The House voted last week to repeal a key piece of Obamacare. Hadn’t heard? That’s because hardly anyone in either party uttered a peep of concern; the repeal passed by a whopping 419-to-6 margin. The provision in question was the so-called Cadillac tax on overly generous health care plans, designed to keep costs down even as more people got coverage, which was set to phase in three years from now. The repeal action moves to the Senate, where there is wide support. Repeal would cost the treasury $197 billion over a decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

The hypocrisy flows almost as copiously as the red ink. Democrats were happy to argue, when the Affordable Care Act was still a bill and not a law, that its coverage expansion would come hand in hand with long-needed cost containment. Now, they are happy to turn around and gut the cost containment. Republicans pretended great concern about the deficit, then two years ago passed a budget-busting tax cut, and now enable yet more deficit spending. They failed to repeal Obamacare, but, with the complicity of Democrats, they will likely repeal a crucial section that made it fiscally responsible. And where are the former Obama administration officials as their party evinces this Cadillac tax cowardice?

There is a lesson here for those who promise massive new government programs such as Medicare-for-all, premised on unlikely or, as in the case of Berniecare, preposterous promises about their affordability. Obamacare was a relatively modest health-care coverage expansion —nothing like some of the plans Democratic presidential candidates are discussing. The Cadillac tax was a limited measure that would have restrained (not removed) benefits for relatively privileged Americans. Yet, when the rubber hits the road, Congress is failing even to stick to the timid cost containment Obamacare envisioned. To argue that one can create a brand-new health care system based on the premise that Congress will suddenly discover the courage to drastically ratchet down payments to doctors and hospitals requires ignorance, willful or otherwise, of the past several decades of political history.

Not every voice asking “How will you pay for it?” does so in a cynical spirit. Not everyone who waves the flag of fiscal responsibility does so to kill proposed programs they oppose for other reasons. Some do so because, time and again, Congress has proved itself incapable of living up to the promises lawmakers have made on managing national finances, piling more and more debt on future generations.

Even with these considerations in mind, there is room for sober proposals that improve government services. But anyone concerned about an eventual fiscal reckoning must consider the consequences of political cowardice before promising Americans more government benefits or tax cuts.

— The Washington Post