Dear liberal friends,
According to news reports, health care is on its way to passage. Or, at least, to a successful cloture motion, potentially on Christmas Eve. All of this would seem to be a great victory for liberals. But I must ask, honestly, at what cost? Is it worth your integrity and your soul to get legislation passed?
All along this process, the primary method to promote health care has been bald-faced lies and deception. Any person over the age of 5 knows this. You can’t SAVE money by insuring millions more people. You can’t do cost control without rationing. You can’t lower premiums by adding new mandates and requiring insurers to issue policies to all comers, even those who wait until they are already sick. You can’t introduce a “public option” with infinite funds and not have it crowd out private care. You can’t add new penalties and taxes and not hurt the economy, not to mention breaking Obama’s promise to not raise taxes on the middle and lower classes. All of these things, and more, are knowing, willing falsehoods.
Add to this the disgraceful willingness of legislators to bribe, threaten, and smear in order to get the magic 60 votes. It was already well-known that Mary Landrieu (D-LA) was “encouraged” by the so-called “Louisiana Purchase,” the adding of hundreds of millions in funding specifically targeted for New Orleans. Now it is clear that Ben Nelson (D-NE) was bought off in one of the most blatant and shameful instances of political payoffs, a most likely unconstitutional exception of Nebraska to get special Medicare funding. Who knows what else happened in the top-secret, closed-door meetings of exclusively Democrats held to cobble this thing together.
And all of this maneuvering, cheating, and dirtiness to pass a massive, complex piece of social and economic legislation making over one-sixth of the US economy on a politically-motivated timetable. All of this to get a massive new entitlement out the door, in order to satisfy the president’s domestic agenda, regardless of whether it is good law, good policy, or even coherent. All of this because the White House stated, without any logical backing, that Congress needed to “pass something” rather than nothing, no matter what it looked like. Even liberals know this is not good law – it will most likely exacerbate problems, and create entire new ones. It is the first time in history something like this has been passed against widespread public disapproval, without a single ounce of bipartisanship. And while surely that second part is part political calculation, the fact that Republicans were excluded from every part of this and that even “moderates” like Snowe were repulsed says a lot about this process.
So I ask this of my liberal friends: is this the “change you believed in”? Is this a new era of bipartisan, open, accountable government? Or is this the same old political games, ratcheted up to entirely new levels? Is this the way that progressives govern? Are you bothered at all by the behavior of your leaders? If you still have your soul, then I’d say you must be. If not, you have truly become the living, breathing epitome of what is wrong with our country.
Sincerely,
Brian