President Obama and congressional Democrats won a political victory Sunday evening by passing healthcare reform legislation by a vote of 219 - 212. As they say in politics, it's all about winning, whether the win is done via a bipartisan manner or not, as long as legislation is passed on a majority vote, then it's a win.
Congratulations to the Democrats! They won without a single republican vote and 34 Democrats voting against their own party's measure.
That said, this win is, in reality, a Pyrrhic victory for the Democrats for several reasons.
One, the simple House majority vote was not that large. They won by four votes, or a bare minimum. Four votes! What does that say about this legislation? That it's pretty much a bad bill that an entire opposition party could not support, unlike, say, the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s where republicans joined non-Southern Democrats to say, hey, enough!
Two, the federal taxation that is going to have to be collected from all those who work will increase. There is no free lunch folks. Somebody has to pay for Congress's mess!
Three, the Democrats say this reform will pay for itself, but let's be real. When President Bush lobbied the congress in 2003 to pass the Prescription Drug bill, he told us the bill would cost over $400B over ten years. The figure more than doubled three years after passage, and will continue to increase.
Think the real cost Speaker Pelosi mentioned, of $940B, is the actual cost to insure the 30 million uninsured beginning in 2014? This is not taking into account the "Cornhusker" deals offered to members for their votes. It also does not take into account future amendments to put back the cuts into Medicare/Medicaid that Pelosi put in, in order to get the Congressional Budget Office's thumbs up as a deficit reducer.
Four, if anyone thinks this is the end of the healthcare reform debate, guess again. What the Democrats did Sunday evening was merely the beginning of the end of private healthcare insurance as we know it.
For liberal Democrats, a true healthcare victory is one in which the federal government provides universal healthcare coverage for all Americans modelled after the European nationalized healthcare system.
As Cong. Dennis Kucinich (D-OH) explained on National Public Radio shortly after his "yes" vote, the passage opens the door for further government expansion into healthcare, and ultimately, universal healthcare.
This legislation, it is said, will cover 30 million uninsured Americans. However, as I recall during the Bush years, Democrats were lamenting the 47 million uninsured. What's happened to the 17 million uninsured? Who are they, and why weren't they covered by this Democrat-led bill?
The answer is simple.
Thinking well into the future, the Democrats' game plan is to launch another endeavor to Insure Those Left Behind. This new political effort will allow the Democrats to use this new uninsured group (perhaps a collection of illegal aliens) as a battle-cry against, to use Pelosi's language, the mean-spirited and evil GOP in 2012.
For millions of Americans who were let down the night of March 21, 2010, November cannot come any sooner.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
It's just the beginning. Congressional Democrats are lying when they say this bill will CUT the deficit. It's unrealistic. The CBO were crunching numbers based on projection and gimmicks and speculated tax revenue, without sleep, hours into the night, no one believes any of this nonsense. As far as I'm concerned, those making these decisions, their days are numbered, and because they lie and cheat, they are illegitimate.
ReplyDelete