A Summer Obama Drama

WASHINGTON POST, 8/10/2009 by Fred Hiatt (Hat tip: John H. Detweiler) - Here are two versions of the summer sizzler “President Obama and the Exploding Deficit,” playing in a cineplex near you:
In Version One, President Obama pronounces himself ready to make hard political choices to tame the federal debt. But after spending a trillion dollars to extinguish an inherited economic crisis, he proceeds to insist — as if nothing had happened — on the biggest expansion of federal government spending since Medicare: guaranteed health insurance for all.

He claims to want a bipartisan bill but refuses to consider any component that might offend a Democratic constituency, no matter how essential to a coherent plan: no malpractice reform (trial lawyers), no taxing of employer-provided health-care benefits (unions), no means-testing of Medicare benefits (middle-class seniors. Read more at the Washington Post...