On Keeping Only The Popular Parts Of Laws

This is the other popular line of Obamacare thought: “But some parts of it, like no-preexisting-condition, are popular, so we should keep those (or: the Rs will be pressured to keep those)”. To the extent this offense against logic accurately predicts our future in a post-overturned-mandate world, it is quite sad.

Suppose I continue my hypotheical ill fated yet powerful Congressional term by taking ‘bath salts’ and then proposing a new law, called the Wash Law:

Each year on the day after Groundhog Day the government shall simultaneously (a) tax each person $1 million, and (b) rebate each person $1 million.

Clearly that law, by itself, is a wash, and would have no effect on amything. But it’s also clear that if you breathlessly did a bunch of detailed opinion polling you would discover that provision (b) of the Wash Law is overwhelmingly more popular than provision (a).

So when my law is repealed/overturned and folks run around saying (and even the opposition in Congress plans that) we should ‘keep’ or ‘restore’ only provision (b) of the Wash Law, and describing that as a non-insane outcome, citing public opinion that provision (b) is ‘overwhelmingly popular’, how is a person with a brain and logical faculties supposed to refrain from tearing his hair out?

If you figure that out, let me know. But on the bright side, I suppose baldness is a pre-existing condition.

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