Schieffer Rues: If Only ObamaCare Had Been Enacted Before Opponents Could Attack It
From the debate over ObamaCare over the past few years, Bob Schieffer learned not of all the problems that need to be addressed or that it lacks public support, but that it should have been enacted without delay so critics would have been thwarted. “The opponents of this have had two years to just go at it from all different angles,” he lamented.
“One lesson in all of this,” Schieffer opined on Sunday’s Face the Nation, is “never pass a law again that doesn’t go into effect immediately.” He acknowledged “nobody really knew what was in it,” insisting “the people who might have benefited and saw some good in this...a lot of them don’t even know what those parts of it are.”
Meanwhile, he rued, “the opponents of this have had two years to just go at it from all different angles, and you know, the law is not on the books yet. I think if this had gone into effect immediately, I think you’d have a very different situation.”
If only, so liberals could avoid such messy arguments about implementing another government expansion.
Schieffer, during the roundtable on the October 6 Face the Nation:
Can I add just what I think is one lesson in all of this that I think people on both sides: Never pass a law again that doesn’t go into effect immediately. What you have had here with this health care law, you pass it, and nobody really knew what was in it. It’s 2,000 pages. It didn’t go into effect for two years. So the people who might have benefited and saw some good in this, they -- a lot of them don’t even know what those parts of it are. There are also some parts that are not too good that have got to be straightened out. But the fact is, the opponents of this have had two years to just go at it from all different angles, and you know, the law is not on the books yet. I think if this had gone into effect immediately, I think you’d have a very different situation.
— Brent Baker is the Steven P.J. Wood Senior Fellow and Vice President for Research and Publications at the Media Research Center. Follow Brent Baker on Twitter.