Washington has a bad habit of naming laws by what they are not.<\/p>\n
These euphemisms usually win temporary public support. After all, who wants to be against anything \u201caffordable\u201d? But on examination, such idealistically named legislation usually turns out to be aimed at special interests and the opposite of what voters were promised.![\"Capitol_Building_3\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/Capitol_Building_3.jpg?resize=300%2C225&ssl=1\")
<\/p>\n
The \u201cPatient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010,\u201d otherwise known as Obamacare, frontloaded for immediate enactment some popular freebies. Who would oppose keeping children on their parents\u2019 health coverage until age 26, or prohibiting denial of insurance for those with pre-existing illnesses?<\/p>\n
Then, three years later and with two elections out of the way, the tab for all the perks suddenly came due. The law turns out neither to protect patients from rate\u00a0hikes nor to make health care affordable. In fact, the administration promises of 2009\u201310 are becoming the nightmare of 2013.<\/p>\n
Health-insurance premiums are skyrocketing. Taxes to pay for the bill increased. So far, the Obamacare sign-up website has made going to the DMV seem like a picnic. Businesses are not made more competitive as promised but are cutting back on their full-time employees. The deficit will not go down because of Obamacare.<\/p>\n
Doctors do not welcome the radical changes; many may retire to avoid them. Healthy young adults are not rushing to buy Obamacare plans \u2014 at least not once they learn that they will pay a lot for something they will use rarely to subsidize others who pay little for something they will use constantly.<\/p>\n
All individuals must buy a plan or pay a penalty, while businesses have already been given a one-year reprieve from the skyrocketing expenses of the coverage. Congressional and administration staffers who wrote the law, insider businesses that supported it, and pet unions that donated for it now all want to be excused from it.<\/p>\n
At a time when the national debt has just hit $17 trillion and Medicare and Social Security are facing impending insolvency, another gargantuan redistributive entitlement does not seem a good way to revive the economy or streamline the nation\u2019s health care.<\/p>\n
Obamacare does, however, grow government. It increases the federal work force. And clerks in Washington will judge which Americans have too much health care and which have too little \u2014 and then even everything out.<\/p>\n
Our next fight is over \u201ccomprehensive immigration reform.\u201d Washington knows what the public supports, and so it certainly offers the necessary platitudes. There are promises of a pathway to citizenship for illegal immigrants who have avoided public assistance, lived a long time in the U.S., and not been convicted of crimes.<\/p>\n
Applicants, we are told, must be willing to learn English, pay a fine, and get in line behind those who played by the immigration rules. The public also first wants a closed border and legal immigration based on ethnically blind and meritocratic criteria.<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, the above is not quite what congressional supporters of the comprehensive reform really want. There will be no comprehensive guarantees that illegal immigration will first cease. Most legal immigration will still be based on family ties and proximity to the southern border, not on ethnically blind education or skill requirements. Those convicted of many sorts of crimes may still be eligible for amnesty. Dependence on public assistance will not necessarily be a barrier to citizenship. In other words, the bill will be comprehensively disingenuous.<\/p>\n
About every five years or so, we also see a farm bill that must delude a public that is skeptical about paying out billions of dollars to wealthy farmers and expanding food stamps to include those who are not impoverished.<\/p>\n
In 1996 it was informally called the Freedom to Farm Act (officially the \u201cFederal Agriculture Improvement and Reform Act of 1996\u201d) \u2014 on the promise that the bill would downsize and then eliminate federal farm subsidies in seven years. It did not.<\/p>\n
Instead, after 9\/11, Congress rushed in an even more generous replacement bill under the guise of \u201csecurity.\u201d Apparently, we were supposed to believe that \u201cThe Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002\u201d would make us safer from al-Qaeda.<\/p>\n
After gas prices soared, next came the 2008 \u201cFood, Conservation, and Energy Act\u201d \u2014 as if high-priced ethanol would solve our energy needs or had much to do with crop-subsidy payments and food stamps.<\/p>\n
Then, to piggyback on worries over high unemployment, there was the 2013 \u201cAgriculture Reform, Food, and Jobs Act\u201d that is still being debated. If the past is any guide, this bill will not lead to reform, more food, or more jobs. It will continue to give profitable farmers more federal money when commodity prices are high and government insolvent. And it will subsidize groceries to a record number of recipients at a time when epidemic obesity, not malnutrition, threatens the health of millions of lower-income Americans. Food choice, not scarcity, is our national challenge.<\/p>\n
Beware of Congress bearing the gifts of beautifully misnamed laws.<\/p>\n
<\/em>NRO contributor Victor Davis Hanson is a senior fellow at the\u00a0Hoover Institution<\/a>. His latest book is\u00a0<\/em>The Savior Generals<\/a>, published this spring by Bloomsbury Books.\u00a0<\/em>(C)\u00a0<\/em>2013<\/em>\u00a0Tribune Content Agency LLC.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Who would oppose “affordable care” and “farm security”? by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 Washington has a bad habit of naming laws by what they are not. These euphemisms usually win temporary public support. After all, who wants to be against anything \u201caffordable\u201d? But on examination, such idealistically named legislation usually turns out to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[495],"tags":[643,251,899,1064,861,898,40,213,440],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1Jz","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6799,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/affordable-care-of-patient-protection-or-obamacare\/","url_meta":{"origin":6669,"position":0},"title":"Affordable Care or Patient Protection or Obamacare?","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 2, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO's The Corner\u00a0 There are some rumors that the administration wants to distance itself from the slang \u201cObamacare,\u201d a term the president embraced in the 2012 campaign but now finds hurtful to his polls and his colleagues in the Congress. But what would be alternatives? We\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Healthcare"","block_context":{"text":"Healthcare","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/healthcare\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6745,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamacare-is-dead-long-live-obamacare\/","url_meta":{"origin":6669,"position":1},"title":"Obamacare Is Dead. Long Live Obamacare!","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 13, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO's The Corner\u00a0 In the next 90 days, the Obama administration will have to declare victory and then abandon most of Obamacare. The legislation defies the laws of physics\u2014more and broader coverage for more people at\u00a0less\u00a0cost\u2014as well as logic: Young people, on average as a cohort\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Healthcare"","block_context":{"text":"Healthcare","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/healthcare\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6778,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamacare-speak\/","url_meta":{"origin":6669,"position":2},"title":"Obamacare-Speak","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 21, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The Obama administration is altering its language like there's no tomorrow. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 The Obama administration once gave us \u201cman-caused disasters\u201d for acts of terrorism and \u201cworkplace violence\u201d for the Fort Hood shootings. Now it has trumped those past linguistic contortions by changing words to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Healthcare"","block_context":{"text":"Healthcare","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/healthcare\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6705,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obamacare-and-human-nature\/","url_meta":{"origin":6669,"position":3},"title":"Obamacare and Human Nature","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 4, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO's The Corner Obamacare was predicated on the idea that it would be techie-driven and noble in inspiration, and therefore, presto, just had to work. But the entire program, whether one likes it or not, assumes things that simply are contrary to human nature, and therefore,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Healthcare"","block_context":{"text":"Healthcare","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/healthcare\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8118,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-a-one-man-revolution\/","url_meta":{"origin":6669,"position":4},"title":"Obama, a One-Man Revolution","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 7, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"In his \u201cfourth quarter,\u201d he feels free to ignore popular opinion, the rule of law, and Congress. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ National Review Online Until now there were two types of peaceful American change. One was a president, like Franklin D. Roosevelt or Ronald Reagan, working with Congress to\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Politics"","block_context":{"text":"Politics","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"pic_giant_122514_SM_Barack-Obama-G","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/01\/pic_giant_122514_SM_Barack-Obama-G-500x292.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":6754,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-rule-of-law\/","url_meta":{"origin":6669,"position":5},"title":"The Rule of Law?","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 14, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0NRO's The Corner\u00a0 When his pet businesses did not like elements of the Affordable Care Act, Obama simply exempted them. When employers objected that their mandate would unduly hamper job creation, the president simply ignored the settled law and exempted them. Now, when millions have lost\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Healthcare"","block_context":{"text":"Healthcare","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/obama-administration\/healthcare\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6669"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6669"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6669\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6671,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6669\/revisions\/6671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6669"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6669"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6669"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}