Would You Trade Health Reform For The House?

by Stuart Shapiro

William Saletan suggests that Republicans certainly would rather have no HCR than control of the House.

Most bills aren’t more important than elections. This one was. Take it from Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader. Yesterday, in his election victory speech at the Heritage Foundation, he declared, “Health care was the worst piece of legislation that’s passed during my time in the Senate.” McConnell has been in the Senate for 26 years. He understands the bill’s significance: It’s a huge structural change in the relationship between the public, the economy, and the government.

Read the whole piece, as I think it makes a couple of good points.  Primary among them is that the health care bill is permanent (it is not getting repealed, no matter what Dick Armey threatens) and Congress can change in two years.  It is a bit of a false choice since I think the Democrats would have lost regardless of whether HCR had passed, but it is nice to remember that these past two years have seen more important legislation passed than any period since the Johnson administration.

By: Stuart Shapiro

Stuart is a professor and the Director of the Public Policy
program at the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers
University. He teaches economics and cost-benefit analysis and studies
regulation in the United States at both the federal and state levels.
Prior to coming to Rutgers, Stuart worked for five years at the Office
of Management and Budget in Washington under Presidents Clinton and
George W. Bush.