Sebelius: Opposing ObamaCare is like opposing civil rights in 1964, or something

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius spoke at the NAACP convention yesterday in Orlando to congratulate them on their support for ObamaCare.  Why, the same kind of people who oppose ObamaCare now are like those who opposed the Civil Rights Acts in the early 1960s, she told the audience.

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Did she mean … Democrats?

“The Affordable Care Act is the most powerful law for reducing health disparities since Medicare and Medicaid were created in 1965, the same year the Voting Rights Act was also enacted,” Sebelius said. “That significance hits especially close to home. My father was a congressman from Cincinnati who voted for each of those critical civil rights laws, and who represented a district near where the late Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth lived and preached.

“The same arguments against change, the same fear and misinformation that opponents used then are the same ones opponents are spreading now. ‘This won’t work,’ ‘Slow down,’ ‘Let’s wait,’ they say.

“But history shows that upholding our founding principles demands continuous work toward a more perfect union…And it requires the kind of work that the NAACP has done for more than a century to move us forward.

“You showed it in the fight against lynching and the fight for desegregation. You showed it by ensuring inalienable rights are secured in the courtroom and at the ballot box. And you showed it by supporting a health law 100 years in the making.

“With each step forward, you said to forces of the status quo, ‘This will work,’ ‘We can’t slow down’ ‘We can’t wait,’ ‘We won’t turn back.’

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Er, yeah. Because opposing a law-enforcement effort to stop lynchings is so totally like opposing another big, costly, and destructive government intervention in the health-insurance industry.

It’s just another case of demagoguery from an administration forced to admit that they can’t administer their own law after a three-year head start.  In a blatant attempt to avoid the political consequences of the bill’s destructive failure, the White House wants to ignore the law they created and which Democrats shoved down the throats of Americans to buy off employers for a year or so.  This argument tosses even more demagoguery into the mix by bizarrely implying that opposition to ObamaCare is somehow racist — which gets Sebelius off the hook from explaining why HHS has utterly failed to meet the requirements of the mandates this administration demanded and got from Congress.

House Republicans want both mandates delayed an equal amount of time, and propose to do it correctly — via statute. However, Obama issued a veto threat in the rare chance that the Senate passes the extension, too:

Obama will veto measures set for House votes Wednesday to delay key parts of the new healthcare law if they reach his desk, the White House said.

The administration “strongly opposes” a pair of Republican-led bills to delay the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate and individual mandate, a White House statement said.

The employer mandate requires businesses with 50 or more full-time employees to purchase health insurance or face penalties. The individual mandate requires the same thing for most Americans.

The scheduled House votes follow an administration announcement July 2 to delay for a year, until 2015, the employer mandate, saying business owners expressed concerns about the law’s complex reporting requirements.

The back-to-back votes will seek to codify the White House’s delay and match it with a one-year delay of the individual provision, saying it’s only fair.

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Yes, I’d like Obama to explain why employers got a waiver while individuals still have to deal with IRS enforcement in 2014, and why he’s suddenly a lot less interested in “fairness” for the people rather than the fat cats that employ them.  Or is that like opposing the Smoot-Hawley Act?

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