Apparently the die is cast in the Senate, and it appears by Christmas they’ll pass a health care bill that no sane person wants. (Obviously my friends over at Progressive Delmarva are probably jumping for joy.) But how are they getting it passed? Good old pork and special interest politics.
If the 2,074 page original bill wasn’t good enough, how about 373 more pages dumped on an unsuspecting public in the middle of the night by Harry Reid and company? It features early Christmas presents like the federal government picking up the tab for Medicaid expansion in the state of Nebraska (to buy Sen. Ben Nelson’s vote) and a new university hospital in Connecticut for Sen. Chris Dodd – who’s up for re-election next year – courtesy of you and I. Makes you wonder whether any goodies were placed in the bill for Maryland and Delaware – probably not because our Senators are Democrat hacks who swallowed the Kool-Aid early and were already behind this measure.
And it’s probable that the final product will look more like the Senate bill than the House one because changing too much supposedly risks that precious 60-vote majority in the Senate – at least that’s the conventional wisdom.
But let’s face facts here – the House has plenty of votes to spare on the Democratic side so they can afford to lose a few ‘Blue Dogs’ along the way. They will fall in line with the Senate version – some will do it kicking and screaming, but it will be done. Democrats face the same dilemma that conservative Republicans faced with President Bush when he wanted budget-busting entitlements in that it’s hard to go against the titular leader of your party even if you don’t agree with him. And Bush didn’t play Chicago-style politics like Obama and Rahm Emanuel do.
So it’s likely that 2010 will dawn with the passage of this so-called major achievement, for which I’m sure historians will someday see as another milestone on a once-great republic’s road to ruin. Democrats and the CBO can claim this bill will be “deficit-neutral” all they want but common practice in Washington is throwing that out the window – after all, now we’re paying one state’s Medicaid, another state’s hospital, and assorted other bribes for affirmative votes.
It tells me that the only principle Senate Democrats have is the principle of selling out taxpayers to buy votes. After all, they don’t have to live with the system they’ll create.
What Nelson did was unconscionable. They should pass a law against it. Boy, that last sentence I just typed really shows my ignorance.