Research

When he addressed a joint session of Congress on September 9th, President Obama claimed that his government-run health care experiment “will slow the growth of health care costs for our families, our businesses, and our government.” Yet last night, his Chief Medicare Actuary released a report demonstrating how Obama’s government-run health care experiment will make health care costs higher than they would have been without this so-called “reform.” This is only one of many instances where Obama says something that the American people want to hear that is entirely the opposite of what his agenda actually does.

Now that Obama has checked health care off his list (for now), his current crusade is against Wall Street bailouts. Yet the bill he’s touting expressly empowers the federal government to bailout failing companies. While he and his surrogates won’t stop talking about how he plans to end bailouts, the experts say that it does exactly the opposite, including two economists:

"We're not seeing a very forceful step on the too-big-to-fail-problem," said Carmen Reinhart, an economist at the University of Maryland. "If there's any doubt that the crisis may be systemic, we will bail out again." So, if a major bank says, "Hey, save us or the economy will go under," the government's going to save the bank. Full stop. [NPR] did find one expert, Doug Elliott of the Brookings Institution, who is actually a huge fan of the regulatory reform bills … But they don't end too big to fail, he said.

Obama has peddled falsehoods about health care, and now he’s peddling falsehoods about his so-called “Wall Street reform” bill. Americans simply cannot trust Obama, especially given that even Democrat congressmen like Brad Sherman (D-CA) are calling him out, saying Obama’s legislation had “permanent, unlimited bailout authority.” If his own party doesn’t believe him, why should you?