In the post-dawn hours on Thursday the Senate passed ObamaCare 60 to 39, in the first vote on Christmas Eve since 1895 and after the longest consecutive session in Congress since World War I. We are thus heading toward the first U.S. entitlement program dragged across the finish line on a straight partisan majority, a bill that even its most fervent supporters admit is "flawed" but better than nothing.

It is far worse than nothing. The bill itself is an unprecedented arrogation of federal power over one-seventh of the economy, and even its closest antecedents, Medicare and Medicaid, passed in 1965 with the support of both parties. Reflecting the political consensus that has always inspired durable social reform in America, those entitlements cleared the Senate with more than half...