Health care bill passes (but I may never eat sausage again).
March 22, 2010

 
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Hooray! History was made Sunday night as the House passed the (ugly) Senate health care reform bill, as well as the “Reconciliation” bill to strip out all the ugly stuff. The first bill goes to President Obama to sign while the Reconciliation bill goes back to the Senate for them to agree to the changes made to their bill (Majority leader Reid says they have the votes).

I tried to watch the House proceedings all afternoon. I really did. But it was so noxious, I had to keep turning it off. This, coming from a guy that watches and reports on “Fox news Sunday” every week for “Crooks & Liars“. They describe watching the Democratic process “like watching sausage being made”… ie: don’t watch if you don’t want to be turned off from ever eating sausage again (fortunately for us, most sausage isn’t made that way any more). But to call the House debate “sickening” is like calling the Ebolla virus “a bad case of the sniffles”.

If Congress hadn’t been debating Health Care Reform (HCR) for over a year now, one might think from watching that the entire debate started this morning. Every… Single… Republican talking point that has been asked and answered a dozen times over was repeated and asserted as gospel all afternoon: “this bill is going to bankrupt the country”, “fund abortions”, and that “the majority of Americans are against this bill”. Well, no, this bill will NOT “bankrupt the country”. The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office reported that it will CUT the deficit by $1.2Trillion dollars over the next ten years. Republicans love to quote the CBO when it says something they like. But when it doesn’t, suddenly everyone at the CBO are a bunch of morons that can’t tell when “the Democrat Party” is putting one over on them.

Karl Rove argued with former Obama campaign manager David Plouffe on ABC’s “This Week” Sunday morning and kept comparing the HCR bill to “a Bernie Madoff Ponzi Scheme”. Funny that, because Madoff was a creation of DEREGULATED PRIVATE ENTERPRISE… the same people Rove & Company want to turn your health care over to. So who would you rather have in charge of your health care? The people that have run Social Security successfully for 70+ years and Medicare for 40+, or Wall Street?

Second point… the bill “will fund abortions”. Total nonsense. Not only does the bill go to great lengths to deny women the right to purchase abortion coverage even if she pays with her own money, but the “loophole” pro-lifers opposed was the fact “poor people receiving government assistance to buy insurance… even though they’d be forbidden from buying abortion coverage with that money… they could still purchase insurance from a company that DOES cover abortion for other clients, and therefor, tax dollars would (in theory) be going to “fund abortions”. Yes, they really are THAT obsessed with “abortion coverage”… or at least, when it comes to tax dollars. Apparently, state-level GOP Parties has no problem with its OWN insurance covering abortion for its staff members. The hypocrisy is palpable.

And lastly, that “the majority of Americans are against health care reform”. Nonsense. There are some polls stating that more people oppose “this particular” bill, but not reform in general. In fact, if you break those “No” votes down, you’ll find many actually wanted a STRONGER bill, preferably something that includes a “Public Option”. But Republicans have been citing ALL the opposition to this bill as a consensus against ALL health care reform in general. And that’s just not true. Obama won the election campaigning on health care reform. TEN Bush states fell his way, giving him a huge mandate. To try and argue now that all those people “didn’t want health care reform” when they voted for him is laughable.

One last thought before I finally turn in for the night after such an exhausting day… AFTER the Senate bill passed the house, and AFTER Republicans spent ALL AFTERNOON complaining about the unamended Senate bill, with its “Corn-husker Kickback”, “Louisiana Purchase”, and whatever other cutesy name they came up for the special deals in the Senate bill, EVERY SINGLE REPUBLICAN then voted AGAINST the Reconciliation bill that strips out most of those “special deals”. Hey guys, I get that you don’t like the Senate bill, but once it had passed, why would you vote against stripping out all the things you complained about all afternoon??? If you ever needed proof of Republican obstructionism simply for the sake of obstructing Democrats… even when it is in their own best interest to go along with them, “Reconciliation” was the vote.

Sorry for the dearth of links. I will try to follow up after the Senate vote on Wednesday.
 

 

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March 22, 2010 · Admin Mugsy · 2 Comments - Add
Posted in: General, Healthcare, Politics

2 Responses

  1. Grant in Texas - March 22, 2010

    GOP apparatchik Elisabeth Hasselbeck had her new Monday morning RNC talking points down pat on “The View” today. It’s still that American people didn’t want this bill and that it only passed by seven votes due to the “Bullied, Bribed, and Bought” Democrats who voted “yea”. Watch for these “3-B’s” replace “RAMMING” for awhile.

    Seems this meme is nothing new as didn’t this better describe Bush’s “Coalition of the Willing” to join the attack on Iraq, so another “something borrowed”?

  2. Grant in Texas - March 22, 2010

    I see where our Republican Texas Attorney General wasted few minutes initiating a law suit to overturn the new legislation. Of course A.G. Greg Abbott, a paraplegic due to a falling tree, has had some big health care costs of his own and but has good STATE-PAID health-care. Abbott has a typical Republican attitude….”I got mine…to hell with everyone else!”

    http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/APStories/stories/D9EJQ7100.html

    Texas teabaggers…..partying like it is 1861!

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