Ed Morrissey
HotAir.com
8/31/2010
ObamaCare sometimes seems like Mark Twain’s comment about the weather, and how everyone complains but no one does anything about it. Minnesota’s Tim Pawlenty opened up a new front on opposition to the federal takeover of health care by issuing an executive order to block state requests for ObamaCare funds. Calling the program “an explosion of federal spending” that does nothing to address the actual causes of rising costs in health care, Pawlenty drew a line in the sand between Minnesota and the White House:
Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty Tuesday ordered all state agencies to not to submit applications to any health care funding from the federal government related to the health care overhaul.
Any applications must be either required by law or approved by the governor’s office. …
“Obamacare is an intrusion by the federal government into personal health care matters and it’s an explosion of federal spending that does nothing to make health care more affordable,” Pawlenty said in a news release.
The Star-Tribune has the executive order in full at the link above. Time’s Mark Halperin gives Pawlenty high marks for “clever 2012 positioning”:
Pawlenty’s move allows him to argue that he stood on the frontlines as an elected official and tried to thwart the law through aggressive means. And it allows him to stoke the contrast he and his strategists most want to make with Mitt Romney, whose support for a similar health care measure in Massachusetts continues to bedevil him with many Republicans.
Alternately or even simultaneously, it could be that Pawlenty just thinks ObamaCare is bad policy, and especially bad for the states…
The article continues at HotAir.com
