Harry Reid as Ebenezer Scrooge

By Alan Caruba

Is it my imagination or does Harry Reid, Majority Leader of the Senate, resemble Ebenezer Scrooge saying “Bah! Humbug!” whenever anyone suggests that Obamacare is possibly the worst piece of legislation in decades?

As of this writing, Harry cannot find enough DEMOCRAT votes to pass this horror. He doesn’t need Republican votes, but like his counterpart, Nancy Pelosi, he is being forced to find millions with which to bribe those hold-out Senators to vote for a bill that exceeds two thousand pages and creates a literal madhouse of new bureaucracies.

For old people—-and that includes me—-it is a virtual death sentence in the event we become ill and, for most older people, that is a virtual certainty.

As Mortimer B. Zuckerman, Editor-in-Chief of US News & World Report, had to say this month, “Save the cheers for the looming healthcare ‘reform.’ It looks more and more like something that will take us over a cliff. None of the proposals offer credible solutions for reining in the runaway cost inflation that is crippling us.”

Zuckerman went on to write that, “The new programs being proposed in Congress will increase our health insurance premiums for the typical family by more than $1,200 a year and roughly double healthcare spending in the next decade from approximately $2.2 trillion, or 16.2 percent of the estimated GDP in 2009 to over $4.3 trillion, or 20.3 percent of the estimated GDP by 2019” just ten years from now.

But there may not be any GDP or health insurance programs by then because the United States will be in default, unable to pay back the money it has borrowed; not unlike a lot of Americans who charged too much on their credit cards or took out mortgage loans they could not afford.

Moody’s Investors Services just announced that both the United States and Britain must take action soon to get their public finances in order if they are to avoid being downgraded from their top triple-A credit ratings.

Let me put it this way, the United States of America cannot afford a healthcare “reform” in its present form and cannot afford a “Cap-and-Trade” bill that would tax all energy use. It is impossible to add people to Medicare at the same time it is approaching insolvency. When you make energy more expensive, manufacturers move to places where it is affordable. Places like China where they are opening a new coal-fired plant every ten days to generate electricity.

Terence P. Jeffrey of Cybercast News Service put it quite accurately and quite bluntly in early December when he wrote that Obama will bankrupt America. Citing figures developed by former U.S. Comptroller General David Walker, Jeffrey reported that the total value of the federal government’s ‘unfunded liabilities’ stood at $56.4 trillion. The nation’s annual GDP is about $14 trillion and we are in the hole by a factor of 4.

The financial crisis has been stabilized. Much of the TARP funds have been is returned by the banks, some of whom were literally forced to take it, and Obama’s “solution” is to borrow from TARP for more bogus “job stimulus”, even though the law expressly forbids it

Jeffries noted that, “In 2008, President Bush’s last year in office, the federal government spent $2.983 trillion. Under Obama’s plan, according to the Congressional Budget Office, annual federal spending will climb to $4,982 trillion by 2019.” Over the next decade “Obama’s plan would increase the national debt by a total of $7.137 trillion, running deficits averaging $713.7 billion per year.”

And I haven’t even discussed what a horror Obamacare is! Americans would be in absolute bondage to the proposed healthcare system that Harry Reid is trying to pass.

A government committee would decide what treatments you would receive.

Healthcare would be provided to all non-U.S. citizens, illegal or otherwise.

A National ID Health card will be issued and government will have real-time access to your financial records.

No company could sue the government for price-fixing. There would be no “judicial review” against a government monopoly.

An employer must enroll employees into the public option plan and must pay for healthcare for part-time employees and their families!

Any individual who doesn’t have an acceptable healthcare plan according to the government will be taxed 2.5% of their income.

This kind of tyranny goes on for two thousand or more pages. It is worse than you can even imagine.

And Ebenezer…er…Harry Reid, doesn’t care. Neither did Nancy Pelosi and, since it is one of his key legislative initiatives, neither does President Obama.

“Apre moi, le deluge” said Louis XV of France as he watched the end of the monarchy that led to a bloody revolution. President Obama may well say something similar, but for him it will be said in triumph.