Of the Democrat senators who voted for Obamacare in December 2009, half are no longer in the Senate. These former senators include “eight who were defeated by Republicans, and eight more who chose not to run again and were succeeded by Republicans.” But, following the Gruber debacle, are Democrats remorseful? The Weekly Standard,
When, days after the 2014 midterm elections, Gruber’s remarks were publicized, Democratic politicians and journalists scrambled to denounce them, and Gruber himself apologized in congressional testimony for his “glib, thoughtless, and sometimes downright insulting comments.” Disdaining and deceiving the people are indeed affronts to democracy, but are not the only transgressions against American self-government. Gruber’s arrogance was gratuitous, but the deceptions he smugly praised served a Democratic purpose: convincing people that government interventions that can bestow formidable benefits while imposing negligible costs are, despite sounding too good to be true, low-hanging fruit ready to be harvested.
If Democrats were forthright and respectful they would have enough confidence in their proposals and their countrymen to speak plainly. They would say: “We’re not idiots; you’re not idiots; and only an idiot could believe it’s possible for government to do big things that help lots of people without also imposing big costs, through taxes and regulations, that adversely affect lots of people. The reason you should support the Democratic agenda is not that we’re magicians who can make something out of nothing. It’s that the benefits of our programs will exceed their costs—so much so that our country and most of our citizens will be better off paying the higher taxes and complying with the more stringent regulations than we would be absent the taxes, the regulations, and the benefits they make possible.”
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