The Left's Real Agenda

An honest statist at the New Yorker openly admits that a key purpose of Obamacare is to create a new entitlement that will make people more dependent on government and therefore more likely to support Democrats. The Wall Street Journal's editorial page admires Mr. Cassidy's honesty, but obviously is troubled by the implications. For what it's worth, Cassidy's argument is very similar to the one made by Bill Clinton's pollster back in the early 1990s, so we can't say we haven't been warned what the left wants:

...let's give credit to John Cassidy, part of the left-wing stable at the New Yorker, who wrote last week on its Web site that "it's important to be clear about what the reform amounts to." Mr. Cassidy is more honest than the politicians whose dishonesty he supports. "The U.S. government is making a costly and open-ended commitment," he writes. "Let's not pretend that it isn't a big deal, or that it will be self-financing, or that it will work out exactly as planned. It won't. What is really unfolding, I suspect, is the scenario that many conservatives feared. The Obama Administration . . . is creating a new entitlement program, which, once established, will be virtually impossible to rescind." Why are they doing it? Because, according to Mr. Cassidy, ObamaCare serves the twin goals of "making the United States a more equitable country" and furthering the Democrats' "political calculus." In other words, the purpose is to further redistribute income by putting health care further under government control, and in the process making the middle class more dependent on government. As the party of government, Democrats will benefit over the long run.