But there I was on Sunday evening, watching the votes come in in disbelief. Since then, like so many Americans, I’ve been trying to figure out exactly what is in this bill. By now, we’re all familiar with the debate over the true cost of the bill, the double-counting, the Madoff-type accounting, as Karl Rove labelled it during his debate with David Plouffe on This Week this past Sunday. But, new facts seem to coming out about this bill daily. A good example is the surfacing of the fact that our new health care reform doesn’t cover children with preexisting conditions, despite President Obama’s assertion to the contrary yesterday. Also, if you’re worried about how states will fund a surge in the number of people dependent on Medicaid, when they already face huge deficits with decreased revenues and no relief in sight, you probably can already guess what Dems’ answer to this problem will be — more bailouts, more money, more dependence on the all-powerful federal government and a continuing erosion of states’ rights.

I’ve heard some references to conservatives’ overly inflamed rhetoric when it comes to this issue. I don’t think one can emphasize enough how far-reaching the consequences of this kind of irresponsible accounting and spending will be — and that doesn’t even begin to touch on how our health care system as we know it will be affected.

And at the end of the day, the level of power this bill allows the federal government to have over all of us is unprecedented and dangerous. This quote from a law professor sums it up better than I can.

“If Congress can require you to buy health insurance because of the ways in which your uncovered existence (affects) interstate commerce or because it can tax you in an effort to force you to do (any) old thing it wants you to, it is hard to see what — save some other constitutional restriction — it cannot require you to do — or prohibit you from doing.“

It is this sentiment that has left me with a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach all week long. More reactions to specifics in the bill to come…

Here are just some of the czars the President has appointed so far; it seems that no one has a definitive count. Foreign Policy and Glenn Beck put the count at 18. Here’s a partial list:

Health reform czar (this czar is different from the Health Choices Commission Czar now being proposed);

Energy czar;
Car czar;
Urban affairs czar;
Faith-based policies czar;
TARP czar;
Stimulus accountability czar;
Non-proliferation czar;
Terrorism czar;
Regulatory czar;
Drug czar;
Guantanamo closure czar;
Border czar; and
Information technology czar.

The newest czar Obama wants to add the list is the Health Choices Commission Czar who will essentially single-handedly act as a regulator of the newly formed government-run health insurance program. Health insurance is currently regulated at the state level, but when the federal government takes over this arena, this is another power that will be stripped from states’ hands. Under the federally controlled insurance scheme, states could only compete with federal programs or set up a state-based insurance exchange program with permission from the federal czar. This is a completely different vision of federalism as we know it with states answering to the federal government and not the other way around.

Robert Moffit of The Heritage Foundation writes that this is not a federal-state partnership – it is federal domination of the states. Mr. Moffit is absolutely correct. But, this is the goal of the Obama administration – to puff up the federal government at the expense of states’ rights, individual control and freedom of choice. And, with all of these czars Obama is appointing without any repercussions and without any fury from the public, he is succeeding in taking power from states, from individuals and placing it in the hands of of unelected officials who answer to no one but the President.

Obama promised us transparency in his administration. Doesn’t appointing the largest amount of czars any President has ever had cut against this promise completely? When our President has appointed more czars in the course of six months than Russia did over three centuries, it is an understatement to say that something is very wrong. The appointment of these czars is the epitome of government expansion without any accountability.

*Originally published July 7, 2009 on the American Issues Project Blog, here.