Just Asking Questions

James Pethokoukis notes that the Chinese are using Obama's trip to ask him tough questions about progressive health care reform, specifically whether he honestly thinks the plans presently under consideration will reduce costs (in a word "No"). God forbid American media outlets show the same curiosity: China Questions Costs of US Health Care Reform

Guess what? It turns out the Chinese are kind of curious about how President Barack Obama’s healthcare reform plans would impact America’s huge fiscal deficit. Government officials are using his Asian trip as an opportunity to ask the White House questions. Detailed questions.

Boilerplate assurances that America won’t default on its debt or inflate the shortfall away are apparently not cutting it. Nor should they, when one owns nearly $2 trillion in assets denominated in the currency of a country about to double its national debt over the next decade.

Nothing happening in Washington today should give Beijing any comfort or confidence about what may happen tomorrow. Healthcare reform was originally promoted as a way to “bend the curve” on escalating entitlement costs, the major part of which is financing Medicare and Medicaid. That is looking more and more like an overpromised deliverable.

Progressives would never dream of listening to the concerns of middle class Americans. They would rather just call them teabaggers and racists. But if the concerns come from an authoritarian dictatorship steeped in Marxist-Leninist thought? Much more receptive!