MORE ON THE CLASS ACT’S DEMISE:

Last March, I did a retrospective on the law’s first year anniversary, wherein I pointed out that there had been a lot of bad news, and no upside surprises. Six months later, we’ve had more nasty surprises, and the “upside” consists of the entirely unsurprising revelation that forcing insurers to cover kids up to 26 results in more kids under the age of 26 being covered, at some cost in rising premiums.

During the debate over health reform, a lot of liberals were suggesting that ObamaCare’s deficit reduction was just as likely to be larger than projected as less–or even that the CBO’s scoring process systematically underestimated the savings from new health care programs. Jonathan Cohn professed himself “baffled” by the belief “that, rather than try and craft a fiscally responsible program, the Democrats instead figured out the CBO’s accounting methods, came up with ways to make an expensive program seem deceptively cheap, and then fiddled with the numbers to get the result they wanted.”

But how else do we explain the CLASS Act, which the Washington Post warned about in December 2009? Or the utterly moronic provision forcing small businesses to give 1099s to all their vendors? Are we really to assume that these were not stupid gimmicks put into the law to, erm, “make an expensive program seem deceptively cheap”, but rather, represent the sober and considered judgement of Democratic legislators and the Obama administration about sound fiscal policy?

That’s a far scarier thought, actually.

Indeed. I’m going long on tar and feathers futures.