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As long as it's not Bush, I guess the presidency is a cakewalk..........

There was one small consolation for Republicans amid last November’s shellacking. For at least four years, their opponents would enjoy the dubious pleasure of trying to govern the United States of America. Late on election night, while the confetti swirled in Blue America, more than a few veterans of the Bush years no doubt hoisted a toast to the exuberant liberals: Good luck with that

Oh, it seems easy at first. The press is kind; the Congress is pliant; the country loves you. You’re a breath of fresh air after the previous administration’s excesses. Your first attempts at big-ticket legislation shoulder their way into law. The opposition party looks easily divided, easily co-opted and deeply out of touch.

But eventually the hard part arrives. For Barack Obama, it may have started last week, courtesy of the abacus-wielding wonks at the Congressional Budget Office.

First, the C.B.O. slapped a $1 trillion price tag on Chris Dodd and Ted Kennedy’s version of health care reform — a figure, it noted, that would buy coverage for only a third of America’s uninsured. A day later, the C.B.O. priced the Senate Finance Committee’s more self-consciously centrist draft of health care legislation. The good news: The bill would cover more than two-thirds of the uninsured. The bad news: It would cost $1.6 trillion across 10 years.

These are scary numbers, for a country headed for a fiscal cliff — scary enough to send the Finance Committee scrambling to craft a cheaper version of its bill, and scary enough to give liberals flashbacks to the collapse of Clintoncare.

But they aren’t actually surprising numbers. The current U.S. health care system is, by general agreement, overpriced, bloated and hugely inefficient. And if you expand a bloated, inefficient system, it stands to reason that you’ll end up with billions or even trillions more in bloat and inefficiency.

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