The Growing Battle Over Berwick
RealClearPolitics
By Hal Scherz
July 27, 2010
Even with last week's Elaine Sherrod -NAACP media uproar, the Obama administration's recess appointment of Dr. Donald Berwick as Medicare czar continued stirring controversy, with Senate Republicans "spoiling for a fight" and "escalating the conflict" according to the Washington Examiner's Byron York. Putting the unpopular Obamacare measure back on the political front burner just as Democratic candidates were hoping it had gone away, the administration's decision to bypass congressional committee hearings with the Berwick appointment had an angry Kansas Senator Pat Roberts introducing an "abuse of power" resolution and Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell making it pointedly clear GOP cooperation on even routine Senate business was now in question.
Beyond just the affront to democratic procedure or Senate prerogatives though, the Berwick matter offers Obamacare opponents a larger political opportunity. Recent reports and studies by the Congressional Budget Office, HHS and independent groups have discredited last winter's solemn pledges by the president and Democratic Congress that under Obamacare, everyone could keep their current insurance plan and neither the deficit nor insurance premiums would rise. Now, six months after calling Republican warnings on rationing "scare tactics," President Obama has anointed and empowered the single most passionate advocate of government medical rationing in America, thus adding the charge of cynicism to already burgeoning credibility problems of Obamacare proponents.