Obama stoking backlash with ‘falsehoods’ on healthcare, Walker says

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) said Tuesday that the Democrats and the public were abandoning President Obama because he hasn’t been truthful about his signature healthcare law.

{mosads}Walker called ObamaCare an “abysmal failure” and a “wet blanket” on the nation’s economic recovery, and said that, in addition to the bungled rollout, the president’s incorrect pledge that if you like your plan you can keep it had soured Obama’s allies on the law.

“I think people are just as angry at his falsehoods,” Walker said on CNBC’s “The Kudlow Report.”

“I think regardless of how people originally thought about ObamaCare, overwhelmingly the public realizes this is an abysmal failure,” he added. “Not just the rollout but the policy itself. And I think the longer that this goes on, the more Democrats are gonna run for the hills.”

Walker is widely considered a top candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016. Many conservatives believe a Republican governor could fare well after eight years of a former senator in the White House, and Walker highlighted this point.

“I think that’s part of the problem of you have someone who didn’t have executive experience and they let the political shop in the White House run everything,” he said.  

Walker has so far declined to expand Medicaid under the healthcare law, but his state has an ambitious cost-reimbursement program for the poor. Walker hopes to push those who don’t qualify for Medicaid or Wisconsin’s BadgerCare onto the federal exchanges, but said he has no faith that the Affordable Care Act will work.

“They made a promise that nobody could actually deliver on – not just in terms of a website but on the overall policy of ObamaCare, which is an abysmal failure,” Walker said. “It’s not only a fail for ObamaCare, it is continuing to be a wet blanket on the recovery and the nation’s economy.”

“It only gets worse as day … by day goes by and more and more of these promises, we find out, you know, were not only not right — it’d be one thing if they were wrong and you were told they’re wrong — and you actually believe that people believed that,” he continued. “But the more we find out that … firm after firm actually telling the White House and the administration this wasn’t gonna work … it’s either one of those things where they’re not listening to the facts or they’re not being informed. In either case, it’s rather troubling.”