So they finally did it. After a year of debates, tea parties, special elections, name-calling and general Beltway folly, the Democrats passed their health care bill. What a calamity.
The Obama Administration and its media allies are still celebrating the fiscal responsibility of this behemoth bill. Am I missing something? The premise that by providing 30 million more Americans with health care will lower costs and reduce the deficit is absurd. The reason the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office priced the bill below one trillion dollars is because it counts 10 years of taxes, with only 6 years of funding programs. In addition, it counts $53 billion of social security cuts and $500 billion of medicare cuts twice. This is not partisan spin; these are simple facts. A second grader with a crayon could see right through this pretzel logic. This is Bernie Madoff accounting.
The real reason this bill passed was because of the many backroom deals and political bribes. In order for it to pass in the Senate, we were treated to the Nebraska and Florida kickbacks and the exemption of union members’ “Cadillac” plans. While in the House, when the day before the vote and Nancy Pelosi was a few votes short, she bought off several members of Congress. For example: Tennessee Rep. Bart Gordon with $100 million in extra Medicaid money for his state, Florida Rep. Suzanne Kosmas with more money for the Kennedy Space Center which falls in her district, and California Rep. Jim Costa by increasing water supplies to his district. In the end, Pelosi gave 17 states additional Medicare money.
This is not “change.” This is not “a new era of bipartisanship.” This is back room, cigar smoking, Chicago politics. I am absolutely disgusted.
Most repulsive of all was Nancy Pelosi walking arm-in-arm with civil-right’s legend John Lewis, in order to invoke the passage of the landmark Civil Rights Bill in 1964, which was passed with broad support in both parties. What a cynical perversion of history, implying that those who oppose this legislation are like those who opposed racial equality.
This bill is really about generating a European-style welfare state, where the central government subsidizes up to 60% of health care for its citizens. The fiscal responsibility scheme was a gimmick, as we will all see in the coming years. The only way to pay for the bill is through raising taxes, probably through a national VAT tax, which is standard in Europe. Raising taxes is the only way to sustain such an expensive entitlement program, as Democratic Senator Dick Durban recently admitted. In the midst of an economic turndown, you don’t need a PhD in economics to know that this is not smart. Transforming our country into a high-taxing welfare state is contrarian to the essence of the American ideal: a land where freedom and individualism has spurred unprecedented entrepreneurship and economic growth, which greatly contrasts with Europe. This is the American dream, and I fear these days might be over.
I voted for Barack Obama because I had the, perhaps naïve, hope that he would unite our country after years of bitter partisanship. But the only bipartisan aspect about this bill was in its opposition, with 34 Democrats joining all 178 Republicans in the House.
The Republicans have many constructive ideas about controlling health care costs such as tort reform or allowing consumers to purchase insurance across state lines, although they should be criticized for not trying to enact these reforms when they controlled Washington. However, they were effectively shut out of the debate—locked out of the backrooms where far-left Democrats were secretly crafting this legislation. More telling, President Obama did not hold a single meeting with Republican leaders between last March 5th, 2009 and February 26th of this year.
In the end, the issue at hand is not about reforming the broken health care system with its rising costs as I, like the majority of Americans, want reform but in a fiscally responsible manner; the problem is this monstrosity of a bill that will bankrupt our country, suppress economic growth and jeopardize America’s preeminent standing in the world. This is not the change that this once-Obama supporter was hoping for.
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