NEWSPEAK

This past weekend, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi urged her colleagues to back a trillion-dollar federal takeover of U.S. health care even if it threatens their political careers, "a call to arms that underscores the issue's massive role in this election year," Fox News reported.

Lawmakers sometimes must enact policies that, even if unpopular at the moment, will help the public, Pelosi said in an interview broadcast Sunday the ABC News program "This Week."

It took courage for Congress to pass Social Security and Medicare, which were unpopular at the time "but eventually became highly popular," she said.

Well, "checks in the mail" have always been a popular program for those who receive them — perhaps a tad less so for young people who foot the bills but know darned well the piggy bank will be bust before they ever turn 65.

But I was intrigued by this assertion that Medicare was "initially unpopular."

You see, Ms. Pelosi, some of us -- even some of us under 60 -- remember the vote.

In terms of legislative history, what became known as "Medicare" started out as H.R. 6675, "The Social Security Amendments of 1965."

At ssa.gov/history/tally65.html -- our source being the U.S. government -- we learn this legislation passed "The House Ways & Means Committee on March 23, 1965 (President Johnson issued a statement in support of the bill after the favorable Committee vote) and a Final Report was sent to the House on March 29, 1965. The House took up consideration of the bill on April 7th, and passed the bill the next day by a vote of 313-115 (with 5 not voting).

"The Senate Finance Committee reported the bill out on June 30th and debate began on the Senate floor that same day, concluding with passage on July 9, 1965 by a vote of 68-21 (with 11 not voting)."

"Unpopular"? Medicare was socialism, of course; it turned out to be a tragic mistake which put the camel's nose under the tent and gave us the overpriced, bureaucratized medical system we have today (just as subsidized student loans have driven up the price of college tuition.)

Whose law is it that states any government intervention will always produce unwanted and unintended consequences, leading to calls for a new, even bigger government intervention to fix the problems caused by the previous government intervention -- though without the sponsors ever acknowledging that's the source of the problem? The "Last Knight," perhaps: Ludwig von Mises? Or F.A. Hayek? Why aren't they required reading in the government schools, do you suppose?

Medicare will also bankrupt the nation within the decade, unless it's scrapped through "means-testing," which could lead to some mild and (need we say) COMPLETELY inappropriate unpleasantness directed by the ripped-off "contributors" toward our noble, hard-working "public servants," the nature of which I'm not allowed to predict here but for which I refer you either to my more recent books or to the Web site www.vinsuprynowicz.com.

At any rate, neither of the outcomes is likely to be pretty.

But "unpopular"? Even minority House Republicans voted FOR Medicare in 1965, 70-68, while GOP Senators split 17-13 against.

Of course, we were lied to. According to the Cato Institute, sponsors in 1965 swore the Medicare payroll tax would never exceed 1 percent, and that costs would amount to only $9 billion by 1990. (They actually reached $67 billion by that date -- try applying that factor to current fudged-up cost estimates for Obamacare.)

But where's the evidence that Medicare, in 1965, was as unpopular as Obamacare is today? Where's the evidence that sponsors had to use "reconciliation" in 1965 because they couldn't muster a 60 percent majority?

In the best tradition of Eric Blair (George Orwell, to you), Ms. Pelosi, even in her final term in the House, appears to be rewriting history as she goes along.

-- V.S.