Laura Meckler has an article in today’s Wall Street Journal that offers a sad commentary on Barack Obama’s presidency. Obama was supposed to bring change to Washington, but that was little more than a campaign slogan with no real meaning. The article summarizes all the healthcare lies that he spoon-fed to the American people on the campaign trail. On the issues he used to attack his opponents, both Sec. Clinton and Sen. McCain, he has now said he would be open to implementing their ideas.
Here are the noteworthy flip-flops:
As a candidate, Mr. Obama criticized Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton for proposing that all Americans be required to get health insurance. Now he says he is open to the idea.
He ran some 47,000 TV ads criticizing Republican candidate John McCain for wanting to tax employee health benefits and cut Medicare spending. Mr. Obama has now signaled openness to taxing such benefits, and has proposed his own Medicare cuts — in both cases on a smaller scale.
In addition, the White House isn’t ruling out the possibility that families earning less than $250,000 a year might see higher taxes if they have generous health benefits that become subject to new taxes. During the campaign, Mr. Obama had vowed not to raise taxes on any families earning less than $250,000.
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In the campaign, Mr. Obama criticized Sen. McCain’s willingness to cut Medicare and Medicaid spending to pay for his plan.
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Looking for ways to pay for health care, now that he is in office, Mr. Obama has proposed more than $600 billion in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid over 10 years.
Obama was supposed to change Washington, not let Washington change him. Did he really believe what he was saying on the campaign trail? Or were they fabrications used to get elected? It’s impossible to say, but we can be certain that Obama is not the man Americans thought they were electing. He owes it to voters to not change course on such an important issue. The actions we take on healthcare will reverberate for years to come. The voters elected him based on a specific platform. He should not now back flip in the other direction.