Governing is Harder than Lying

The Republican party won the “lie of the year” award for its claim that the Affordable Care Act represented a “government takeover of healthcare” – a pretty impressive achievement in an era of ubiquitous political slime! Until now, they could safety lie and oppose, offering no constructive suggestions whatsoever. But now they are in power, they are in a bit of a bind. They are making a priority out of repealing the Affordable Care Act. But they couldn’t be bothered with actually doing the hard work and figure out how to reform the broken system in a way that they think would work better. It’s pretty clear why – they have no answer, and never will. They face another problem. One of their new rules says that legislation must be paid for. So how will they compensate for the loss of $100 billion from the repeal of this Act? The answer – simply exempt the repeal bill from the rules. Read Ezra Klein rip apart Eric Cantor’s feeble attempts to argue his way out of this paper bag. I fear we are in for a depressing few years.