Posted by
Bert Chapman on Wednesday, March 17, 2010 8:04:12 PM
A book written about the 1986 tax reform act was called something like "Showdown at Gucci Gulch" in honor of the well clad footwear worn by lobbyists representing various interest groups in the hallways outside congressional committee hearing rooms. There are a lot of terms you could use to describe the horsetrading and legislative browbeating being done by President Obama and his Democratic legislative sycophants on the Hill as they plunge hellbent for leather to produce health care legislation that no sane American who has studied it wants. This is one of the potentially defining moments in American political history when we will find out if the American people want to embark on the road to governmental health care serfdom or retain some semblance of individual autonomy in our personal health care decision-making.
Despite being rebuked by gubernatorial voters in New Jersey and Virginia, and senatorial voters in Massachusetts, the Obama Administration and the Democratic congressional leadership have staked their political credibility on the role of a health care dice which Americans of multiple political shades have said they don't want. These Americans realize an expanded governmental involvement in our health sector will not improve the quality of our health care, will not decrease costs, and will result in further national debt and budget deficits that will make it impossible for our economy to create new jobs with benefits and increase our debt and make us increasingly vulnerable to hostile foreign economic coercion. Obama and congressional Democrats should have heeded the warning shots fired across their bows by these three elections and scaled back their lofty aspirations. They should have used these events as signs that Americans don't want more governmental control over their health decisions and decided to work with congressional conservatives to produce incremental health care reform in areas such as tort reform, increased electronic record keeping, being able to buy health insurance across state lines, and giving small businesses and individual entrepreneurs the opportunity to cooperatively purchase discounted health insurance coverage. Hubris, however, rules the day and Obama and company have decided to go for all or nothing.
They may momentarily succeed in their goals due to parliamentary procedural trickery, but they will have lost any claim to moral authority when the U.S. is confronted with a more serious political or security crisis such as a terrorist attack and they demand respect and trust from the American people. Administering the bureaucratic leviathan this bill is will increase the burdens on doctors, patients, medical personnel, and insurance companies and worsen an already challenging situation. Their will be tons of legal suits brought, some legitimate and some bogus, which will keep America's medical community from working effectively with we the care receivers to get the high quality and affordable attention we sometimes require. Hopefully, this hideous legislation is about to be strangled and our congressional personnel and executive branch politicos sit down and draft health care legislation that Americans actually want and can support in a bipartisan fashion instead of at the egocentric bull whip of Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and the ghost of Ted Kennedy. Hopefully, we can defeat this insidious legislation and begin decisively accelerating Barack Obama's political and presidential downfall!