Oopsies! Schumer Admits that Passing Obamacare Was a Mistake

Get a load of this. The majority of the country opposed Obamacare when Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and his cohort passed that bill, and President Obama signed it into law. The Democrats smeared Tea Party activists who peacefully assembled to voice their opposition as “racists.”

Only now, years later and after the law has wreaked havoc on millions of Americans’ health care, Sen. Schumer recognizes that the law was a big mistake. He said so in a speech in Washington on Tuesday.

Schumer says Democrats “blew the opportunity the American people gave them” in the 2008 elections, a Democratic landslide, by focusing on healthcare reform instead of legislation to boost the middle class.

“After passing the stimulus, Democrats should have continued to propose middle class-oriented programs and built on the partial success of the stimulus,” he said in a speech at the National Press Club.

He said the plight of uninsured Americans caused by “unfair insurance company practices” needed to be addressed, but it wasn’t the change that people wanted when they elected Barack Obama as president.

“Americans were crying out for an end to the recession, for better wages and more jobs; not for changes in their healthcare,” he said.

Schumer even noted that with just 5% of Americans lacking health care prior to the law, there was no crisis. Which begs the question, then why did he and every other Democrat claim, for decades on end, say that there was a crisis? Democrat policy amounted to systematically lying to the American people, claiming there was a crisis when there was not one, across several decades.

While it would be nice to be able to take Schumer at face value here and assume that he is being honest, he and his fellow Democrats have repeatedly surrendered any right to be taken at their word.

Schumer himself has touted Obamacare and joined smears of those of us who oppose it. So what’s up with his mea culpa now?

Schumer is posturing, giving Democrats space to criticize and abandon Obama over the next two years. It’s all about the Democrats’ hopes of re-taking Congress in two years. His comments may spark serious public infighting between the congressional Democrats and the Obama White House and its bitter enders — which is just what both the congressional Democrats and the White House want. For the preening and posturing.