The health care overhaul has been the law now for nearly a week, but tea party protesters remain in a state of denial, and Tennessee's Republicans can't stop bellowing and braying about the terrible injustice of it all. Their main gripe? In addition to stealing our freedom in some unexplained way, Democrats in Congress are busting the state government's budget.
"It will be devastating to the state's finances," Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey says everywhere he goes. As his No. 1 witness, he cites none other than Gov. Phil Bredesen, the state's top Democrat. Bredesen famously denounced health care reform as "the mother of all unfunded mandates" back in the summer when the tea partiers were just beginning to work themselves into a froth. Now, he's dropped the catchy language. It's merely "a huge unfunded mandate" that, according to the governor, will cost the state $1.1 billion in its first five years—from 2014 to 2019.
