The House of Representatives voted by a very narrow margin Sunday night to pass the healthcare reform bill. Regardless of the closeness of the vote, it will soon become the law of the land when President Barack Obama signs it.
The passage of the healthcare bill also provides us with a convenient excuse to step back and look at the predictions made by politicians and pundits who spent the past year telling everybody that healthcare reform was dead (many thanks to Think Progress for compiling these):
– Dick Morris, Fox News commentator, November 4: “A deathblow to ObamaCare.”
– Fred Barnes, Fox News commentator, January 20: “The health care bill, ObamaCare, is dead with not the slightest prospect of resurrection.”
– Robert A. Levy, chairman of the Cato Institute, January 26: “That’s why Obamacare is dead.”
– Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA), Minority Whip, February 24: “Speaker Pelosi doesn’t have the votes in the House. . . . It is futile for for them to continue to try and push something on the American people that frankly won’t result in better health care.”
– Rep. Dan Boren (D-OK), March 3: “I think the votes are not there and I don’t see where we get them.”
– Cantor, March 5: “Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi doesn’t have the votes needed to pass a health-care bill in the House of Representatives.”
– Rep. John Boehner (R-OH), Minority Leader, March 14: “If she had 216 votes, this bill would be long gone. They tried to pass it in September, October, November, December, January, February. Guess what? They don’t have the votes.”
– Boehner, March 17: Health care reform will pass “over my dead body.”
– Cantor, March 19: “[T]here’s no way they can pass this bill.”
In addition to the predictions compiled by Think Progress, I’d like to add one from my favorite right-wing pundit, Charlie Krauthammer, who has been so wrong on so many of his predictions on so many occasions.
Last summer Krauthammer opined in a Washington Post column titled “Why Obamacare is sinking”:
What happened to Obamacare? Rhetoric met reality. As both candidate and president, the master rhetorician could conjure a world in which he bestows upon you health-care nirvana: more coverage, less cost.
But you can’t fake it in legislation. Once you commit your fantasies to words and numbers, the Congressional Budget Office comes along and declares that the emperor has no clothes.
And let’s not forget South Carolina Sen. Jim DeMint, who also said last summer:
“If we’re able to stop Obama on this it will be his Waterloo. It will break him.”
There are some people who just shouldn’t make predictions.
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