Fred Barnes: Major Congressional Reforms Demand Bipartisan Support
[Mr. Barnes is executive editor of the Weekly Standard and a commentator on Fox News Channel.]
For decades, a rule of thumb in Washington has said that there should be popular support and a bipartisan majority before approving an initiative that significantly affects tens of millions of Americans. Health-care reform—ObamaCare—has neither, yet Democrats want to impose it anyway. If they succeed, the consequences could be devastating for the country and probably for the president and his party.
The reasoning behind the rule is simple. Forcing drastic change on an unwilling public is likely to cause national disunity, stir angry protests, increase political polarization, and deepen distrust of Washington. But if popular opinion and both political parties support the change, discord will be minimal.
Discord is all but certain if ObamaCare in anything like its present form is enacted. A majority, or at least a large plurality, of Americans oppose it. Their opposition is raw and intense, as we've learned from the spate of contentious town-hall meetings held by Democratic members of Congress last summer. A Washington Post/ABC News poll of Oct. 19 confirmed the obvious: Far more Americans "strongly" oppose ObamaCare (36%) than "strongly" support it (26%)...
... A glance at some sweeping measures enacted in Washington over the past half-century underscores how essential popular approval and bipartisanship approval are. Without them the controversy and wrangling never stops.
The creation of the interstate highway system in 1956, the passage of civil rights legislation, the war on poverty and federal aid to education in the 1960s, and No Child Left Behind in 2001 all were reasonably popular measures. True, the antipoverty bill, the Economic Opportunity Act, drew only 10 Republican votes in the Senate and 22 in the House. But that dwarfs Republican support for ObamaCare. At the moment, only one Republican in the Senate and one in the House are seen as possible votes.
Even the original Social Security Act of 1935 drew majority support by Republicans in the House (81 yes, 15 no) and in the Senate (16 yes, five no).
Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965 with doctors opposed, but the public on board. The two programs attracted a bipartisan majority in Congress of nearly all Democrats and half the Republicans. In 2003, President Bush's Medicare prescription drug benefit got only nine Democratic votes in the House, but 35 of 48 Senate Democrats voted for it...
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For decades, a rule of thumb in Washington has said that there should be popular support and a bipartisan majority before approving an initiative that significantly affects tens of millions of Americans. Health-care reform—ObamaCare—has neither, yet Democrats want to impose it anyway. If they succeed, the consequences could be devastating for the country and probably for the president and his party.
The reasoning behind the rule is simple. Forcing drastic change on an unwilling public is likely to cause national disunity, stir angry protests, increase political polarization, and deepen distrust of Washington. But if popular opinion and both political parties support the change, discord will be minimal.
Discord is all but certain if ObamaCare in anything like its present form is enacted. A majority, or at least a large plurality, of Americans oppose it. Their opposition is raw and intense, as we've learned from the spate of contentious town-hall meetings held by Democratic members of Congress last summer. A Washington Post/ABC News poll of Oct. 19 confirmed the obvious: Far more Americans "strongly" oppose ObamaCare (36%) than "strongly" support it (26%)...
... A glance at some sweeping measures enacted in Washington over the past half-century underscores how essential popular approval and bipartisanship approval are. Without them the controversy and wrangling never stops.
The creation of the interstate highway system in 1956, the passage of civil rights legislation, the war on poverty and federal aid to education in the 1960s, and No Child Left Behind in 2001 all were reasonably popular measures. True, the antipoverty bill, the Economic Opportunity Act, drew only 10 Republican votes in the Senate and 22 in the House. But that dwarfs Republican support for ObamaCare. At the moment, only one Republican in the Senate and one in the House are seen as possible votes.
Even the original Social Security Act of 1935 drew majority support by Republicans in the House (81 yes, 15 no) and in the Senate (16 yes, five no).
Medicare and Medicaid were established in 1965 with doctors opposed, but the public on board. The two programs attracted a bipartisan majority in Congress of nearly all Democrats and half the Republicans. In 2003, President Bush's Medicare prescription drug benefit got only nine Democratic votes in the House, but 35 of 48 Senate Democrats voted for it...