The timing of this push is horrible – of all the unforced errors on the part of Obama and the congressional leadership, this one is the worst. They are debating health care at a time when people are cheering that the economy is only shrinking by 1%, so relieved they are that the “free fall” is over! This Congress and President are simply not focusing on what is worrying the voters. Instead, they’re too busy chasing FDR’s ghost. Every Democratic leader wants to be the one to expand the New Deal/Great Society social welfare state – and Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid plan to be the ones to do it.

The political problem with this is twofold. First, the electoral risks associated with not staying focused on job one – fixing the economy – are too obvious to bother enumerating. Second, the government has already emptied the Treasury with TARP, the auto bailout, and the stimulus bill. The country is now feeling particularly averse to deficit spending, which makes the current political environment quite different from 1964/65, the last time such an expansion of social welfare was achieved. Back then, the country had been enjoying a five-year economic boom, and times were so good that LBJ could offer Kennedy’s tax cut, the Great Society, and an amping up of the U.S. presence in Vietnam. That’s not the way it is now. As the AP reports, tax receipts have declined 18% this year – the worst drop since the Great Depression – and President Obama’s second choice for Commerce Secretary can now suggest on national television that we’re on our way to being a Banana Republic…without anybody laughing him off the tube.