Flush from their victory over the American public regarding health care. Democrats are now even more willing to ignore public opinion. The proof is the resurgence on Capital Hill for creating amnesty for as many as 13 million illegal aliens.
After fourteen months of contentious debate, Democrats triumphed on Sunday and passed legislation mandating government run health care on the American people. Never mind that Democrats could never explain that if the powerful from Canada, Great Britain, Saudi Arabia, France, and a host of other countries routinely came here for their health care, why we should have the same health care system they were all running away from.
Barack Obama was quoted as saying; " This is what change looks like." Congressional Democrats passed the bill on a 219 to 212 vote strictly along partisan lines. What this actually looks more like is; "Washington to America; drop dead!" There is no doubt that this legislation will touch the lives of each and every American citizen; mandating benefits for approximately 10% of the population at the expense of the other 90%. If this is the future of change; I'll pass.
A long road remains to be traveled before this entitlement is secured. Over half the states have already passed legislation making it illegal for the government to mandate that their citizens purchase health care insurance. There is also the unavoidable constitutional challenge. Never before in the history of the US has Congress mandated, under penalty of law, that each person in the country be required to purchase anything. And before any of you deep thinkers start with the "They make us but car insurance" line; no they don't. You have to buy car insurance if you want to drive, no one has ever said you must buy insurance because you exist. Although that may soon be the new requirement in order to be born in the first place.
Doctor: "You've already secured a health care policy for your, as yet, to be born child haven't you?
Prospective father: "Well no. It's really kind of expensive and I am only 20 years old so I'm under my parent's policy. I just started working and don't have a lot of money."
Doctor: Well, we can't allow this to happen. Nurse bring the vacuum!"
When asked to reference the specific portion of the Constitution that granted the Congress the power to mandate such a purchase, Nancy Pelosi's response was "Are you kidding me?" No Congresswoman we are not.
Likewise, Congress never would explain why they decided to ignore such decided, vocal, public outcry against this takeover of a sixth of the economy. The complaints actually began in August of 2009. People of all political persuasions packed town hall style meeting across the country to make their voices heard. So negative was the outcry that the Senate Majority Leader kept the Senate in session over Christmas in order to pass the senate version of health care prior to allowing his people to return to their districts for holiday. A blatant effort to ensure public opinion wouldn't be any influence in deciding the fate of the entire American health care system. God forbid the public have any say in this.
One might reasonably ask why elected representatives, who are elected to actually represent their constituents (hence the name elected representative) would deliberately ignore public input. Well, this time public input didn't agree with the desired outcome that a more important group desired; namely themselves. In retrospect the president's quote; " We proved that this government – a government of the people and by the people – still works for the people." seems extremely disingenuous.
Many on both sides of this issue are still wondering why this fourteen month long slog to this point? The answer is that it took every bit of those fourteen months for both legislative houses of the federal government to build up the chutzpa to ignore the opinion of the American public. Chutzpa the President, the Speaker, and the Majority Leader already possess in abundance.
It is important to remember this was a test case in more ways than one. On the surface there were two former limitations of government being pressed. Can we fundamentally rewrite the contract between the American people and the state; and can we do this without the least regard for how those citizens may actually feel about it? The answer to both is apparently; a resounding yes.
Unlike immigration amnesty, which was roundly defeated in 2008 by a vocal majority of the American people jamming phone lines and crashing email servers in Washington with their protests; this time while the phones rang and the servers crashed due to traffic loads, and the House said "Nuts" to the American people and shoved it our collective nether regions anyway: And then patted each other on the back for doing so. I was watching the final vote. Afterwards I felt as if I needed a shower.
Snubbing your constituents may come with a price, but it's a price they may not have to pay until November. My guess there is a new strategy being hatched in Washington. A strategy in which elected representatives may willfully ignore their constituents, do as they please, and pay no price at the ballot box next November. All they have to do is keep ignoring the American people.
I mentioned amnesty in the prior paragraph. Hubris, like murder, gets easier each time it is practiced. I can hear congressmen and senators saying even now; "Ya' know it's not hard, ignoring those idiots back in the district. We should have thought of this a long time ago. Maybe we should take another swing at this amnesty thing? My district is Republican plus eight right now. I'll bet that six or seven thousand 'new' citizens who could be reminded where their recently granted citizenship, with all the benefits citizenship entails, came from would be grateful enough to return me to office in November."
The next jihad, my friends, is amnesty. Obama Akbar!
Did they really ‘ignore’ the American people, Mr. Wavering? After all, President Obama campaigned on a platform that included health care reform. In fact, he made a pretty big point of it, and I think his proposals were actually more ‘progressive’ than what they ended up with. He, and the Democrats, swept into power with a big, fat majority in both houses. He’s pretty much just doing what he said he would do, isn’t he? Elections have consequences, guys. America elected him, his party, and his general governing philosophy, decisively.
HCR is not really all that unpopular, even now. We could play ‘dueling polls’, but I don’t think the polling supports this apparent view that BHO has rammed something deeply unpopular down the throats of an unwilling public. I personally think you guys mistake the INTENSITY of the opposition for its actual extent and depth.
Oz
Ozzie, what polls are you looking at? I haven’t been able to find a single one, unless of course there is one that only polls deadbeats that would turn up positive because it is “like Christmas, all I have to do is pay the copay”.
Rest assured that this issue will not die and the Ds will be out in November. Unfortunately most of the Rs are just Ds in disguise so the socialism will continue to grow until the country finally disolves into civil conflict and balkanizes into Mexico, South, Mid-West, and the least likely to succeed North-East since it has no manufacturing and loads of folks with their hands out instead of having workers.
Things will be tough for Ds as the full bill is read and the multiple taxes, mandates, and gifts for votes finally are exposed.
Hmmmm. How to respond?
Apparently they did. “Americans’ views of President Obama are the most negative since Obama took office last year — 46% approve and 48% disapprove in the latest Gallup Daily three-day average. Meanwhile, Congress’ 16% approval rating is just two points above its all-time low. Meanwhile Americans are closely divided over healthcare reform with (49%) calling the bill “a good thing” and (40%) calling it “a bad thing” (40%).”
Gee; I wonder if that 49% is the same 49% that never pay taxes. Just a thought.
http://www.gallup.com/tag/Congress.aspx
Ozzie, what polls are you looking at?
These, for a few. The first is the Nate Silver thing that got a lot of play early in the year, showing that a lot of the opposition to HCR is from the Left (ie, it didn’t go far enough). The other polls demonstrate the shift toward the positive since it passed.
Please note: I don’t use polls to support my positions. I only use them to refute it when people (such as a lot of folks on IC) claim that ‘America’ is against this or that.
Personally, I don’t think opinion polls on complex social policies are worth a bucket of warm spit.
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2009/12/in-polls-much-opposition-to-health-care.html
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2010/03/are-democrats-better-off-for-having.html
http://www.gallup.com/poll/113980/Gallup-Daily-Obama-Job-Approval.aspx
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2010-03-23-health-poll-favorable_N.htm
http://www.pollster.com/blogs/rising_tide_for_hcr_especially.php
Gee; I wonder if that 49% is the same 49% that never pay taxes. Just a thought.
Good question. Any evidence for your assertion?
Oz
Ozzie,
It was speculation, not an assertion. Speculation contains a question, assertion carries an exclamation. Let’s attempt a little accuracy here, shall we?
While I have no direct evidence in hand that would prove such a question. Having said that; conventional wisdom is that there is a significant portion of the American population that fervently believes that the government should be in the business of directly ‘caring’ for its charges.
There are several liberal media pundits that have cheered health care reform as finally establishing the right to health care. While we know that is not what happened here (the bill didn’t alter the fabric of the Constitution, only the country) it is reasonable to presume that those in favor of the legislation would be those who stand to reap the greatest benefit (i.e. the greatest possible advantage for the least possible input).
So you could break the nation into four groups: Two of which (1 & 4) receive substantial advantage or benefit from the bill; and the one who gets hosed (2), and one (3) that remains unaffected.
1. The 49% who will receive heavily subsidized or (free) insurance.
2. The 40% who have coverage & know the bill does nothing to control costs or rates. This would include any business owner caught in the compliance mandate
3. The 10% of the4 uber-rich that probably pay cash and always have because they can afford it.
4. The group that gains the largest advantage under the bill; namely the politicians and bureaucrats who now possess the ability to, through regulation, control literally each and every aspect of each subsidized citizen’s life.
Man, how do democrats keep missing those pesky rich? They’re the ones ya’ll really want to grind into the ground; aren’t they?
Regarding taxes; tax receipts break down as follows;
Top 1% – 40.42% of taxes paid
Top 5% – 60.63% of taxes paid (an additional 20.21%)
Top 10% – 71.22% of taxes paid (an additional 10.59%)
Top 25% – 86.59% of taxes paid (an additional 15.37%)
Top 50% – 97.11% of taxes paid (an additional 10.52%)
Bottom 50% – 2.89% of taxes paid.
http://www.ntu.org/tax-basics/who-pays-income-taxes.html
The percentage of persons benefiting the most from income taxes while paying the least; is within one percentage point of the people quoted in the Gallup poll that also overwhelmingly favor health care legislation. As I said, speculation; but reasonable speculation nonetheless.
An interesting aside here: Just because you have insurance doesn’t guarantee your ability to take advantage of it. For those of us that have insurance, co-pays are the cost of doing business. For instance, I have insurance, but an emergency room visit is a $100 deductible. The last time we had to go (my wife badly cut her finger) we presented our insurance card during triage, and the very next question was will that be cash, check, or charge? Because hospitals are required to treat all who show up and the majority have no money, they get money from the insured up front.
My wife was admitted to the hospital two years ago. This admission ultimately required surgery. The ‘out-of-pocket’ costs were a $250 admission charge and $2,500 in additional expenses. My insurance pays 80% and I pay 20%. My ‘out-of-pocket’ limit is $2,500; so I pay that cost. We began this evolution in the emergency room also. The emergency room fee was folded into the admission fee. My wife’s $43,000 hospital bill did cost me a total of $2,750.
So, riddle me this? If a person mismanages their personal income, of is so lacking in job skills that they cannot earn enough to purchase insurance outright; how is subsidizing them going to help?
Imagine the look on some ‘public uterus’ face when she marches into the emergency room like Alexander into Persia and says; “My child has the sniffles and I have insurance.” and presents her card whereupon the triage nurse tappy-taps her computer and says; “That’ll be a hundred bucks sister!”
“But all I’ve got is a twenty and I was going to buy beer on the way home!”
Having insurance prior to the passage of the bill was possessing unspoken proof of ‘ability to pay’. Subsidizing that purchase does nothing for that person accept guarantee he or she will be subject to yet another collection agency call. Oh, and insurance companies are well within their rights to refuse to settle accounts if the insuree refuses to pay the deductible.
So now we’re left with only one group that gains significant advantage from this legislation; the bureaucrats. Yes sir, universal health insurance! I can’t wait to hear the next round of sob stories from the left over this travesty! There, that was an assertion.
Mr Wavering corrects me:
It was speculation, not an assertion
Fine, Bill, we’ll split the difference and call it an ‘insinuation’. Howzzat work for ya?
Bottom 50% – 2.89% of taxes paid.
The percentage of persons benefiting the most from income taxes while paying the least; is within one percentage point of the people quoted in the Gallup poll that also overwhelmingly favor health care legislation. As I said, speculation; but reasonable speculation nonetheless.
and
So now we’re left with only one group that gains significant advantage from this legislation; the bureaucrats.
Your reasoning is specious on so many levels I have run out of fingers and toes to count them. I disagree with something in just about every sentence you wrote.
I have no intention of doing a line-by-line rebuttal, however. Just didn’t want you to think your reply was so brilliant that it left me unable to respond. I’ve found that these little arguments can become a major drain on my time, so I’m trying to rein myself in a bit.
Oz
Ozzie,
“I have no intention of doing a line-by-line rebuttal…” It is, of course, your choice to ‘proclaim’ any argument as unfounded or inaccurate. This is the United States (for now) and anyone may make up such an assertion; or is the word of the day “insinuation”?
Although my education included 12 years of Catholic schooling I’ve never run across a case where the mere issuance of disagreement has never equaled success in a debate. While I can well appreciate your commitment to conservation, I feel as if you’ve left me no choice but to take my victory and go.
As always; your friend,
Bill
Mr. Wavering mischaracterizes my criticism, slightly:
It is, of course, your choice to ‘proclaim’ any argument as unfounded or inaccurate
“Specious”, actually. Although there is overlap, the shades of meaning are important to me.
But yes, that quibble aside, you are correct, sir: I intend to declare your entire post ‘specious’, and then simply leave.
That is my plan.
Oz
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