Let's start with the fact that the current president's "signature legislative achievement" is a) wildly unpopular; and b) a disaster in multiple ways, including people losing plans they liked, costs to the taxpayers soaring . . . you get the idea. Now let's remember that in the last two mid-term elections, Republicans ran on repealing ObamaCare and won by huge margins.
So when these same Republicans - now in control of both chambers of Congress thanks in large part to their commitment to repealing ObamaCare - vote to repeal ObamaCare, how does the mainstream media treat this news?
As a joke, and no one more so than PBS, which has something in common with ObamaCare. They are both taxpayer-supported government boondoggles that do not need to exist, because offerings in the private sector can meet all the needs they purport to meet. Yet there they are. You to get your health care through ObamaCare exchanges, you'll accept the narrowed-down networks, wait times, higher-than-promised premiums and declining quality of coverage you would expect from something the government has for you. And if you want to get your news from a government-sponsored network, you'll get
crap like this:
One more time: Republican Rep. Charlie Dent, who is in a Pennsylvania district Mitt Romney won in 2012 just 51 to 48 percent, last week lamented the kinds of issues House Republicans have been taking up so far in this new 114th Congress. In his words:
"Week one, we had a Speaker election that didn't go as well as a lot of us would have liked. Week two, we spent a lot of time talking about deporting children, a conversation a lot of us didn't want to have. Week three, we're debating reportable rape and incest — again, not an issue a lot of us wanted to have a conversation about. I just can't wait for week four."
So what about Week Four? It will be about (drum roll) repealing Obamacare. House Republicans, leadership aides confirm, will move forward with a bill on full repeal of the health care law, something Republicans have done half a dozen times now. (They have voted more than 50 times on measures relating to changing the law, including six times for full repeal). So why are Republicans doing this again? Frankly, because newly elected freshmen members haven't voted for it before, and they want the opportunity to do so.
A pretty good week for proponents of Obamacare: Meanwhile yesterday, the Department of Health and Human Services
announced that 9.5 million people had signed up for coverage under the law. The law faces an uncertain future before the Supreme Court later this year, and it remains unpopular. The latest
Kaiser Family Foundation tracking poll finds that 40 percent approve of it while 46 percent do not. But, according to that same poll, 64 percent said that if the Supreme Court rules against federally sponsored state subsidies, then Congress should pass a law making them available. In all, between the sign ups, that polling, and the CBO report showing cost forecasts lower, it's been a good week for proponents of the law — and they haven't gotten very many of those.
First consider the snarky tone of the report itself, complete with the "drum roll" crap.
Oh, those stupid Republicans, voting to repeal ObamaCare yet again even though they know Obama will veto the repeal. What idiots!
Now consider this for a second. First of all, if Obama does veto the repeal, it will be the first time because a repeal vote has never passed the Senate before. Assuming that happens this time, that is certainly news and of the serious variety. The PBS story makes it sound as if they're just engaging in some quixotic exercise for the umpteenth time for no reason whatsoever. And of course the writers speculate that the vote is about nothing more than members of Congress being able to tell their constituents they voted to repeal ObamaCare.
Well,
they should vote to repeal ObamaCare. It's a terrible law and the nation rightly hates it. And that leads us to the question of who is really acting the fool here. If the Republicans vote to repeal and Obama vetoes the repeal, why does the media play it as Republicans being delusional and silly rather than Obama being obstinate, stubborn and narcissistic. I mean, you know the answer as well as I do, but it's still worth asking.
Finally, notice how in the final paragraph of the quoted passage PBS cherry-picks "good" news about ObamaCare while completely ignoring
this news about the costs of ObamaCare predictably soaring way beyond what was originally forecast. And even as PBS admits that the country still hates the law by a 40-46 margin, they play up what the public might want Congress to do in a hypothetical situation to prevent it from becoming an even bigger disaster than it already is.
I'll agree with PBS on one thing, though:
If the GOP Congress votes to repeal ObamaCare, and
if Obama vetoes the repeal, that will be silly, stupid and ridiculous. But as you might expect, they've got the silly part completely wrong.
