Lowry on the “Mad Dash” to Pass ObamaCare

From National Review editor Rich Lowry’s column for King Features Syndicate:

As with the stimulus package, Obama’s health‐​care plan depends on speed. More important than any given provision, more important than any principle, more important than sound legislating is the urgent imperative to Do It Now.


Do it now, before anyone can grasp what exactly it is that Congress is passing. Do it now, before the overpromising and the dishonest justifications can be exposed. Do it now, before Obama’s poll numbers return to Earth and make it impossible to slam through ramshackle government programs concocted on the run. Do it now, because simply growing government is more important than the practicalities of any new program…


Obama cultivated an image of cool during the campaign. Unrattled. Deliberate. Cerebral to a fault. Who knew he’d be in a panic to remake one‐​sixth of the economy by the first week of August of his first year in office?


Normally, the larger and more complicated a bill is, the longer Congress takes to consider it. With the stimulus and cap‐​and‐​trade, Obama and the Democrats upended this rule of thumb by passing byzantine, 1,000-page bills that no one had the time to read. When the work product is indefensible, deliberation is dangerous.


There’s a touch of the guilty conscience about Obama’s terrible rush. As if he knows he was elected as a moderate‐​sounding deficit hawk last year, and if he’s going to pass an ambitious left‐​wing program, he must do it before the opposition builds.