Isn’t democracy great? Tuesday night’s special election for the Massachusetts Senate seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy and JFK before him was a perfect lesson in American democracy: citizens fed up with their elected leaders forced a change. Tocqueville is smiling in his grave.
Scott Brown’s stunning defeat over Martha Coakley is overall an indictment of President Obama’s ruling, specifically the current health care proposals in Congress. Many pundits are quick to blame Coakley’s ineptness and gaffes (calling Curt Shilling a Yankees fan was surely ill-advised) for her loss, but it was the Democratic Party and its current policies which were really the sticking point.
The People’s Republic of Massachusetts is the bluest of blue states, a bastion of the Democratic Party. This election was in no way a fluke, it was unequivocally about regular Americans’ decisions that the current health care proposal would do more harm than good. And they’re right.
No political doublespeak, maneuvering nor outright lies, like those regularly perpetrated by New York Times columnist Paul Krugman, can honestly disprove the fact that the current legislation—both the Senate and House versions—is a fiscal nightmare. This legislative behemoth would make our national deficit skyrocket, while greatly expanding government.
In order to get the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office to score the total cost of the bill below $900 billion for its first ten years, and a net break-even proposition, the many deficit raising spending provisions do not take effect until the fifth year, while all the new taxes start immediately! Essentially all of the insurance reforms and spending, such as Medicaid expansion, federal subsidies for coverage, the individual mandate to purchase health insurance and the corresponding employer mandate to provide it, would not start for four years. Yet, the bill calls for immediate drastic cuts in Medicare (which most likely will never happen), and additional taxes on insurance companies, wealthy Americans (not smart during an economic recession) and “Cadillac” plans, though excluding the latter for one of the Democrats’ most loyal constituencies—union members.
There’s simply no way to get around this math. In addition, the backroom deals—like those that spared union members’ plans and Ben Nelson’s deal for Nebraskans—undermine President Obama’s pledge for a new era of openness and an end to special interests. The hypocrisy stinks.
In the end, these regular citizens of Massachusetts were right to vote for Brown, thus effectively killing this health care bill. They know best—after Massachusetts’s similar 2006 health care plan, premiums have skyrocketed in the state.
The Democrats were elected to clean up Washington after years of Republican mismanagement, but the dogs have become the pigs (a la “Animal Farm”).
I want, just as all Americans should, President Obama to be a successful president. Hopefully this election will serve as a wakeup call as the 1994 midterm elections were to President Clinton. He learned that a successful president rules from the center, not the far left nor the far right, and actively “finds common ground,” to use candidate Obama’s phrase, to work with Republicans and pass meaningful legislation.
Our country has too many problems, like jobs for one, for there to be fierce partisan gridlock in Washington. Everyone agrees that our health care system badly needs reform, but Democrats need to work with Republicans and not let far leftist ideologues, who prefer the decadent model of a European welfare state, control the debate. Let’s hope President Obama gets the message. Now that’s change I can believe in.
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