Great moments in WTF: Obamacare has nothing to do with the budget?

**Posted by Phineas

Charles C. W. Cooke commented on the speech President Obama gave today on Obamacare, and to say he was flabbergasted would a vast understatement. After recounting the various lies, non-sequiturs, and insults that filled the speech (1), he turns to the whopper of whoppers: Obama’s assertion that the PPACA has nothing to do with the budget:

These were all astonishing and infuriating in equal measure. But they paled in comparison to the dishonesty of the president’s central claim, which was that the attempt to link defunding to the debt-ceiling fight is illegitimate because Obamacare has “nothing to do with the budget.” I struggle to imagine how the president could have kept a straight face when he said this. This is a law, remember, that was crowbarred through Congress with the questionable use of reconciliation, a parliamentary procedure that is reserved exclusively for budgetary matters; a law that was sold as a deficit-reduction measure; a law that contains a significant spending component, including a 5-10 percent increase in the size of the federal budget; and, alas, a law that boasts a central mandate that was upheld (rewritten) by the Supreme Court as a tax, thus ensuring that any changes to the penalties must be approved by the House. “Nothing to do with the budget”? This is what we call a lie, Watson.

Where’s Joe Wilson when you need him?

If we had an honest press, he’d be called out on this garbage every time he stepped anywhere within eyesight of a journalist. Instead, the vast majority will continue to kiss his shoes, just as they have since 2007.

Footnote:
(1) Such as comparing opposition to Obamacare to some unnamed (imaginary?) person saying that the law is the equal of the Fugitive Slave Act. I’m not joking. He really said that. That’s straight out of Rule 13 of Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. The man cannot stop being a community organizer. I don’t think he can help himself.

(Crossposted at Public Secrets)