It’s “The Little Red Hen” in reverse! For those unfamiliar with this childhood bedtime classic, the eponymous protagonist sets out to bake bread, first by planting seeds, then cutting the wheat, and so on. At each stage, the hen asks three farm friends for help. Each time, the dog, cat, and duck decline to share the labor. It is not until the final “task” — eating the freshly baked loaf — that the three agree to pitch in, at which point the vindictive hen tells them no dice.
Contrast this fable with the bedtime story that chronicles the passage of the Affordable Care Act in 2010.
At each stage of the process, the Democrats who controlled both houses of the 111th Congress refused to allow their Republican “friends” to sit at the table. The “work” that produced the monstrosity that was passed into law was so labored and fractious that ultimately Congress resorted to a parliamentary trick, using the process of reconciliation, which required only a simple voting majority, to pass the bill.
Fast forward to now and to the MSM’s bitter admission that Obamacare is in trouble. Responding to the administration’s postponement for one year of the “employer mandate” provision, Jeff Zeleny of ABC wrote that the delay “validates an argument critics have been making for years: Obamacare was misguided and is collapsing under its own weight.”
In the parlance of “The Little Red Hen,” the bread tastes awful. But since the Democrats insisted on taking full ownership of the bill from the outset, would it not require an act of unbridled chutzpah for the president or his water carriers in the liberal media to ask the once-shunned Republican members of Congress to help rewrite the recipe?
Let’s put the question to Jamelle Bouie, Obama groupie extraordinaire, who writes at Greg Sargent’s Washington Post blog:
Such an administrative reform [fixing the employer mandate] is only possible in a settled political environment, where both sides accept the reality of the Affordable Care Act. As it stands, the Republican Party is still committed to repealing every portion of Obamacare, regardless of the costs. Indeed, after news of the delay broke, House Majority Leader Eric Cantor responded on Twitter with a simple declaration. ‘Rather than simply delaying the pain, we should go ahead and scrap this entire law before any more damage is done.’…
Bouie goes on to submit that the “GOP wants Obamacare to fail” and is “doing all it can to ensure that outcome.” One supposes in the fairy tale world that Bouie and his ilk inhabit, it’s only the Republicans (the “bad guys”) who object to eating this stale and moldy loaf.
Related Articles
- Scales fall from MSM’s eyes as reporters contemplate horrors of Obamacare
- UnitedHealthcare to leave individual insurance market in CA
- Will Obama end up repealing Obamacare himself?
- CA to use federal taxpayer money to train students to sell Obamacare
- Obama’s re-election and the lessons of ‘white affirmative action’
- Is Obama to blame for the polarization in country?
- Should the GOP use the nuclear option to kill ObamaCare?
- Shared sacrifice: Cutting ObamaCare could save $2 trillion
- ObamaCare, the great job killer
- Why ObamaCare needs to be repealed, not tweaked
- New survey: 65% of doctors say healthcare quality will decline under ObamaCare
- Poll: 13% of Americans approve of the health care law as written
