Obamacare = The Tower of Red Tape! The Ugly Duckling

Obamacare, the Ugly Duckling - Andrew Stiles - National Review Online
At 20,000-plus pages — and growing — the bill has become a towering monstrosity.

By Andrew Stiles - March 21, 2013

They sure do grow up fast.

In the three years since Obamacare — the legislative darling of the president’s first term — was signed into law, it has grown from an adorable 2,700-page binder full of rules and kickbacks into a towering 7-foot-3-inch, 300-pound behemoth totaling more than 20,000 pages of byzantine mandates and regulations. When House speaker Nancy Pelosi infamously said, “We have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it,” she wasn’t kidding.  

Obama's Ever Rising Tower of Red Tape

Now, thanks to some enterprising staffers in the office of Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, the American people can finally see what their elected officials created. The so-called Red-Tape Tower became an instant hit on social-media sites after McConnell’s press office tweeted a photo on March 12 (hashtag:#redtapetower) of all 20,000-plus pages of regulations that the administration has released since Obamacare became law. The tower was stacked neatly in a corner of the Capitol building and adorned with a red satin bow that a staff member found at a stationary shop in nearby Union Station. The photo has been shared by tens of thousands on Facebook and Twitter.

“It’s a very effective visual way of dramatizing the impact of this bill and what we’ve been predicting would happen for three years,” explains one McConnell aide. “We can talk about it all we want, but actually showing people all the regulations printed out is very powerful.”

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