has one law so exemplified the worst of the Leviathan state — grotesque cost, questionable constitutionality and arbitrary bureaucratic coerciveness. Little wonder the president barely mentioned it in his latest State of the Union address. He wants to be reelected. He’d rather talk about other things.”
Read more: http://www.weeklystandard.com/blogs/rnc-doesnt-forget-happy-birthday-obamacare_634383.html