Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post threw a fit in print yesterday over the “lies” Republicans unleashed on those watching C-SPAN Saturday night as the House worked to pass Pelosi’s health-care bill. In the column, she muses with impressive intellectual nuance, “Are Republicans against figuring out what works?” and admits she’s only backing Pelosi’s 2,000-page regulation of 1/6 of the economy because she didn’t like the way Republicans were talking about it. Trust her admittedly fickle judgment on health-care legislation at your own peril. Her indictment of Republicans, on many points (though not all; Boehner admits a mistake on his statement, for instance), relies on the standard retort to conservative worries about the bill. “The bill language doesn’t precisely say any of the stuff you say, and because I’m a liberal and therefore utterly confident in the benevolence and efficiency of the federal government in practice despite all evidence to the contrary, I can’t imagine that anything unintended or bad would ever come of the measures put forth in this 2,000 page bill no one understands. You’re a liar.” Here’s one of the things Republicans “lied” about on Saturday:
Oh, so you’ll face five years in jail for refusing to pay the fine imposed upon you for choosing not to buy insurance. Well, that’s totally different. Thanks, Ruth Marcus for clearing that up. I’m sure Nancy Pelosi will back you up on this very important distinction. “No one is being jailed for being uninsured,” after all.
