Light Dawns on Obama's Head

The Wall Street Journal tells us that Mr. Obama has figured out why the Obamacare web site was such a disaster.

First of all, he was careful to assure us that the fiasco wasn't his fault:

"The challenge, I think, that we have going forward is not so much my personal management style or particular issues around White House organization," he said.

Having exonerated himself personally of any possible failings, managerial or otherwise, he revealed where the fault lies:

"It actually has to do with what I referred to earlier, which is we have these big agencies, some of which are outdated, some of which are not designed properly. . . . The White House is just a tiny part of what is a huge, widespread organization with increasingly complex tasks in a complex world."

Glory be!  Mr. Obama sounds as if he's been reading Scragged.  He's saying that our government is too big, too wasteful, and too ill-designed to be run properly by anybody, not even by a genius such as himself who had the wisdom, foresight, and connections to choose the best possible vendor for the job: a company run by his wife's college roommate.

We've pointed out that government mismanagement of our health care system has led to acute shortages of many crucial drugs.  To simplify the argument, we don't want health care run by the same folks who gave us $600 toilet seats and $100 hammers.  To Mr. Obama's condemnation of government complexity and general ineptitude, we say, "Amen."

When Will They Ever Learn?

Alas, Mr. Obama's insight that government can't do anything well won't change his basic message that government should take on more and more functions.  Why not?  Because his party's survival depends on giving goodies to people who vote for Democrats.

After all, the WSJ reminds us that:

He devoted his second Inaugural Address to the practical and moral virtues of what he called "collective action" and tried to convert we the people into we the government.  [emphasis added]

For the past 50-60 years, liberals and progressives have won elections by convincing voters that government will take care of them.  The results are finally becoming visible: our cities and states are going broke due to the cost of welfare payments and public employee salaries and pensions which cannot possibly be paid.

The coming wave of municipal bankruptcies won't convince politicians to stop making impossible promises, but individual voters may be catching on and stop believing in them.

I was in favor of Obamacare because I thought that everyone should have health insurance.  I just didn't realize that I'd have to pay for it.  [emphasis added]

This was said by an Obama supporter whose health insurance was canceled because it didn't include the government's laundry-list of expensive conditions which all policies must cover.  She found that the cheapest acceptable policy cost about twice what she'd been paying.

Liberals have felt good about themselves for decades because they support programs which they're told will benefit society.  This is OK with them - so long as they don't have to pay.  Mr. Obama keeps talking about taxing "the rich" to keep his supporters from realizing that they'll be the ones who pay.

We've reported over and over that our very few rich people pay more than half the income taxes collected in the US.  Turns out that isn't the whole story: the Congressional Budget Office just revealed that the top 40% of taxpayers pay more than 100% of all income taxes collected.  How is this possible?  Because the bottom 40% pay negative 9% - that is, they don't pay any taxes, the government uses other people's taxes to give them money.

How much more does government plan to take from those who are already paying far more than their fair share?  As Mitt Romney pointed out, it's obvious why the bottom 47% or so vote for Democrats: they're their meal ticket.  But what about everybody else, those who actually have jobs and pay taxes?

Up until now, the plain, unarguable fact that there aren't enough rich people to pay for all these wonderful programs hasn't made a dent in Mr. Obama supporters' belief that they're entitled to feel good about themselves because they're doing good at someone else's expense.  This may change now that some of them are realizing that in this case at least, they'll have to pay part of the cost.  In terms of payment, Mr. Obama is correct in saying that we taxpayers are the government.

Will liberals stay liberal once the costs to their own personal wallets finally come home to roost? Mr. Obama has admitted that our government is so dysfunctional that it can't deploy a decent web site; there can be no further arguments about its ability - more accurately, the lack thereof - to successfully take over the one-sixth of our economy that is the medical industry.  How much longer will his plans be permitted to fail at vast expense, now that he's realized they can't possibly succeed even in theory?

We'll be quoting the President's insightful words of wisdom often as the looming health care disaster unfolds day by day.