Thursday, June 7, 2012

Pelosi: Obamacare Provides Americans the “Liberty” to Quit Their Jobs

Politico reports that, when asked at her weekly press conference this morning about new polling data indicating more than two-thirds of Americans want at least some of Obamacare struck down, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Obamacare “is about life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness for the American people.”  Politico further reported that Pelosi said the law would allow people to leave their jobs “to pursue their happiness” without fear of losing insurance.

Her comments this morning echo Pelosi’s 2010 remarks about Obamacare, in which she encouraged artists to “leave your work” and “be creative and be a musician or whatever” because they will have government-funded health coverage under the law.  Of course, this message is slightly inconsistent with her other claims that Obamacare will create 4 million new jobs.  And there’s also the minor detail that in order for Americans to reclaim their “pursuit of happiness” to quit their jobs, as Pelosi claimed, they actually need to have a job to quit.  By Pelosi’s logic (such as it is), the “stimulus” must have also promoted liberty – it hasn’t delivered the jobs promised, so millions of Americans have been engaged in the “pursuit of happiness” on the unemployment lines.

More fundamentally, however, is this principle many conservatives believe:  Liberty comes neither from government mandates and diktats, nor from government programs encouraging a culture of dependence – it comes from government creating an environment where each individual has the freedom to govern his or her own life.  Obamacare includes an unprecedented mandate for individuals to purchase a government-defined product, and trillions of dollars in new spending on unsustainable entitlements that non-partisan experts agree will discourage work and harm economic growth.  Both elements are fundamentally antithetical to liberty – which is why ALL of Obamacare must be repealed.