Democrats Show Strain of Heated Battles

By NAFTALI BENDAVID and JONATHAN WEISMAN

WASHINGTON -- A bruising session marked by politically volatile legislation strained relations between congressional Democrats and the White House and spawned cracks in the party's coalition.

Since Mr. Obama's inauguration, Congress has enacted a stream of significant legislation. The gamut runs from an economic-stimulus package, children's health care, pay parity for women, tobacco regulation, consumer credit-card protections, public service and land conservation, in addition to key budget bills.

But on some marquee issues, White House officials and Democratic congressional leaders concede the schedule has slipped -- while noting that nothing major has failed. In addition, some Democrats say their colleagues misunderstand the White House role, which is to shape public discourse and resolve party disputes, not dictate policy specifics.

Many of the Democrats' internal disputes stem from growing friction between the party's conservative and liberal wings. Several years ago, then-Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D., Ill.), in an all-out push to retake Congress, aggressively recruited conservative Democratic candidates.

Now Mr. Emanuel, as White House chief of staff, finds the very lawmakers he courted slowing the more-progressive president's agenda. Some liberals complain Mr. Obama is overly protective of those newly elected Democrats and too willing to cut deals.

"The chickens are coming home to roost," said Rep. Maxine Waters, an outspoken liberal Democrat from California.

Conservatives Democrats have their own complaints. Mr. Obama and his top aides have worked diligently to show they are heeding conservatives' concerns about a health-care overhaul's costs. But the president's political operatives -- at the Democratic National Committee and the grassroots group Organizing for America -- haven't been so solicitous.

Television ads running in some moderates' districts urging support for Mr. Obama's health initiative left them feeling bullied and betrayed. "Those ads really created problems," one House leadership aide said.

Other Democrats complain that by not providing enough clarity on where the health-care overhaul is headed, the White House has left them exposed politically as they face constituents' scrutiny -- and rivals' attacks -- during the August recess.

"Specificity is what is needed," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein. "What's most helpful now is: 'This will reduce costs, and here is precisely how.' " Asked if the White House had provided this specificity, the California Democrat said, "No."

Republicans are seizing on the tensions to bolster their criticism of the Democratic agenda. "Many within the president's own party are now standing up and telling the administration to slow down and reassess," Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said this week.

Similar unhappiness surrounds the president's energy initiative, which was meant to reduce carbon emissions in the hope of slowing global warming. Mr. Obama chose not to spend political capital stumping for the House measure, while Republicans have been savaging moderate Democrats for supporting what they call a "cap-and-tax" bill.

Some argue that Mr. Obama's relations with his party are good, by historical standards. Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton alienated fellow Democrats almost immediately with their perceived disdain for Congress.

Mr. Obama, a former U.S. senator, has been solicitous of lawmakers and put Capitol Hill veterans in key positions, from Mr. Emanuel to Budget Director Peter Orszag, a former director of the Congressional Budget Office.

When Mr. Obama took office in January, Democratic leaders set high expectations that they would accomplish almost as much as the New Deal Democrats of the 1930s.

Then, in May, Mr. Obama demanded that Congress provide money to close the U.S. detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but declined to specify what would happen to its inmates. Afraid of being accused of releasing terrorists into their districts, Democrats rebelled and refused to allocate the funds.

One unexpected problem was a breakdown in the White House's legislative game plan. The Senate was supposed to move before the House on health care, officials say, giving skittish House members assurance before they moved forward on the difficult issue.

Instead, the House kept its end of the bargain, pushing through a climate bill only to find the Senate stuck on health care and doing nothing on energy.

On health care, "I just think that they are giving out a very poor message," said Sen. Bernie Sanders, a liberal Vermont independent who caucuses with the Democrats. "At the end of the day, if they think everyone will be so excited because they passed something, I think that is wrong both from a public-policy and a political perspective."

Minnesota Rep. James Oberstar and other Democrats, meanwhile, have sharply criticized an administration move to postpone a roughly $500 billion transportation bill.

Looking ahead to the fall session, dissatisfaction is growing as campaign promises give way to the nitty-gritty of legislating. "Our fear, or concern, is that the legislative branch not become a cheerleader for the executive branch," said Democratic Rep. John Tanner of Tennessee.

Write to Naftali Bendavid at naftali.bendavid@wsj.com and Jonathan Weisman at jonathan.weisman@wsj.com

What should be done about health care?

WND Exclusive WND FORUMS

Here's your chance to propose an alternative to Barack Obama's plan

Vowing to overhaul the health care system, President Obama and his Democratic allies in Congress are proposing a government-run plan to compete with private insurance estimated to cost at least $1 trillion.

Many Americans fear this will lead to nationalized health care but acknowledge something needs to be done to "fix the system."

Now, a WND forum introduced today gives you a chance to weigh in.

What ideas do you have for Congress? You can spell them out now at "Fixing Health Care."

Earlier this year, WND introduced the "Laughlines" forum, where readers can share the best jokes, viral e-mail hoots and amusing comments.

Check out "Fixing Health Care" and "Laughlines," along with other WND forums including:

* "The World's Greatest Books," which asks you to nominate the most important non-fiction books of all time – aside from the Bible – from ancient times to the present.

* Is Barack Obama eligible to be president under the U.S. Constitution?

* WND's daily polls on the hottest topic in the news.

* OPERATION SPIKE: A listing of nominations for "the most under-reported stories of the year."

* The plan by Congress to ban incandescent lights, a move described as "one of the most blatantly unconstitutional and amazingly stupid congressional acts."

* The great debate over global warming, and the plans for emissions taxes and penalties for producing energy.

* Your only direct access to ask a question of the president.

* The famous Chuck Norris Laughlines, featuring the greatest punch lines about the famous martial arts champion, longtime actor and WND columnist.

* Your opportunity to be a WND news editor, where you can post hot, breaking stories.

* WND's BlogNetDaily.

* WND's assignment desk.

* And a forum for your best poll ideas.

Health Care Questions Obama Can’t Answer

By Herman Cain

During President Obama’s primetime press conference last Wednesday, he made the usual promises about Obamacare, which have no resemblance to what Congress is working on. The president continues to promise more choices, better health care, fewer costs and less government intervention. The “Health Care De-form” legislation working its way through Congress is just the opposite.

Rather than the lapdog mainstream media doing its job and challenging the president on his assumptions and assertions, they play “run and fetch” with whatever the president says. Since they didn’t do their jobs, here are a few real questions for starters.

Mr. President, since government mandates have never produced the desired results in the history of this country, why do you believe they will work this time?

When the government mandated a salary and wage freeze during World War II, businesses still had to compete for the best people in the workforce. As a result, businesses started offering health insurance benefits as an employment incentive and the practice has intensified over time. So much so, many politicians now proclaim that health care is a “right”.

Mr. President, is food a similar “right”? (No response)

Mr. President, since persistent problems have been reported about Medicare, Medicaid and veterans’ health care, why do you believe that this time the government bureaucracy will perform much better than ever before?

I can’t imagine that he really believes that, but he has to keep saying it because that’s what the “sheeple” want to hear, and it provides cover for what the Democrats in Congress are working on to get us on the road to health care rationing.

Mr. President, if the real objective is to provide health insurance for the “uninsured” in this country, then why not allow people the opportunity to pay a small fee to participate in Medicare? In fact, why not offer free Medicare to those that are really, really poor?

According to my calculations the costs would be only a fraction of $1.5 trillion if you use the real number of 8 million chronically uninsured people instead of the misleading 46 million. Alternatively, why not provide a “health insurance voucher” for those who are chronically uninsured?

Mr. President, have you considered changing the law to allow association health plans, along with allowing health insurance premiums to be tax deductible regardless of who paid for them?

History has shown that free market forces are better than government mandates to curb the rapid rise in costs.

At that point, President Obama would pull a “Clinton”. In 1994, when I asked President Bill Clinton a question during a televised town hall meeting he did not want to answer, he said, “Send me your information and I will get back to you, next question.”

I’m still waiting.

Mr. President, since no country with government-controlled health care has been able to avoid health care rationing to control costs, what evidence do you have that suggests we will be able to do what no other country has been able to do?

Oops! The president’s staff might call security on that one.

If the last question of the night about a “racial” incident in Boston involving a friend of the president was not a plant, then it was a brilliant accidental distraction to throw to the media. “Run and fetch” worked again, because that was the main story by many news outlets the next day.

Here’s my last question: Mr. President, do you really know what’s in the “Health Care De-form” legislation?

Sorry, we are out of time.

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Common Sense May Sink ObamaCare

OPINION: DECLARATIONS

It turns out the president misjudged the nation’s mood.

By Peggy Noonan

This is big, what’s happening. President Obama appears to have misstepped on a major initiative and defining issue. He has misjudged the nation’s mood, which itself is news: He rose from nothing to everything with the help of his fine-tuned antennae. Resistance to the Democratic health-care plans is in the air, showing up more now on YouTube than in the polls, but it will be in the polls soon enough. The president, in short, may be facing a real loss. This will be interesting in a number of ways and for a number of reasons, among them that we’ve never seen him publicly defeated before, because he hasn’t been. So we may be entering new territory, with new struggles shaped by new dynamics.

His news conference the other night was bad. He was filibustery and spinny and gave long and largely unfollowable answers that seemed aimed at limiting the number of questions asked and running out the clock. You don’t do that when you’re fully confident. Far more seriously, he didn’t seem to be telling the truth. We need to create a new national health-care program in order to cut down on government spending? Who would believe that? Would anybody?

The common wisdom the past week has been that whatever challenges health care faces, the president will at least get something because he has a Democratic House and Senate and they’re not going to let their guy die. He’ll get this or that, maybe not a new nationalized system but some things, and he’ll be able to declare some degree of victory.

And this makes sense. But after the news conference, I found myself wondering if he’d get anything.

I think the plan is being slowed and may well be stopped not by ideology, or even by philosophy in a strict sense, but by simple American common sense. I suspect voters, the past few weeks, have been giving themselves an internal Q-and-A that goes something like this:

Will whatever health care bill is produced by Congress increase the deficit? “Of course.” Will it mean tax increases? “Of course.” Will it mean new fees or fines? “Probably.” Can I afford it right now? “No, I’m already getting clobbered.” Will it make the marketplace freer and better? “Probably not.” Is our health care system in crisis? “Yeah, it has been for years.” Is it the most pressing crisis right now? “No, the economy is.” Will a health-care bill improve the economy? “I doubt it.”

The White House misread the national mood. The problem isn’t that they didn’t “bend the curve,” or didn’t sell it right. The problem is that the national mood has changed since the president was elected. Back then the mood was “change is for the good.” But that altered as the full implications of the financial crash seeped in. The crash gave everyone a diminished sense of their own margin for error. It gave them a diminished sense of their country’s margin for error. Americans are not in a chance-taking mood. They’re not in a spending mood, not after the unprecedented spending of the past year, from the end of the Bush era through the first six months of Obama. Here the Congressional Budget Office report that a health care bill would not save money but would instead cost more than a trillion dollars in the next decade was decisive. People say bureaucrats never do anything. The bureaucrats of CBO might have killed health care.

And this makes sense. But after the news conference, I found myself wondering if he’d get anything.

I think the plan is being slowed and may well be stopped not by ideology, or even by philosophy in a strict sense, but by simple American common sense. I suspect voters, the past few weeks, have been giving themselves an internal Q-and-A that goes something like this:

Will whatever health care bill is produced by Congress increase the deficit? “Of course.” Will it mean tax increases? “Of course.” Will it mean new fees or fines? “Probably.” Can I afford it right now? “No, I’m already getting clobbered.” Will it make the marketplace freer and better? “Probably not.” Is our health care system in crisis? “Yeah, it has been for years.” Is it the most pressing crisis right now? “No, the economy is.” Will a health-care bill improve the economy? “I doubt it.”

The White House misread the national mood. The problem isn’t that they didn’t “bend the curve,” or didn’t sell it right. The problem is that the national mood has changed since the president was elected. Back then the mood was “change is for the good.” But that altered as the full implications of the financial crash seeped in. The crash gave everyone a diminished sense of their own margin for error. It gave them a diminished sense of their country’s margin for error. Americans are not in a chance-taking mood. They’re not in a spending mood, not after the unprecedented spending of the past year, from the end of the Bush era through the first six months of Obama. Here the Congressional Budget Office report that a health care bill would not save money but would instead cost more than a trillion dollars in the next decade was decisive. People say bureaucrats never do anything. The bureaucrats of CBO might have killed health care.

The final bill, with all its complexities, will probably be huge, a thousand pages or so. Americans don’t fear the devil’s in the details, they fear hell is. Do they want the same people running health care who gave us the Department of Motor Vehicles, the post office and the invasion of Iraq?

Let me throw forward three other things that I suspect lessen , or will lessen, support for full health-care reform, two of them not quantifiable.

The first has to do with the doctors throughout the country who give patients a break, who quietly underbill someone they know is in trouble, or don’t charge for their services. Also the emergency rooms that provide excellent service for the uninsured in medical crisis. People don’t talk about this much because they’re afraid if they do they’ll lose it, that some government genius will come along and make it illegal for a doctor not to charge or a hospital to fudge around, with mercy, in its billing. People are afraid of losing the parts of the system that sometimes work—the unquantifiable parts, the human parts.

Second, and this is big, some of the bills being worked on in Congress will allow for or mandate taxpayer funding of abortion. Speaking only and narrowly in political terms, this is so ignorant as to be astounding. A good portion of the support for national health care comes from a sort of European Christian Democrat spirit of community, of “We are all in this together.” This spirit potentially unites Democrats, leftists, some Republicans and GOP populists, the politically unaffiliated and those of whatever view with low incomes. But putting abortion in the mix takes the Christian out of Christian Democrat. It breaks and jangles the coalition, telling those who believe abortion is evil that they not only have to accept its legality but now have to pay for it in a brand new plan, for which they’ll be more highly taxed. This is taking a knife to your own supporters.

The third point is largely unspoken but I suspect gives some people real pause. We are living in a time in which educated people who are at the top of American life feel they have the right to make very public criticisms of . . . let’s call it the private, pleasurable but health-related choices of others. They shame smokers and the overweight. Drinking will be next. Mr. Obama’s own choice for surgeon general has come under criticism as too heavy.

Only a generation ago such criticisms would have been considered rude and unacceptable. But they are part of the ugly, chafing price of having the government in something: Suddenly it can make big and very personal demands on you. Those who live in a way that isn’t sufficiently healthy “cost us money” and “drive up premiums.” Mr. Obama himself said something like it in his press conference, when he spoke of a person who might not buy health insurance. If he gets hit by a bus, “the rest of us have to pay for it.”

Under a national health-care plan we might be hearing that a lot. You don’t exercise, you smoke, you drink, you eat too much, and “the rest of us have to pay for it.”

It is a new opportunity for new class professionals (an old phrase that should make a comeback) to shame others, which appears to be one of their hobbies. (It may even be one of their addictions. Let’s stage an intervention.) Every time I hear Kathleen Sebelius talk about “transitioning” from “treating disease” to “preventing disease,” I start thinking of how they’ll use this as an excuse to judge, shame and intrude.

So this might be an unarticulated public fear: When everyone pays for the same health-care system, the overseers will feel more and more a right to tell you how to live, which simple joys are allowed and which are not.

Americans in the most personal, daily ways feel they are less free than they used to be. And they are right, they are less free.

Who wants more of that?

The Press Conference President Obama Could Give

by Newt Gingrich and Nancy Desmond

(Today’s Newt Gingrich Letter has been written with Nancy Desmond, CEO of the Center for Health Transformation.)

Last week, the Federal Reserve made a little noticed, but astonishing announcement. In addition to projecting unemployment over 10% in the coming months, they also projected no net new jobs over the next five years.

Let me repeat that to drive the point home: no net new jobs over the next five years.

This is an amazing and sober prediction about the health of our economy, one that should make every lawmaker pause and reassess the priorities of government.

In this environment, almost every decision for lawmakers should come down to one question: Since small businesses create ¾ of the jobs in America, would this piece of legislation create a better or worse environment for small business job creation?

It is in this context that tonight’s press conference with President Obama on health reform should be judged.

The Opportunity Buried in the Bad News

Until now, President Obama has more or less allowed Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her allies in the House to dictate the terms by which health reform would be accomplished.

Disappointingly, they have chosen an expensive, big-bureaucracy health care plan that would raise taxes on small businesses.

The reaction from moderate Democrats, Republicans, health professionals, indeed, from most Americans, has been growing opposition, and despite a massive majority in the House, it looks unlikely today that Speaker Pelosi can coerce this legislation through Congress like she did the energy tax.

As a result, President Obama could be stuck tonight trying to defend an indefensible piece of high tax legislation in the middle of a recession with growing unemployment and massive deficits. It’s a task that will be even more difficult in the wake of CBO Director Douglas Elmendorf’s recent testimony before the Senate Budget Committee that the proposed legislation would actually increase the long term trajectory of federal spending in healthcare.

But what if President Obama used the announcement from the Federal Reserve to, in effect, start the health-reform debate over?

What if he said tonight, that given the continued trouble of our economy, he is asking Congress to go back to the drawing board to craft a pro-jobs, pro-growth, pro-reform health bill that would gain bipartisan support?

What would that bill look like?

A Pro Jobs, Pro Growth Plan for Health Reform

The fact is America desperately needs real change in our health and healthcare system. Americans are paying more and more money for less and less quality care.

At the Center for Health Transformation, we have been working for the past six years to develop solutions for the problems in our health care system, which don’t rely on higher taxes, bigger government, and more bureaucrats.

We believe we can have a system in which every American has access to better health with more choices at lower cost.

We believe we can have a system in which the individual and his or her doctor have the knowledge and incentives to make wise choices; a system in which fraud and waste are rooted out, in which quality and best practices (not volume of services) are rewarded and in which prevention, health and wellness are central.

And most importantly in today’s troubled economy, we believe we can have a system that will also be central to job creation and to America’s economic recovery.

Six Straightforward Steps to Better Healthcare

To create a system that delivers more choices of higher quality health care at lower cost we need to take the following six straightforward steps:

1. Stop Paying the Crooks. First, we must dramatically reduce healthcare fraud within our current healthcare system. Outright fraud -- criminal activity -- accounts for as much as 10 percent of all healthcare spending. That is more than $200 billion every year. Medicare alone could account for as much as $40 billion a year. (Please visit www.healthtransformation.net for the information about our latest CHT Press book, Stop Paying the Crooks, edited by Jim Frogue.)

2. Move from a Paper-based to an Electronic Health System. As it stands now, it is simply impossible to keep up with fraud in a paper-based system. An electronic system would free tens of billions of dollars to be spent on investing on the kind of modern system that will transform healthcare. In addition, it would dramatically increase our ability to eliminate costly medical errors and to accelerate the adoption of new solutions and breakthroughs.

3. Tax Reform. The savings realized through very deliberately and very systematically eliminating fraud could be used to provide tax incentives and vouchers that would help cover those Americans who currently can’t afford coverage. In addition, we need to expand tax incentives for insurance provided by small employers and the self-employed. Finally, elimination of capital gains taxes for investments in health-solution companies can greatly impact the creation advancement of new solutions that create better health at lower cost.

4. Create a Health-Based Health System. In essence, we must create a system that focuses on improving individual health. The best way to accomplish this is to find out what solutions are actually working today that save lives and save money and then design public policy to encourage their widespread adoption. For example, according to the Dartmouth Health Atlas, if the 6,000 hospitals in the country provided the same standard of care of the Intermountain or Mayo health clinics, Medicare alone would save 30 percent of total spending every year. We need to make best practices the minimum practice. We need the federal government and other healthcare stakeholders to consistently migrate to best practices that ensure quality, safety and better outcomes.

5. Reform Our Health Justice System. Currently, the U.S. civil justice system is the most expensive in the world -- about double the average cost in virtually every other industrialized nation. But for all of the money spent, our civil justice system neither effectively compensates persons injured from medical negligence nor encourages the elimination of medical errors. Because physicians fear malpractice suits, defensive medicine (redundant, wasteful treatment designed to avoid lawsuits, not treat the patient) has become pervasive. CHT is developing a number of bold health-justice reforms including a “safe harbor” for physicians who followed clinical best practices in the treatment of a patient. You can learn more at www.healthtransformation.net.

6. Invest in Scientific Research and Breakthroughs. We must accelerate and focus national efforts, re-engineer care delivery, and ultimately prevent diseases such as Alzheimer's Disease and diabetes which are financially crippling our healthcare system.

The Last Thing We Need is a Plan That Raises Taxes and Eliminates Jobs

Clearly, the last thing America needs is more taxes on job producers, whether it is in the form of a national energy tax, automatic tax increases in 2010 when the 2003 tax relief measures expire, or a healthcare plan that will raise taxes, eliminate jobs, and allows Washington bureaucrats to make decisions that ought to be made by individual Americans together with their families and doctors.

President Obama has a choice tonight, as does America.

We can make health and healthcare into a major source of job creation, economic revival, and improved health and well-being for every American.

Or we can make it into a government-run system that will destroy our economy along with our health.

To learn more about our plan for reforming health without raising taxes, eliminating jobs or raising the deficit, please visit www.healthtransformation.net.

Your friends,

Newt Gingrich and Nancy Desmond


Newt’s Quick Links

• A pro-jobs, pro-growth health reform plan is just one step towards getting our economy moving again. Today, American Solutions will hold a press conference to outline a “Jobs Here, Jobs Now, Jobs First” agenda for small business job creation. You can learn more at www.americansolutions.com.

• To see a recent historical example of how a pro-growth agenda can revitalize the American economy, watch Callista and my new movie, Ronald Reagan: Rendezvous with Destiny.

• When some Americans noticed the glaring contrast between the mainstream media’s treatment of the death of pop singer Michael Jackson and the death of World War II hero Darrell “Shifty” Powers, they got together on the internet to do something about it. Powers was part of the “band of brothers” who landed in Normandy with the 101st Airborne on June 6, 1944 to help reclaim the European continent for freedom. He died June 17. To learn ways you can join in his memorial, go here.

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Mr. Gingrich is the former speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and author of "Real Change: From the World That Fails to the World That Works" and "Winning the Future" (published by Regnery, a HUMAN EVENTS sister company). Ms. Desmond is CEO of the Center for Health Transformation

Click here to have the Newt Gingrich Letter sent to you every week

Obama Can't Be Trusted With Numbers

So why should we trust him with health care?

By KARL ROVE

In February, President Barack Obama signed a $787 billion stimulus bill while making lavish promises about the results. He pledged that "a new wave of innovation, activity and construction will be unleashed all across America." He also said the stimulus would "save or create up to four million jobs." Vice President Joe Biden said the massive federal spending plan would "drop-kick" the economy out of the recession.

But the unemployment rate today is 9.5% -- nearly 20% higher than the Obama White House said it would be with the stimulus in place. Keith Hennessey, who worked at the Bush White House on economic policy, has noted that unemployment is now higher than the administration said it would be if nothing was done to revive the economy. There are 2.6 million fewer Americans working than Mr. Obama promised.

The economy takes unexpected turns on every president. But what is striking about this president is how quickly he turns away from his promises. He rushed the stimulus through Congress saying we couldn't afford to wait. Now his administration is waiting to spend the money. Of the $279 billion allocated to federal agencies, only $56 billion has been paid out.

Mr. Biden has admitted that the administration "misread" the economy. But he explained that away on ABC's "This Week with George Stephanopoulos" on Sunday by saying the administration had used "the consensus figures and most of the blue chip indexes out there" to draw up its stimulus plan. That's not true.

The Blue Chip consensus is an average of some four dozen economic forecasts. In January, the consensus estimated that GDP for 2009 would shrink by 1.6% and that unemployment would top out at 8.3%. Team Obama assumed both higher GDP growth (it counted on a contraction of 1.2%) and lower peak unemployment (8.1%) than the consensus.

Instead of relying on the Blue Chip consensus, Mr. Obama outsourced writing the stimulus to House appropriators who stuffed it with every bad spending idea they weren't previously able to push through Congress. Little of it aimed to quickly revive the economy. More stimulus money will be spent in fiscal years 2011 through 2019 than will be spent this fiscal year, which ends in September.

On Sunday, Mr. Biden, backpedaling from his drop-kick comments, said that "no one anticipated, no one expected that the recovery package would in fact be in a position at this point of having to distribute the bulk of the money."

This fits a pattern. The administration consistently pledges unrealistic results that it later distances itself from. It has gotten away with it because the media haven't asked many pointed questions. That may not last as the debate shifts to health care.

The Obama administration wants a government takeover of health care. To get it, it is promising to wring massive savings out of the health-care industry. And it has already started to make cost-savings promises.

For example, the administration strong-armed health-care providers into promising $2 trillion in health savings. It got pharmaceutical companies to promise to lower drug prices for seniors by $80 billion over 10 years. The administration also trotted out hospital executives to say that they would voluntarily save the government $150 billion over 10 years.

None of this comes near to being true. On the promised $2 trillion, everyone admits that the number isn't built on anything specific -- it's an aspirational goal. On drug prices, a White House spokesman admitted that "These savings have not been identified at the moment." It is speculative that these cuts will actually be made, when they would begin, or whether they would reduce government health-care spending.

None of this will stop the administration from arguing that its "savings" will pay for Mr. Obama's $1.5 trillion health-care plans. By the time the real price tag emerges, it will be too late to do much more than raise taxes and curtail spending on urgent priorities, such as the military.

The stimulus package is a clear example of how Mr. Obama operates. He is attempting to employ the same tactics of bait-and-switch when it comes to health care, only on a much larger scale.

Mr. Obama has already created a river of red ink. His health-care plans will only force that river over its banks. We are at the cusp of a crucial political debate, and Mr. Obama's words on fiscal matters are untrustworthy. His promised savings are a mirage. His proposals to reshape the economy are alarming. And his unwillingness to be forthright with his numbers reveals that he knows his plans would terrify many Americans.

Mr. Rove is the former senior adviser and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush.

Karl writes a weekly op-ed for The Wall Street Journal, is a Newsweek columnist and is now writing a book to be published by Simon & Schuster. Email the author at Karl@Rove.com or visit him on the web at Rove.com.

Or, you can send him a Tweet @karlrove.

Canada's ObamaCare Precedent

Governments always ration care by making you wait. That can be deadly.

By David Gratzer

Congressional Democrats will soon put forward their legislative proposals for reforming health care. Should they succeed, tens of millions of Americans will potentially be joining a new public insurance program and the federal government will increasingly be involved in treatment decisions.

Not long ago, I would have applauded this type of government expansion. Born and raised in Canada, I once believed that government health care is compassionate and equitable. It is neither.

My views changed in medical school. Yes, everyone in Canada is covered by a "single payer" -- the government. But Canadians wait for practically any procedure or diagnostic test or specialist consultation in the public system.