Congratulations to President Obama. He keeps racking up victories, and now has been named winner of the Lie of the Year award.
Oops, so sorry. Being No. 1 isn’t always a good thing.
Then again, the sponsor of the award, PolitiFact, understated the president’s great skill at bending the arc of truth. The fact-checkers called Obama’s claim that “if you like your health-care plan, you can keep it” the biggest whopper of 2013, and 59 percent of its mostly liberal readers agreed.
But hold on, that’s discrimination. Think of all the other known ObamaCare lies that got overlooked.
His promise that you can keep your doctor — that wasn’t true. Nor was it true that, if you get your insurance at work, nothing will change. As for the “affordable” part of the Affordable Care Act, millions of Americans already discovered the privilege of enrolling will cost them more money, not less.
The world knows there’s no truth behind Obama’s claim that the federal Web site is like shopping on Amazon. Nor, after the White House’s vaunted “tech surge,” is the Web site functioning with “private-sector velocity and effectiveness.”
The White House lies go on and on — they haven’t stopped yet, because Jay Carney’s lips still are moving — but even a comprehensive list wouldn’t do justice to Obama’s singular achievement. Remember, he’s said these things repeatedly for years, so you’d need multiplication tables to get a real total.
Even that wouldn’t tell the whole story. The sin isn’t just the sum of his various false claims. ObamaCare itself is the Big Lie. The whole thing is false.
Look at this way: It now appears that not a single major promise made about the law will turn out to be credible. When it comes to delivering the product as sold, there’s no there there.
In private business, that’s called fraud. When the government does it, it’s for your own good. Bernie Madoff would be a free man if he had gone to Washington instead of Wall Street.
Even liberals who swooned over the law are coming to realize that its promise to provide universal coverage was false. Projections say that, despite ObamaCare, tens of millions of Americans will remain without health insurance.
Young people also are running away because many are realizing the law was designed to transfer wealth from them to older, sicker people. The high premiums they’ll pay aim to fund reduced costs for their parents’ generation.
And get this: Thanks to the tsunami of cancellations in the individual market, some 5 million people will have lost their private insurance by Dec. 31. The vast bulk are not expected to find replacement coverage by the new year, meaning the first real impact of ObamaCare will be to take away health care for millions of people.
If that’s victory, what would defeat look like?
Back in 1996, then-Nebraska Sen. Bob Kerrey called fellow Democrat Bill Clinton an “uncommonly good liar.”
So true, but in hindsight, Clinton looks like an amateur. Although he later insisted he “did not have sexual relations with that woman,” nobody believed him. He survived because enough people liked him anyway and believed that sex, even with an intern in the Oval Office, was a private matter.
Obama, on the other hand, has perpetrated a lie that is clearly a public matter. It is also of enormous consequence, one that could eventually hit most families in America one way or another.
The biggest changes almost certainly will be permanent, with price increases and different coverage and deductibles unlikely ever to be rolled back. State taxpayers will be stuck with the increased tab for Medicaid after federal subsidies end. And generations to come will pay the federal costs, which will — bet on it — soar past current estimates.
All things considered, then, the impacts of ObamaCare are gigantic and here to stay, while none of the major promises will be kept. And so calling it the Lie of the Year would be insufficient.
It’s the Lie of Forever.
Christie caught in GWB jam
If you’re one of the unfortunate masses stuck in city gridlock this week because of “emergency repairs” that shut two lanes on the George Washington Bridge, you got a taste of why New Jersey Democrats are tearing at Gov. Christie. They charge that his Port Authority loyalists caused miles of traffic tie-ups around Fort Lee in September as political retaliation.
Christie denied the charge, but he’s also made light of it and said the resignation of two top PA aides was unrelated to the lane closures.
That’s not very persuasive. It’s pretty clear the aides lied when they said the lanes were closed for a traffic study. In fact, Patrick Foye, the bi-state agency’s executive director, said there was no study.
Naturally, Dems are eager to tarnish Christie, a likely GOP presidential candidate, but he’s giving them ammunition. The unannounced closures cost commuters and businesses enormous time and money, and look like a raw abuse of power. Those are the sorts of things Christie usually rails against, yet he’s not very bothered by this one.
Absent a better answer, his inartful dodges should be held against him.
By the way, why did the Port Authority pick this busy week, including rush hour, to shut down two lanes on the GW, causing backups throughout Manhattan and The Bronx? Is New York also being punished for something?
De Blasio transition a tale of dithering heights
Psst — has anybody seen Bill de Blasio? If you do, remind him he’s supposed to be forming a government.
Unless he changes his mind, Dollar Bill will be sworn in two weeks from today and give his inauguration speech. After that, City Hall is his, ready or not. So far, he’s not.
To judge by his pokey pace, he’s either planning to run the government with just the five people he’s named so far, including Police Commissioner Bill Bratton, or keep scores of top Bloomberg people around. The only other decision he has made is to move his family from Brooklyn to Gracie Mansion, and even that was slow.
“A lot of people are scratching their heads,” one Bloomberg insider said. “They don’t know whether they’re supposed to leave on Jan. 1, or stay around for awhile.”
Some of a new mayor’s personnel choices can wait, but others reflect the heart of his priorities. A chancellor, a budget director, an emergency chief, more deputy mayors, a fire commissioner, housing and health commissioners, a top lawyer, a planning director — they are big jobs that are key to carrying out a mayor’s agenda and delivering basic services.
On second thought, given de Blasio’s agenda, he should take his time. The change he’s promising can wait.
Never would be good.
City is off the wall
A headline said the city is planning to open a “high school with no walls.”
Well, that’s one way to cut costs.