The Washington Post’s Bob Woodward said on Fox News Sunday that ObamaCare isn’t a scandal such as Watergate or Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.
However, he thinks the problems associated with the so-called “Affordable Care Act” are going to get worse because "It’s going to blow a hole in the budget” (video follows with transcript and commentary):
CHRIS WALLACE, HOST: I hate when people come up to me and say, “You know, you’ve been around this town a long time,” because I always know what that means. Bob, you’ve been around this town a long time, have you ever seen anything like this? A president with his, three years to roll out his signature accomplishment – literally, with his name on it – and it gets so botched?
BOB WOODWARD, WASHINGTON POST: Well, I have to think about what this is. It’s a mess, clearly, but what it isn't, and I think you have to look at the question of motive. And the President’s motive here, even though there deep problems with the implementation, he wants to do something good for 30 million people and get them health insurance. So this isn’t Watergate. This isn’t Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.
WALLACE: I'm not saying it's a scandal. I’m just, what it seems to be is rank incompetence.
WOODWARD: Yeah, there’s no question about that, but you see all of these stories and this frenzy out there, the game over, the presidency is over, some people are saying. I think that's not the case.
But here’s the other side of this which I would agree with George Will on. When you go down the road, it's going to get worse, because you talk to the experts and they will tell you that this is a money issue. It’s going to blow a hole in the budget. And when we go in two or three months from now and have more “Are we going to shut down the government? Are we going to pay for the debt we have?” All of a sudden, this is going to come on the table and people are going to say, "My God, it's going to cost much more money than we were spending on these things before."
So how you disentangle this is now on Obama’s head. Now, can he learn? This is an executive function, which is something he’s not starred in so far in his presidency. And, can he get it together? You know everyone says and knows he is bright, and can he learn to manage?
It goes without saying that I agree with Woodward about ObamaCare blowing a hole in the budget.
However, where were media members such as himself in 2009 and 2010 when conservatives across the country were making this claim and so-called journalists were stating that it would reduce the budget.
In this case, "Better late than never" doesn't apply, because if they had made this case before this bill was enacted, it never would have been.
