Ezra Klein Gives Up The Big Lie

It seems that the latest blow to ObamaCare has Ezra Klein all flustered. It could also be that the guys at PowerLine laid the smackdown on him for trying to act like he knows what he’s talking about regarding Constitutional law. The PL guys didn’t understand that Klein was simply parroting the Center for American Progress talking points that made their way around the Lefty blogosphere. (I wonder if Journolist 2.0 is operating.)

So after his initial blog about the decision, the one where he was depantsed by PowerLine, Klein followed it up with this gem.

The legal theory currently in vogue in conservative circles holds that the Constitution’s vision of “a central government with limited power” — to use Judge Vinson’s phrase — permits the government to establish a single-payer health-care system that every American pays into through payroll taxes and that wipes out the private insurance industry but forbids the government from administering a regulated market in which individuals purchase private insurance plans and pay a penalty if they can afford coverage but choose to delay buying it until they’re sick.

There’s a chance conservatives will come to seriously regret this stratagem. I think it’s vanishingly unlikely that the Supreme Court will side with Judge Vinson and strike down the whole of the law. But in the event that it did somehow undermine the whole of the law and restore the status quo ex ante, Democrats would start organizing around a solution based off of Medicare, Medicaid, and the budget reconciliation process — as that would sidestep both legal attacks and the supermajority requirement.

The resulting policy isn’t too hard to imagine. Think something like opening Medicare to all Americans over age 45, raising Medicaid up to 300 percent of the poverty line, opening S-CHIP to all children, and paying for the necessary subsidies and spending with a surtax on the wealthy (which is how the House originally wanted to fund health-care reform). That won’t get us quite to universal health care, but it’ll get us pretty close. And it’ll be a big step towards squeezing out private insurers, particularly if Medicaid and Medicare are given more power to control their costs.

It has that huffy, “oh yeah! well…” feel to it. Ignoring the political reality that 1) the Progressive agenda (which includes single-payer) was thoroughly rejected in November and 2) for his plan to work Democrats would need to control the House (which they currently don’t), Klein gives up one of the central lies from the Left.

You see, for as long as we’ve been having this debate, the Left has denied that ObamaCare was meant to pave the way for a single-payer plan. It’s true that a few have let the truth slip out a few times, but the mainstream media would look the other way and refuse to cover it or even talk about it. Klein couldn’t resist. He said what they couldn’t really say too much before the vote for ObamaCare: They want to squeeze out the private insurers. ObamaCare is, in fact, a government takeover of Health Care. It’s Phase 1.

Klein is almost giddy with excitement over it. “You dirty Republicans really screwed up this time!! Now we’ll use the very tactics that got our butts kicked out of power in the House to do exactly what we wanted to from the start!”

It’s a little sad. Having been mocked for his remarks earlier in the year regarding the “confusing” language in the Constitution, then being smacked around by actual lawyers on PowerLine, Klein couldn’t just accept reality and dreamed up a scenario that is dead on arrival. And he acts like this was the plan all along.

Maybe when he’s able to grow a full beard (or finish puberty), the wunderkind might actually get a clue.