[TheMercenary]

The Senate Postmortem, WSJ

We are thus heading toward the first U.S. entitlement program dragged across the finish line on a straight partisan majority, a bill that even its most fervent supporters admit is "flawed" but better than nothing.

It is far worse than nothing. The bill itself is an unprecedented arrogation of federal power over one-seventh of the economy, and even its closest antecedents, Medicare and Medicaid, passed in 1965 with the support of both parties. Reflecting the political consensus that has always inspired durable social reform in America, those entitlements cleared the Senate with more than half of the GOP caucus voting in favor.

The bill Democrats approved on Christmas Eve was drafted "in the shadows, without transparency, just to garner the necessary 60 votes and nothing more," as Mrs. Snowe put it in a statement on Sunday. A law so sweeping and complex that no one can understand it but that will affect the lives of all Americans was thus rushed to passage with little real debate, and less reflection. The Senate considered only 20 of the more than 450 amendments filed.

Those votes were revealing nonetheless, showing that certain Democrats oppose core parts of ObamaCare even as they voted for the final version. Nebraska's Ben Nelson—now justly famous for a Medicaid payoff in return for his vote—and Virginia's Jim Webb voted for the McCain amendment that would have stripped out cuts totalling more than $400 billion in future Medicare spending to fund "universal" health insurance. Along with Blanche Lincoln (Arkansas) and Evan Bayh (Indiana), the duo also supported changes that would have excluded tax increases on individuals earning under $200,000, as President Obama promised during his campaign. The tax amendment failed, 45-54.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...877143186.html