"The United States, like other developed nations, was on a glide path toward entitlement meltdown even before Barack Obama ascended. But his acceleration of the descent has been stupefying. If the health care/student loan behemoth passes, Democrats will have combined two of the greatest follies of recent decades."

"Whatever their sins, insurers are mainly intermediaries; they pass along the costs of the delivery system. In 2009, the largest 14 insurers had profits of roughly $9 billion; that approached 0.4 percent of total health spending of $2.472 trillion. This hardly explains high health costs. What people need to know is that Obama's plan evades health care's major problems and would worsen the budget outlook. It's a big new spending program when government hasn't paid for the spending programs it already has.

"'If not now, when? If not us, who?' Obama asks. The answer is: It's not now, and it's not 'us.' Pass or not, Obama's proposal is the illusion of 'reform,' not the real thing."

"No way around it, the politics of ObamaCare are bad. So bad that it lends credence to the belief that some in the White House and Congress are far more ideologically interested in establishing European-style health care than they are the public's will or their party's electoral success. The question now is how many congressional Democrats are going to follow them into a political black hole."

"Even before President Obama rammed through his trillion-dollar-plus stimulus/bailout packages last year, there was a growing sentiment that the country's top priority ought to be tackling the entitlement programs whose liabilities are like a swelling aneurysm in the brain of the body politic waiting to rupture. The combined unfunded liabilities of Medicare and Social Security -- the federal health care and the pension programs for the elderly -- are $107 trillion, seven times the current GDP. Meanwhile, Medicaid, the joint federal-state health insurance program, is consuming on average 21% of state budgets, their single biggest ticket item even before ObamaCare dumps another 16 million people into the program, expanding the Medicaid population by 25%. Beyond that, state and local governments have promised their employees a trillion dollars more in pension and other benefits than they have funds to deliver. 

"There are not enough taxpayers in the country or creditors in China capable of financing all these promises. Expanding this massive, multifarious entitlement state even more strikes most normal people as sheer lunacy -- especially now that it is visibly coming apart at the seams."

"The proposed increase in government spending creates problems for advocates of reform beyond the perceived impact on deficits and the economy. Fifty-nine percent of voters say that the biggest problem with the health-care system is the cost: They want reform that will bring down the cost of care. For these voters, the notion that you need to spend an additional trillion dollars doesn't make sense. If the program is supposed to save money, why does it cost anything at all?"

"Maybe the facts will come to his rescue, but I just figured I'd get on the record about Eric Massa. I think he's full of it. I don't believe his story and I don't believe that the ethics committee was going to railroad him for one 'salty' comment at a wedding. I am sure that Rahm leaned on Massa, even in the shower. I'm sure that the White House has leaned on lots of people. But I don't think Massa's entirely self-serving story passes the smell test.  So until I see some corroboration of his version, I'm not buying it."

"'Stop messing with Texas!' That was the message Gov. Rick Perry bellowed on election night as he celebrated his victory over Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in the Republican primary for governor. In his reference to Texas' anti-littering slogan, Perry was making a point applicable to national as well as Texas politics and addressed to Democratic politicians as well as Republicans.

"His point was that the big-government policies of the Obama administration and Democratic congressional leaders are resented and fiercely opposed not just because of their dire fiscal effects but also as an intrusion on voters' independence and ability to make decisions for themselves."

"The more we come to rely on government, the fewer freedoms we will enjoy. Government will start dictating what we can own, eat and drive, how much of our money they will let us keep, how we run our businesses, how many -- if any -- guns we can own, and what we may and may not say. Oh, wait! They are already doing that.

"To preserve freedom we must fight for it. Bondage comes when we refuse to fight and are satisfied with the king's largesse. That foul odor coming from Washington is the frog in the kettle coming to a boil."

"Health-care reform is now about the November election.  It's about gamesmanship.  And though the parties differ in fundamental ways that really do matter, a growing majority of Americans no longer care who's up or down, who wins or loses.  A pox on everyone's house, they say... 

Regardless of whether health-care reform passes in the coming weeks or months, the debate has forced Americans to organize their thoughts.  Come November, climate change is going to have a whole new meaning."

"Today's global warming hysteria is the hoax of the 21st century. H.L. Mencken had it right: 'The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and hence clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.'"