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Obama Keeps Lying About His Health-Care Plan, Even After Being Caught by Fact-Checkers

Posted By Hans Bader On August 27, 2009 @ 12:32 pm In Healthcare, Politics as Usual, Sanctimony, Stimulus to Nowhere | Comments Disabled

You just can’t trust President Obama’s claims about his health-care plan. He keeps on lying even after he is caught lying and his lies have become obvious.

The Congressional Research Service and the Washington Examiner say that illegal aliens WILL be covered [1] by ObamaCare — contrary to what Obama claims [2].

Factcheck.org [3] and the Associated Press’s Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar [4] earlier reported that abortions would be covered by ObamaCare — contrary to what Obama claims.

Fact-checkers have repeatedly caught Obama lying about health-care [5].

But when Obama denied that his health-care plan would cover abortions or illegal aliens [2], an Associated Press reporter suddenly decided that he must be right, just because he said so. The AP’s Philip Elliott declared that claims that ObamaCare would cover abortion or illegal aliens must be “untrue” [4] because Obama, the nation’s “Fact-Checker-in-Chief [4],” said so. Never mind that his own colleague Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar had earlier concluded, after reading the bill, that it would in fact cover abortions. If Obama says something, it must be true!

(The AP reporter’s strange logic reminds me of the mystifying and illogical claim by Associated Press reporter Douglass K. Daniel in 2008 that it was a racist, “deliberate attempt to smear Obama [6]” for people to criticize Obama’s links [7] to Bill Ayers, an unrepentant [8] former Weather Underground terrorist and self-described communist [9] who sat on a Chicago foundation board along with Obama that “poured more than $100 million into the hands of community organizers and radical education activists [9].” But Ayers is white, and criticism of Obama’s association with Ayers thus had no conceivable racial “tinge,” as Daniel claimed).

Whether ObamaCare covers abortions or illegal aliens is certainly not my biggest concern about the health-care bill. I’m much more concerned about its immense cost [10], waste [2], and potential rationing [11], and its taking away important health-care freedoms [12].

But Obama’s lying about them still concerns me, because if I can’t trust the President on straightforward issues like abortion or illegal aliens, why should I trust him – and the Associated Press – to accurately inform me about more complicated (but important) economic issues raised by the bill? The bill is more than 1000 pages long, but some of its supporters, like Rep. John Conyers (D-Detroit) have ridiculed [13] the idea of even reading it. The sheer length and messiness of the bill leads Allan Sloan, who wants universal coverage, to oppose it in today’s Washington Post on the grounds it is “certain to contain enough ambiguities, contradictions and just plain mistakes to ensure years of lucrative employment for countless lawyers” and “lobbyists.”

Obama has also broken [14] many campaign promises, such as his pledge to adopt a “net spending cut [14],” which he has violated by proposing record budgets funded by over nine trillion dollars [15] in deficits. This year’s budget deficit has already reached $1.3 trillion [16], part-way through the year, and will grow further as a result of Obama’s $800 billion stimulus package.

The stimulus package is projected to cut the size of the economy “in the long run [17],” according to the Congressional Budget Office. That didn’t stop Obama from falsely claiming that only the stimulus package would prevent “disaster [18]” and “irreversible decline [18].” (Countries that refused to adopt big stimulus packages have fared better than [19] those that imitated Obama. And the biggest-spending countries have suffered worst [20] in the recession.)

The Obama Administration claimed its stimulus package would deliver a short-run “jolt” [21] that would quickly lift the economy, but unemployment actually rose rapidly [22] after its passage [23]. The stimulus package destroyed thousands of jobs [24] in America’s export sector, and subsidized welfare and waste. [25] The stimulus also ended ended welfare reform [26], giving states new incentives [27] to expand welfare rolls.

ObamaCare is full of special-interest giveaways and constitutionally-dubious provisions [28] like racial preferences and set-asides, which has led to ObamaCare being criticized [28] by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.

Obama’s own advisors [11] have called into question his claims about how ObamaCare will supposedly let you keep your health coverage while cutting costs. “ObamaCare is all about rationing [29],” says Obama adviser [30] Martin Feldstein. Feldstein earlier noted that Obama’s health-care plan would harm people [31] with insurance, and massively raise taxes [31].

Feldstein, a Harvard professor, warns [32] that “For the 85 percent of Americans who already have health insurance, the Obama health plan is bad news. It means higher taxes, less health care and no protection if they lose their current insurance because of unemployment or early retirement.” Obama’s plan would “cost more than $1 trillion,” and raise the top federal “income-tax rate from 35 percent today to more than 45 percent,” he notes. [32]

Article printed from OpenMarket.org: www.openmarket.org

URL to article: www.openmarket.org/2009/08/...checkers/

URLs in this post:

[1] illegal aliens WILL be covered: www.washingtonexaminer.com/opin....html

[2] what Obama claims: www.examiner.com/x-7812-DC...bama-lying

[3] Factcheck.org: www.washingtonexaminer.com/opin....html

[4] Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar: newsbusters.org/blogs/tim-...health-care

[5] lying about health-care: www.examiner.com/x-7812-DC...ealth-care

[6] racist, “deliberate attempt to smear Obama: www.breitbart.com/article.php

[7] links: article.nationalreview.com/

[8] unrepentant: newsbusters.org/blogs/rich...-connection

[9] communist: online.wsj.com/article/SB...765367.html

[10] immense cost: www.examiner.com/x-7812-DC...n-promised

[11] rationing: www.examiner.com/x-7812-DC...viser-Says

[12] health-care freedoms: money.cnn.com/2009/07/24/...ne/index.htm

[13] ridiculed: www.cnsnews.com/Public/Con...rticle.aspx

[14] broken: www.openmarket.org/2009/03/...promises/

[15] nine trillion dollars: www.nypost.com/seven/0825..._186337.htm

[16] 1.3 trillion: www.examiner.com/x-7812-DC...l-spending

[17] in the long run: www.openmarket.org/2009/03/...o-admits/

[18] disaster: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...ster.html

[19] fared better than: pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/83869/

[20] suffered worst: online.wsj.com/article/SB...657192.html

[21] short-run “jolt”: corner.nationalreview.com/post/

[22] rose rapidly: www.powerlineblog.com/archive...3741.php

[23] its passage: www.examiner.com/x-7812-DC...employment

[24] destroyed thousands of jobs: www.openmarket.org/2009/05/...ort-term/

[25] welfare and waste.: www.examiner.com/x-7812-DC...orrectness

[26] ended welfare reform: www.openmarket.org/2009/02/...eceptive/

[27] incentives: www.heritage.org/Research/...wm2287.cfm

[28] constitutionally-dubious provisions: www.examiner.com/x-7812-DC...titutional

[29] ObamaCare is all about rationing: online.wsj.com/article/SB...260914.html

[30] Obama adviser: www.businessandmedia.org/artic...8.aspx

[31] harm people: www.examiner.com/x-7812-DC...viser-Says

[32] warns: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn...05.html