Great News: CBO Reconsiders Obamacare, Decides Country Is Headed for Collapse Under President Subprime McDowngrade

Pity they couldn't have told the American people before the passage of the Patient Destruction Act.

CBO Report: Spending Is Driving Debt to “Unsupportable” Level

...CBO’s “alternative” projections ... make clear once again that too much spending—not too little tax revenue—is the biggest threat to the country’s fiscal and economic health. Among other things, the alternative figures show that:

Federal spending will consume record levels of resources as a share of the economy, reaching nearly one-quarter of gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022.

Without tax increases, tax revenue would still reach its historical average, but uncontrolled spending would outpace revenue. This would push federal debt to levels that the CBO calls “unsupportable.”

CBO’s conventional baseline (defined by statute) projects spending, tax revenue, and deficits assuming current law—including scheduled changes in law. This includes an expiration of the “doc fix,” which has prevented a plunge in Medicare physician reimbursements every year since 2003, and the expiration of the Bush-era tax policies, as well as a number of other tax provisions. These would result in a tax increase of about $4 trillion over the next 10 years. These assumptions represent what CBO calls “a significant departure from recent policies.” That is, no one expects these changes to happen...

Oh, and as for Obamacare itself -- guess what?

CBO: New 10-year projected cost of ObamaCare is … $1.76 trillion

...The original 10-year price tag, the one that made it “safe” (but not really safe) for Democrats to drop this fiscal atomic bomb, was $940 billion. What happened, you ask? Well, see for yourself:

Remember, they gamed this thing so that it wouldn’t take effect until 2014, which means that the cost of the first four years of implementation was essentially zero. That $940 billion figure really represented just six years of cost, not 10, but it was politically invaluable to Democratic messaging in letting them tout the bill as costing less than a trillion dollars. Now that we’re nearing 2014 and the 10-year window of cost projections has slid forward, you can see what this leviathan boondoggle really costs: $1.76 trillion, soon to top $2 trillion when the window slides forward another year in 2013 and the new projection reaches into 2023.

But wait. More good news: "Four million Americans can expect to lose their employer-provided healthcare by 2016, according to the revised figures, far more than the 1 million people estimated last year..."

Thanks to the economy, we’re going to end up with a lot fewer people getting health insurance through the workplace than previously estimated and a lot more people getting it through Medicaid, which, as Klein notes, inches us a little closer to that government takeover of health care that the left insists is a conservative myth...

This represents another all-too-predictable failure by the Utopian Statists -- also known as Democrats -- who are bent on dominating our lives.

It's Another Historic Obama Record! U.S. Runs a Quarter of a Trillion Dollar Deficit... in One Month

This President has certainly been a trailblazer when it comes to economic records. Oh, and I blame Bush. And Martin Van Buren, too.

A few days ago we noted that based on preliminary data, the February budget deficit would hit $229 billion (yes, nearly one quarter of a trillion in one month, about where real Greek GDP is these days) - the largest single monthly deficit in history. Unfortunately, this number was low: the final February deficit was just released and the actual print is $231.7 billion...

...It also means that in the first 5 months of the fiscal year, the US has raked up $580 billion in deficits, oddly matched by $727 billion in new debt issuance, 25% more new debt issued than needed to fund deficits...

...through last Friday, and net of tax refunds, total US tax revenues were actually lower in the fiscal 2012 year to date period than compared to 2011, by just under $2 billion, at $625.5 billion. Which is the weakest link for any argument that the US is actually growing: what is growing is America's debt (now almost exponentially), while its revenues are at best unchanged. And the scariest: annualizing net tax revenues brings the number to $1.5 trillion. Which is just 50% more where total US debt interest will be in 2014 when debt is $20 trillion, assuming interest rates are somehow allowed to go back up... to the astronomical level of 5%.

So, despite all of the media cheerleading, it turns out the country's economy isn't growing at all. And the debts just keep on piling up, month after month, at a clip unprecedented in world history.

Another four years of Obama and we won't recognize this country.

Of that, there is no doubt.

Obama and Iran: The Man Who Didn't Bluff

Little more than a week ago, President Obama again addressed growing concerns that Iran's Mullahs were preparing nuclear weapons for regional attacks. He insisted that more time be given for diplomacy, noting that, "as president of the United States, I don't bluff."

Yet, on May 18, 2009, President Obama was asked about Iran and any deadlines for his “policy of engagement.” He responded: “You know, I don’t want to set an artificial deadline ... We should have a fairly good sense by the end of the year as to whether they are moving in the right direction.”

On September 15, 2009, a deadline issued by President Obama for Iran to come to the nuclear negotiating table was ignored by Iran's Mullahs.

On October 11, 2009, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, "The international community will not wait indefinitely for evidence that Iran is willing to live up to its international commitments."

On October 23, 2009, an Obama-backed UN deadline for Iran to begin drawing down its nuclear stockpile was ignored by Iran's Mullahs.

On November 29, 2009, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said, "Time is running out for Iran to address the international community’s growing concerns about its nuclear program."

On December 31, 2009, President Obama's deadline for Iran to respond to his diplomatic outreach was ignored by Iran's Mullahs.

On January 31, 2010, President Obama's new deadline of the end of the month was ignored by Iran's Mullahs.

On May 25,2011, Hillary Clinton stated: "Time is running out for Iran to address the world's concerns over its nuclear intentions."

On March 1, 2012, a bill signed by President Obama that required his administration "to begin enforcing new financial penalties on foreign firms that do business with Iran passed... with no fresh action from Washington."

On March 6, 2012, Obama said: “To resolve this issue will require Iran to come to the table and discuss in a clear and forthright way how to prove to the international community that the intentions of their nuclear program are peaceful. … They know how to do it, and the question is going to be whether in these discussions they show themselves moving clearly in that direction.”

When war comes, and it will, the ramifications will be all the more dire because of the intransigence and cowardice of the Democrat Party. Somewhere, Neville Chamberlain is smiling, because -- very soon -- history will no longer look upon him as the world's most pathetic and gullible weakling. It will instead view Obama as history's greatest appeaser.


Bonus Party of Weakness Quote: Hillary Clinton warned Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, that "time is running out [to] begin a genuine transition to democracy"... on July 11, 2011.

Congratulations, it's another Obama record! Home prices 'down to nearly the same levels as 10 years ago'

Say, I've got an idea! How about another massive, taxpayer-funded rescue package for distressed homeowners? The ninth time is a charm, right?

...national home prices, including distressed sales, declined on a year-over-year basis by 3.1 percent in January 2012 and by 1.0 percent compared to December 2011, the sixth consecutive monthly decline.

...Excluding distressed sales, year-over-year prices declined by 0.9 percent in January 2012 compared to January 2011, but that same metric posted a month-over-month gain, rising 0.7 percent in January. Distressed sales include short sales and real estate owned (REO) transactions.

“Although home price declines are slowly improving and not far from the bottom, home prices are down to nearly the same levels as 10 years ago,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic.

I guess I have to update my Complete List of President Obama's Historic Firsts.

WARNING: Do not show this chart to a liberal (unless wearing headgear to protect you from a cranium exploding into high-velocity brain-shrapnel)

A couple of observations about this graph:

• The vaunted "Clinton Surplus" was, in fact, the work of a GOP House that was willing to fight for fiscal sanity (current Ohio Governor John Kasich was one of the architects of the surplus); in addition, two events conspired to turbocharge the economy -- in spite of Clinton, not because of him.

• Liberals like to talk about Reagan's deficits, but they ignore the fact that every budget Reagan ever sent to the Democrat-controlled House was declared "dead on arrival". Reagan supported a Balanced Budget Amendment, sought to eliminate useless agencies like the Department of Education, and otherwise believed in the U.S. spending within its means.

• Since the Democrats took control of Congress in 2007, they have jammed through the most fiscally irresponsible spending programs in world history (I won't use the word "budget", because they've refused to propose a budget for roughly 1,029 days).

In short, Democrats never propose less spending than Republicans -- unless we're talking about defense. And now, after four years of Democrat-controlled spending, the federal government is forced to borrow 40 cents for every dollar it spends.

And that, my friends, is bound to end badly since the hard left Democrat Party and the RINOs appear ready to turn the spending on auto-pilot -- right into the tarmac.

Exclusive: Full Schematic of Chevy Volt

Hat tip: Whited Speulchre.

Get Ready For Our Third Annual 'Summer of Recovery'

Tyler Durden asks, "If this is such a strong economy, why does this chart look recessionary?"

One way to gauge the real economy is to look at charts of the GDP, wages, household debt and the price of oil; another way is to correlate all of these on one chart. The [above] chart (courtesy of frequent contributor B.C.) plots these four metrics thusly: GDP/(wages/household debt)/price of oil.

Wait. Just. A second. I zoomed the right side of the graph, like, a thousand times.

I marked the green shoot with a nice, pretty arrow!

7 Obamanomics Charts That Legacy Media Won't Show You

Earlier today, James Pethokoukis, the nation's premier economic reporter, published "The economic case against Obamanomics in 13 charts."

The seven most shocking, in my opinion, are the following:

...The actual share of the the population with a job has collapsed and remains low.


... The size of the U.S. labor force has also collapsed, partly due to discouraged Americans giving up looking for a job...


...Those without a job have been without a job for a long, long, long time...


This recovery has lagged others in terms of economic output or GDP growth (via the Minneapolis Fed)...


The result of the weak recovery is a huge gap between where the economy should be, in terms of growth, and where it is...


The slow, anemic recovery has contributed to keeping the housing market in a depressed state...


The White House itself admits that its new budget plan would keep the national debt on a dangerous and unsustainable trajectory (source: The White House)...

The next time I get a "Stimulus Package", I want the Democrats to buy me flowers first.

Shhh... no one tell the idiot legislators in California: job growth 52% higher in states with low business taxes

Governor Moonbeam hardest hit.

An executive looking for a place to locate his company might do well to consider Wyoming. That state is the most business-friendly in the country, at least when it comes to taxes, according to a new study.

The study, released by the Tax Foundation on Wednesday, found that when all the taxes businesses pay are factored in, Wyoming's rate is less than half the national average. The state is one of three — Nevada and South Dakota are the others — that doesn't have a corporate income tax.

Pennsylvania, meanwhile, wins the dubious distinction of imposing the heaviest tax burden on its businesses, with an overall effective rate that's 45% above the national average.

The study, titled "Location Matters," looked at a range of business taxes — corporate income, sales, property, unemployment, gross receipts and others. The accounting firm KPMG collaborated on the report with the Tax Foundation.

Among the most-populated states, California ranked 34th, Texas 12th, New York 42nd, Florida 19th, and Illinois came in 45th. Ohio, which came in 5th, imposes a low-rate gross receipts tax instead of a corporate income tax...

...A separate analysis by IBD found that states imposing the lowest tax rates on both new and existing businesses produced more jobs during the economic recovery than those states with the highest tax burdens.

You mean stealing more money from businesses -- to fund a bloated, unaccountable public sector -- leaves companies with less money to hire workers?

Gee, that logic is sooo difficult to comprehend. That is, if you're a Democrat or an idiot. But I repeat myself.

The nauseating employment chart that President Obama and the Democrats don't want you to see

Via MetricMash comes this stunning chart that depicts just how dire the employment situation has become under the SCOAMF.

As this chart illustrates:

• Over the last 30 years, we have never seen the kind of sustained decline in the labor-force participation rate we're experiencing under Obama. More people are dropping out of the labor force at a faster clip than during any recent stretch and, worse, there's absolutely no sign of recovery.

• The unparalleled success of the Reagan tax cuts is on full display: not only did unemployment drop, but the labor-force participation rate increased at a phenomenal angle. All Americans benefited from these tax cuts and the job creation spurred by Reagan went well into the Clinton years.

Which is why Democrats and the media -- but I repeat myself -- shield you from information like this. There is only one way out of this economic mess: unleashing the private sector by slashing taxes, minimizing the size of government, and obliterating the out-of-control regulatory state. But Democrats prefer failure, so long as they get to control you, the individual. Because they're power-hungry statists, trying to maintain a white-knuckled death grip on the reins of government.

The Obama budget in pictures (or, as I like to call it, the Democrat plan for national fiscal suicide)

Speaking of Greece, I just received these charts from Senator Jeff Sessions (R-AL).

Spending And Debt Per Household Under President Obama’s Budget Plan

President Obama’s formal FY 2013 budget, submitted on February 13th, represents his financial vision for the future, detailed in 2,571 pages as delivered by his Office of Management and Budget.

Only in the infantile mind of a Leftist could these blueprints for economic ruin make sense.

The debt that Obama and his sycophants are planning simply cannot be repaid.

We must stop these irresponsible Statist hacks who have set this country on a course for fiscal destruction.

These charts prove that there are no moderate Democrats left. In November, I urge you to wipe out every single Democrat at the ballot box -- at every level of government.

Do it for the children. And I mean that.

Stunning report: Obama used administrative earmarks to buy Congressional support for his wildly unpopular agenda

Wondering how President Obama convinced politicians to vote for Cap-and-Trade, Obamacare and other unpopular bills that Democrats knew would put their seats at risk? Well, wonder no more, compadre:

An examination of “administrative earmarks” around the time of congressional votes on key pieces of President Obama’s agenda suggests the White House used its power to fund local projects as a means to “buy” votes for major legislative efforts...

...an analysis of grants from agencies during the early years of the Obama administration shows that the districts of moderate Democrats, whose support was so crucial for Obama during the 111th Congress, received large sums right around the passage of three key pieces of legislation: Obamacare, Dodd-Frank financial regulations, and the cap-and-trade bill... During the run-up to votes in the House of Representatives for each of those pieces of legislation, the rate of administrative earmarking spiked.

...The number of grants given by those agencies spiked precisely when the House was considering each of the three pieces of legislation.

Even more troubling: during the same time periods, significant grant money went to the districts of numerous Democratic representatives who looked to face tough battles for re-election. The legislation Obama was attempting to get through Congress was generally unpopular, and vulnerable members needed other ways to appeal to constituents. Federal grants made for a perfect opportunity.

Then-Rep. Chris Carney (D-PA), for instance, kept his support for Dodd-Frank quiet. His website never posted a press release announcing his “yes” vote on the bill. It did, however, tout two federal grants totaling $3.6 million for businesses in his district two days before the Dodd-Frank vote.

Then-Rep. Zach Space (D-OH) hailed from a district reliant on the coal industry, which would have been hit particularly hard by cap and trade. He voted for the measure, but neglected to publicize the vote on his website. He did, however, announce eight federal grants totaling roughly $1.8 million all made during the month before the House passed cap and trade.

At least 32 vulnerable House Democrats received significant federal grant money in the periods leading up to or directly after their votes on at least one of these three pieces of legislation, raising concerns that those grants may have been used either to encourage or reward votes in favor of the administration’s position...

When the complete story of this administration's misuse of taxpayer dollars is written, it will -- in my estimation -- make Tammany Hall look like a ragtag group of pickpockets. Literally trillions of dollars will have been stolen redistributed from the private sector to Obama's pals. Oh, and the next generation will have to repay those bills -- with interest.

Ratio of Americans paying NO taxes explodes to 49% thanks to Obama fairness initiative and suicidal lib policies, but mostly suicidal lib policies

No society can long survive this form of madness:

This year’s Index of Dependence on Government presented startling findings about the sharp increase of Americans who rely on the federal government for housing, food, income, student aid or other assistance. (See last week’s chart.) Another eye-popping number was the percentage of Americans who don’t pay income taxes, which now accounts for nearly half of the U.S. population. Meanwhile, most of that population receives generous federal benefits. “One of the most worrying trends in the Index is the coinciding growth in the non-taxpaying public,” wrote Heritage authors Bill Beach and Patrick Tyrrell. “The percentage of people who do not pay federal income taxes, and who are not claimed as dependents by someone who does pay them, jumped from 14.8 percent in 1984 to 49.5 percent in 2009.” That means 151.7 million Americans paid nothing in 2009. By comparison, 34.8 million tax filers paid no taxes in 1984. The rapid growth of Americans who don’t pay income taxes is particularly alarming...

Alarming, yes, since on the Obama path, "the economy, according to the CBO, shuts down in 2027."

Democrats like to claim that they're the party of science and intelligence. You'd never know it by their inability to grasp the laws of mathematics.


Related: Chart: We are the forgotten 33%.

Meet the masterminds who will decide what kind of health care you and your family will receive

The Wall Street Journal (via AEI) has the uncomfortable low-down on what Obamacare means:

Meet the Obamacare mandate committee

Think the contraception decision was bad? Wait until bureaucrats start telling your insurer which cancer screenings to cover

Offended by President Obama's decision to force health insurers to pay for contraception and surgical sterilization? It gets worse: In the future, thanks to ObamaCare, the government will issue such health edicts on a routine basis—and largely insulated from public view. This goes beyond contraception to cancer screenings, the use of common drugs like aspirin, and much more.

Under ObamaCare, a single committee—the United States Preventative Services Task Force—is empowered to evaluate preventive health services and decide which will be covered by health-insurance plans.

The task force already rates services with letter grades of "A" through "D" (or "I," if it has "insufficient evidence" to make a rating). But under ObamaCare, services rated "A" or "B"—such as colon cancer screening for adults aged 50-75—must be covered by health plans in full, without any co-pays. Many services that get "Cs" and "Ds"—such as screening for ovarian or testicular cancer—could get nixed from coverage entirely...

...Americans first became familiar with the task force in November 2009, when it made the controversial decision to recommend that women ages 40-49 shouldn't get routine mammograms. More recently, it rebuffed routine prostate-cancer screening and the use of tests that detect the viruses that can cause cervical cancer.

...The task force is a part-time board of volunteer advisers that works slowly and is often late to incorporate new science into its recommendations. Only in 2009 did it finally recommend aspirin for the prevention of stroke and heart attack among those at risk—decades after this practice was demonstrated to save lives and had become part of standard medical practice.

The article's author recommends several common-sense measures:

• Congress should make the task force "subject to the Federal Advisory Committee Act, which would at least require it to hold its deliberations in public."

• And Congress should likewise "let private health plans—and their members—decide on their own how preventive tests and treatments should be covered."

All of this is a brutal wake-up call for Americans: Obama's contraception mandate isn't an anomaly. It's the sign of things to come.


Hat tip: BadBlue.

It was Bush's fault...

...not.

Here's the only chart you need to combat the absurd lies of the Left.

Bush was certainly a big-government Republican. But no human being in history has spent as recklessly as Barack Obama (with the help of Democrat miscreants like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid). No one's even come close. Together this troika of idiocy has lawlessly permitted the country to run for more than 1,000 days without a budget.

The budget deficit in 2007 – the last budget approved by the Republican Congress before Nancy Pelosi became speaker – was $160 billion. When the Democrats took over, the deficit exploded. So, yes, Barack Obama inherited a huge deficit from the Democrats in Congress.

...You can also see above that it is irresponsible spending, not revenue, that is driving the debt.

Barack Obama, with the help of a Democratic Congress, has put us on an unsustainable path. This country cannot afford four more years of this man’s destructive policies. He must be defeated.

But November is coming.

J. Wellington Obama's Official Budget

J. Wellington Wimpy -- better known simply as "Wimpy" -- was Popeye's recurring sidekick in the long-running cartoon series.

And Wimpy had a motto that could just as well be President Obama's:

"I'll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today"
As Cato explains, Obama's budgets consist of tax hikes now, with spending cuts and accounting gimmicks sometime... in... teh... future.

We’ve become so used to these unfathomable levels of deficits and debt—and to the once-rare concept of trillions of dollars—that we forget how new all this debt is. In 1981, after 190 years of federal spending, the national debt was “only” $1 trillion. Now, just 30 years later, it’s past $15 trillion...

As ATR points out, the "Obama Plan Uses Budget Gimmickry To Mask Explosive Spending":

• The budget continues to call for spending at historic levels: the request sets spending for the fiscal year at $3.8 trillion and projects $47 trillion in spending over the next ten years

• Holds spending at 23 percent of [GDP] the next ten years, two percent higher than its historical average

• Uses totally dishonest accounting: the President claims to include $4 trillion in deficit reduction. These supposed cuts include $1.6 trillion in tax hikes and $900 billion in war spending the President plans to plow back into infrastructure spending

• Repeats failed “stimulus” spending: For the third year in a row, the plan looks to create a permanent Infrastructure Bank with $350 billion in new spending. The budget also requests $500 billion for a transportation package while shifting Highway Trust Fund spending to mandatory accounts, ensuring its insolvency for posterity

• Continues practice of extending Medicare providers payments without offsetting the $438 billion in spending with cuts elsewhere

• The budget only addresses 40 percent of the government spending problem: the President bankrupts the entitlement programs by once again refusing to confront the nation’s largest debt-drivers

• Fails to take into account the coming costs of the government takeover of healthcare and financial regulatory overhaul. Instead, the President’s budget claims zero effect for supposed cost-saving mechanisms, such as the implementation of the Obamacare Independent Payment Advisory Board

James Pethokoukis summarizes some of the most important changes for the average worker and small businessman:

• The top income rate [for individuals and most small businesses] would be raised to 39.6 percent vs. 35 percent today... [Ed: well, that should help hiring.]

• Between now the end of a second Obama term, Obama proposes $707 billion in “net deficit reduction proposals.” Of that amount, only 16 percent is spending cuts.

• The capital gains rate would rise to 25.0 percent (including the Obamacare surtax and deduction phase out) from 15 percent today... [Ed: well, that should help investments.]

• The double-tax on corporate profits (including dividends) would increase to 64 percent based on the statutory corporate tax rate (58 percent using the effective tax rate), easily the highest among advanced economies... [Ed: well, that should help hiring.]

...Higher taxes, more spending, more debt, and no long-term entitlement reform plan. Hmm, this isn’t a rosy scenario at all. It’s actually a pretty bleak one.

The problem on Capitol Hill is spending, catastrophic levels of debt and an impending fiscal collapse. And we need another wave of real conservatives -- not RINOs and certainly not Democrats -- to continue turning the tide. Because the feckless John Boehner ain't cutting it.

Obama Unveils Family Togetherness Plan: Economy Sucks So Bad That a Record Number of Adults Are Moving In With Their Parents

Had Democrats known their wanton destruction of the economy would bring so many families together, it's likely they would've toned down the reckless deficit spending and regulations a bit.

According to a report released today by Pew Research, most Americans believe the young have been hardest hit by the Obama economic failures, nearly one quarter young adults aged 18-34 have been forced to move back in with their parents.

For some, tough economic times have had an impact on their personal life as well. Roughly a quarter of adults ages 18 to 34 (24%) say that, due to economic conditions, they have moved back in with their parents in recent years after living on their own. Among those ages 25 to 29, the share moving back home rises to 34%. Most adults under age 25 are enrolled in school at least part time (46% are full-time students). By age 25, the majority are out of school, but jobs and housing can be hard to come by, and many “boomerang” back home.

The lesson here, of course, is that you should never tell your parents that you hate living with them, because you’ll probably end up back there, eating your words and helping to chop beans with a dull knife.

To be fair, the real lesson for young people is that voting Democrat means voting for your own economic destruction -- through massive, centralized government; unchecked deficit spending (which you'll have to pay for... plus interest); and complete disregard by government for the rule of law and the civil society.

To paraphrase Margaret Thatcher, the problem with Democrats is that eventually they run out of other people's money to spend.

Good news: 1 in 5 Americans now dependent on government assistance (not including public sector employees)

Hey, check it out, kids: it's another Obama record!

The number of Americans dependent on the federal government has exploded over the past five years, reaching a record 67.3 million people, according to Heritage’s annual Index of Dependence on Government. That means 1 in 5 Americans (21.8 percent) today receive some level of assistance from the federal government.

This week’s chart — one of 15 featured in this year’s report — depicts the percentage of the U.S. population who receive government assistance and the total number of individuals who are dependent on the federal government.

Fifty years ago, before President Lyndon Johnson created the Great Society programs, some 21.7 million people (or 11.7 percent of the population) received assistance through government programs that existed at the time. The number increased sharply in the 1960s and 1970s before falling in the 1990s. Recently, however, it has skyrocketed.

I think this chart must be racist or something.

Or it could just be that this country is headed for fiscal collapse unless we reverse course ASAP.

Shhh. No one tell legacy media that a huge battle is raging in Britain to privatize the National Health Service

The failures of England's National Health Service (NHS) are well known throughout Europe. Of course, as Congressional Democrats and President Obama rammed through their own takeover of the health care industry here in the U.S., legacy media was careful to ignore all of the headlines from abroad.

The often-horrific levels of health care delivered by the NHS became so controversial that the current debate is over how much should be privatized. That's right: the DMV-like NHS will inevitably be dismantled in favor of private health care.

Because government-run health care can't work, won't work and hasn't ever worked in all of human history.

Almost two years in the making, the once eye-catching plan to take the axe to the NHS's bloated bureaucracy and hand power to family doctors has become a metaphor for Mr Cameron's worst failings as Prime Minister – lack of attention to detail, a hands-off management style, misplaced loyalty to old friends and a deep-rooted belief that shouting at the Despatch Box will silence one's critics.

...There has also been the lack of consistency; where once ministers boasted of having the professional bodies signed up and on board, they now claim angry and almost universal opposition is an inevitable outcome of radical reform. What was once hailed as the biggest change in the NHS for 60 years is now being represented as a logical, small-scale continuation of Blairite reforms. In July 2010, Mr Lansley boldly declared that "people voted for change" – which doesn't sit well with his pre-election promise of no more top-down reorganisations.

...In a sign of the fiasco at the heart of the Government, it is now the Liberal Democrats who speak most warmly about the legislation, having rewritten large passages in a coup led by Baroness Williams. The Lib Dems are furious after working hard behind the scenes to be constructive. "The Tories are flip-flopping all over the place," says one. "Cameron is panicking about local elections in May," says another, adding pointedly: "It is very much their Bill."

This, my friends, is the future of health care here in the U.S.

No lack of coverage, but deadly lack of health care. Rationing. Horror stories. Begging your representatives for treatment for yourself or your family members.

Until it all finally collapses. Just like the NHS.


Related: State-run Health Care, By the Numbers.

The Obama Legacy: Sloth, Dependency and Depression

If you're wondering why the economy just can't seem to get rolling, please remember that the White House is motivating a record number of people not to work. It's called "building a culture of dependency (and a constituency of dependents)".

The American public's dependence on the federal government shot up 23% in just two years under President Obama, with 67 million now relying on some federal program...

[The] annual Index of Dependence on Government tracks money spent on housing, health, welfare, education subsidies and other federal programs that were "traditionally provided to needy people by local organizations and families."

The two-year increase under Obama is the biggest two-year jump since Jimmy Carter was president... The rise was driven mainly by increases in housing subsidies, an expansion in Medicaid and changes to the welfare system, along with a sharp rise in food stamps...

If there's anything the last half-century of failed Leftist policies have taught us, it's this: when you reward sloth, you get more sloth. Not to mention rampant fraud and monstrous waste.


Related: More than a third of all U.S. wages and salaries come from government confiscating wealth and redistributing it