On the recordMarch 21, 2012
this Friday the Nation observes an anniversary that most Americans would prefer to see removed from its calendar. I am talking about the second anniversary of the passage of the President's health care law. Rather than celebrate this day, it is one that citizens and taxpayers have come to rue and regret. The process by which Obamacare became law was an affront to republican principles of democratic self-government. The substance of this law is an historic threat to the liberties our Constitution was designed to secure. A decent respect for the opinions of the American people cautioned against passing this law on a purely partisan basis. Yet in spite of the clear opposition of the American people to this massive expansion of government power, and to its historic spending and tax increases, the President and his congressional allies were determined to jam this bill through the Congress. The architects of this strategy, if not the party loyalists who carried it out against the wishes of their constituents, sleep easy at night having done so, because they knew that this was a once-in-a- generation opportunity, the crowning achievement of the liberal bureaucratic state. A takeover of the Nation's health care sector and its top-down regulation by Washington had eluded Democrats for over 70 years. The economic downturn of 2008 changed that.…
