ObamaCare Paybacks May Be On The Way

It looks like the political paybacks for supporting ObamaCare may be starting already. If you'll remember, the final obstacle to passage in the House was Bart Stupak and his gang of 12 pro-life Senators. They suddenly switched their votes in the final hours, for an Executive Order that has no legal power to change or override the provisions of the bill itself.

Or WAS that all they got? Speculation on promises has run wild. But let's look at some facts.

The DAY AFTER Congress approved ObamaCare, the Stupak group asked for a total of $3.4 billion in earmark spending. Possible payback?
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/03/29/pro-life-democrats-switched-vote-health-request-billions-earmarks/

The 11 House Democrats led by Rep. Bart Stupak who dropped their opposition to health care reform legislation mere hours before the final vote have requested $3.4 billion in earmarks -- and one watchdog group wants to know whether the money represents business as usual or political payoffs.

The Sunlight Foundation says it plans to track the earmark requests, which were put in one day after health care reform cleared Congress, to see whether they're approved and whether it appears lawmakers are being rewarded for their vote.

"We know that in Congress one of the ways that leadership tries to influence members is through earmarks," said Bill Allison, editorial director at the nonpartisan organization. "So this seemed to us something good to follow."

I think we'll see a lot of follow-up from the Democrat leadership on promises to members in exchange for their YES votes.


That leadership sold the Democrats in Congress on the idea that voting YES would NOT hurt them in November... they'd experience a post-vote bounce in the polls. The bounce didn't really amount to much, and privately some Democrats are very upset about it.
http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/archive/2010/03/30/the-numbers-don-t-lie.aspx

A Democratic senator I can't name, who reluctantly voted for the health-care bill out of loyalty to his party and his admiration for Barack Obama, privately complained to me that the measure was political folly, in part because of the way it goes into effect: some taxes first, most benefits later, and rate hikes by insurance companies in between.

Besides that, this Democrat said, people who already have coverage will feel threatened and resentful about helping to cover the uninsured—an emotion they will sanitize for the polltakers into a concern about federal spending and debt.

On the day the president signed into law the "fix-it" addendum to the massive health-care measure, two new polls show just how fearful and skeptical Americans are about the entire enterprise. If the numbers stay where they are—and it's not clear why they will change much between now and November—then the Democrats really are in danger of colossal losses at the polls.

Yes, this November could be bad for Democrats, but I really don't CARE who is in charge... so long as they don't pull the kind of crud that the Democrats are pulling now. I wouldn't mind Democrats being in charge IF they respected the Constitution and the free market, and refrained from trying to grow government and bankrupt the nation.

But it doesn't look like they can manage that...