JOPLIN, Mo. — I recently read an article in The New York Post, written by Betsy McCaughey, titled “BamCare’s next crisis.”

In the article she writes: “The Federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services reported last week that health spending in the United States inched up 3.9 percent in 2011 — the latest available statistics, and the third year in a row it rose at that tiny rate. It’s the slowest pace in 52 years, after decades of staggering double-digit increases.”

She further wrote: “It’s an embarrassing fact for President Obama. To frighten the nation into passing the Affordable Care Act, he repeatedly warned throughout 2009 and 2010 of ‘skyrocketing’ health care costs threatening family budgets and the nation’s economy. He even labeled these ‘skyrocketing’ costs ‘the domestic crisis of our time.’”

And, she wrote, “In a separate report, the same agency’s actuaries project that the Affordable Care Act will soon reverse our progress in taming spending growth.”

I checked out this information at CMS.gov to make sure what she wrote was correct.

This article confirms something we’ve seen in the past four years, and I’m afraid we’ll see more of it during the next four years: Barack Obama will say whatever he needs to say to push through an agenda that continues to drive our country into debt and disregard the limits of his office as set out in the Constitution.

During the first four years of his presidency, all we heard from Obama was that our country had to pass nationalized health care. He promised people would be able to keep the insurance they had and told us repeatedly this would lower costs and improve health care. Well, we are starting to see the fallacy of his statements with insurance premiums going up, doctors leaving the medical profession, higher taxes on medical devices and companies cutting full-time employees to part-time employees because of Obamacare.

I realize Obamacare was passed last year, but we are already starting Obama’s next four years with the same crisis-oriented brainwashing. The latest is gun control. Obama always uses sad events to try and push his anti-Constitution agenda. What happened in Newtown, Conn., was a horrendous act, carried out by a mentally disturbed individual, and it resulted in the deaths of innocent children and adults. Obama and the media hurriedly jumped on this sad event by demanding new gun laws.

He even said if Congress didn’t do something, he would use executive orders to mandate new restrictions. This wouldn’t be the first time Obama bypassed Congress to get what he wanted.

The sad fact is this man, who supposedly taught the Constitution, doesn’t believe he has to abide by the Constitution. Congress makes the laws, and he, as president, is supposed to make sure those laws are enforced.

We also see evidence of the mindset of Obama when it comes to the debt-ceiling crisis. The debt ceiling was raised last year, and we didn’t see any cuts in spending; we only saw an increase in spending. If you ask me, that was absurd and irresponsible.

Some people may not know this, but when Obama was a senator, he voted against raising the debt ceiling. On March 16, 2006, then Sen. Obama said: “The fact that we are here today to debate raising America’s debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the U.S. government can’t pay its own bills. ... I therefore intend to oppose the effort to increase America’s debt limit.”

Perhaps Obama should go back and read what he said. Being over $16 trillion in debt and needing to raise our debt ceiling to pay our bills is indeed a sign of failed leadership.

Americans should be prepared because everything that this administration is pushing will be seen as a crisis, and we’ll be told we have to fix it immediately.

It won’t matter if we get bad laws as a result, or if Obama bypasses Congress — we’ll be told it has to be done.

If we, as citizens, don’t stand up for the Constitution and demand that our legislators do the same, then we will see our country go further in debt and the continued erosion of the separation of powers in the three branches of government.



Marilyn Beasley lives in Joplin.