From town halls last summer at which tough questions got lawmakers’ backs up right through the middle-of-the-night votes on thousand-page excrescences largely unread and scarcely comprehended, the directive from congressional leaders has been to ignore voters, ignore polls, ignore qualms and questions: Just pass something.
The House passed one version of Obamacare and the Senate a markedly different one. That usually means a conference committee. This time, the Democratic leaders who own Congress are skipping the usual open process and embracing a so-called “ping pong” of closed-door bargaining designed to cut out not merely Republicans but even Democrats who worry too much about what’s in the sausage.
This has the political left simmering: Liberals fear that their dearest wish, a government-run option, won’t survive. But the doors are closed precisely to enable unsavory compromises that preserve the scant margins by which the bill can pass. They’re closed to keep the priorities of passionate voters from coming into play. We out here are distractions.
This is happening on legislation that will profoundly, permanently change our relationship to government. It’s reasonable to ask that a vast expansion of Washington’s power be based on more than one-vote margins and secret deals, just as it would be reasonable for a senator to, sometime in three months, talk to a concerned citizen as promised.
This is not the season for reason, however. These are the days of political will. Democracy, constituents – all that just gets in the way.
The Founders spin in their graves.
If this keeps up, two or more of the other three boxes™ are going to come into play before this is over.
60 votes in the Senate is not a “scant majority” it is a supermajority, by definition.
At the end of the day, America is a democracy. In a democracy, the majority gets to pass the laws.
As the title says, “If they wanted your opinion, they would ask”. I see Gerrib is here to drive that point home. “Stuff it, they won.”
They won’t want our opinions next November either, but they’ll get it.
I’ve always though that Obama chose Biden for life insurance. No one would be crazy enough to make the “gaff-machine” president by taking out Obama. Of course, the thought of someone taking out both Obama and Biden to make Pelosi president is even more frightening!
Who is in line after Pelosi?
President pro tempore of the Senate. Robert Byrd.
After Pelosi? Robert Byrd. Followed by Hillary Clinton and Timothy Geithner.
Reads like a gang of criminals that should be populating a cell block, not the halls of government.
Yes, most definitely. Next to the murderers and rapists. Hell, I say we bypass the rule of law and just imprison the whole list of them right now.
At the end of the day, America is a democracy. In a democracy, the majority gets to pass the laws and bribe whoever they need to make it happen.
There, fixed it for ya.
Chris says…
60 votes in the Senate is not a “scant majority” it is a supermajority, by definition.
At the end of the day, America is a democracy. In a democracy, the majority gets to pass the laws.
How sweet. There is no supermajority of constituents that want what the administration is passing. In some cases, the popular vote is NAY, yet the reps vote for it. We live in a representative republic which makes it easier for a corrupt administration to bribe or threaten to get their way. Don’t tell us the majority wants Obamacare, because we don’t. There is a supermajority of scared and/or corrupt representatives that dare not go against der fuhrer or his czars. That will be corrected later this year.
It’s high time the legislators gave themselves the same “fast-track authority” that is so highly prized by Presidents when they want trade bills passed. We’ll see if the complete sausage is sufficient to pass muster and is worth the political cost of making it in secret.
Adams never would have stood for other legislators having secret discussions–he would have stood carefully on the other side of Statuary Hall (fka the House Chamber) and listen in.
The Founders spin in their graves.
If Adams is spinning in his grave, it’s spinning the dial of a receiver for a listening device so he can hear the whispered secrets better.
I don’t see the Constitution in your formulation. Funny thing about a Constitution, it seems to include things majorities don’t get to do.
McGehee – health care doesn’t appear to me to be unconstitutional. If the Supreme Court disagrees, I’m sure we’ll hear about it.
Sam Dinkins – you do realize that the Constitution was written in secret? Nobody knew what was going on until a final draft was sent out for ratification.
Bill Maron – cutting special deals for certain states to get a bill passed has been done since the Republic was founded. A special deal for small states is how we got the Senate in the first place.
Look, I’m sorry this group is upset. I really am. (I disagree with what this group wants to do, but that’s a different issue.) However, in a democracy, losing multiple elections have consequences. You don’t like it – get your candidates elected.
The heart of the problem: Check out the poll data at http://www.gallup.com/poll/124958/Conservatives-Finish-2009-No-1-Ideological-Group.aspx. For the 18 years the data covers, the US population has consistantly self-identified as around 40% conservative, 40% moderate, and 20% liberal (I think it’s safe to assume the modern American left-progressive definition) with minor variations.
Yet these left-liberals since the electoral “perfect storm” of 2008 control the White House and both houses of Congress, between a (deserved) revolt against the Republicans, a left-progressive running as a centrist convincingly enough to fool enough centrist voters, and the Congressional seniority system with the safest long-term Dem districts being the leftmost. (Their long-term program of embedding their people within the system dug in deeper than a deer tick has also contributed. Viz the MSM’s refusal to vet The One…)
So the left-liberal 20% minority are now trying to impose radical (and designed to be irreversible) change on the other 80% of the country. Hardly democracy; that’s a much better description for the growing reaction. But assume the liberals know perfectly well that they’re a minority only temporarily in control. Add in their core beliefs that their program is best for the country and that their ends justify whatever means come to hand. In this context their current behavior is perfectly predictable.
Attempts to shame them for this anti-democratic behavior are worthwhile, in that such may peel off enough centrists to slow them down. But don’t expect the core actors in this to be affected in the slightest – their ideology tells them their actions are virtuous; they see y’all as children complaining that the medicine tastes bad. “Shut up and swallow, kid” is what goes through their minds when they hear you.
The long-term cure is going to involve painful structural change. 20% minorities convinced they know better than the rest of us have no business ending up running the country.
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.
When the US has no more takers for its debt, the cannibal pot will burst. It will not be pretty. It will be every man for himself.
Henry Vanderbilt – if a pollster asked me what I self-identify as, I would say “moderate.” I’m only a liberal by the hard-right standards of this blog. Obama is only a liberal by the standards of this blog – which is why various liberal and progressive groups are sniping at him.
Re: Rand’s comment that the Founding Fathers would be spinning in their graves.
As much as I would agree with his distaste for the legislative processes currently imposed by Madame Pelosi, I believe that the Declaration and the BOR were drafted, completed and passed with a minimum of discussion or debate outside of the Continental congress. The finished products were then given to the States for Ratification.
Just nit-picking. The process is Wrong, and I too hope it bites them where it hurts in November.
Gerrib says: “At the end of the day, America is a democracy. In a democracy, the majority gets to pass the laws.”
No, at the end of the day, America is a Republic. The founders knew that democracies never work because they result in “tyranny of the majority” i.e. mob rule. That’s why we have a system of checks and balances. You seem to be operating under the same delusion that Pelosi, Reid, and The One are, that if you “have the votes” anything goes. Yes, they will probably pass the law. Yes, that’s because “they won we lost.” But never has the “loyal opposition” been completely shut out of the debate. Let’s hope that the remaining constitutional check in the power equation quickly ends or delays this travesty so that the ultimate check (The People) get a chance to go back to the polling booth.
Actually, we have a “representative democracy” which is where the people (demos) elect representatives who then govern. Nor has the loyal opposition been shut out of the debate. Great pains were taken to bring them into the debate (Baucus’ “Gang of Six,” the extensive courting of Maine’s Senators) but in the end, the opposition decided to entirely obstruct progress. In fact, the Senate votes on the week of Christmas were attempts to end perpetual debate, AKA filibusters, launched by the opposition.
There is simply nothing un-democratic, un-republican or illegal in the way that the health care bill has progressed through the Congress. You may not like the end result, but it was achieved via a fair fight.
This is not the season for reason, however.
This, in opposition to a bill that was voted for by Senators representing 65% of the U.S. population? Do you really think that 35% of the country should have absolute veto power?
Thanks Jim for adding disclaimers to your post.
Steve says:
Chris says:
The rub is that they’re bumping against the law of excluded middle. It’s as if Team A wishes to poison the food supply and Team B wishes to stop them. What’s the compromise? Half as much poison? No. That is why the Dems needed to wait until they had the slimmest majority possible to move this through.
Titus – providing health care for all Americans is the exact opposite of poisoning the food supply.
Do you really think that the Republicans couldn’t have gotten tort reform and / or allowing interstate competition in insurance if they’d been willing to actually vote for the final bill? Now they get neither.
In your opinion, but that’s another debate.
A long stream of alternating “L”s and “O”s is the correct answer to that question.
Titus – providing health care for all Americans is the exact opposite of poisoning the food supply.
Do you really think that the Republicans couldn’t have gotten tort reform and / or allowing interstate competition in insurance if they’d been willing to actually vote for the final bill? Now they get neither.
Chris, you have so many unquestioned assumptions in your belief system, I doubt rational debate is enough to cure your condition. For example, health care is already provided to all US residents. It may not be a great level of health care, but it is provided. The current bills are not about providing health care or even providing better health care. They’re about supposedly rich people paying for other peoples’ health care while a number of parties take a cut. There are many things to worry about here. First is whether this scheme will make the underlying problems worse. There’s no place for cost control except Medicare cuts and a number of things (which have been mentioned before) that make matters worse.
Second, your posture with respect to congressional politics is absurd. We simply don’t believe the Republicans would get a serious compromise from the Democrats since the latter only needs Republicans in order to provide blame protection for some Democrat members in sensitive seats. Malpractice reform and interstate competition aren’t Republican hobby horses, but merely good, simple ideas that this Congress chooses not to touch.
Finally, what’s in it for the Republicans? They might not regain control of Congress in 2010, but they’ll get a bunch of seats from this health care “reform”. If they compromise, what do they get, besides being booted from office?
As usual, your views and arguments are wholly unrealistic, have little substance, and chock full of pathological beliefs and slogans that make no sense to anyone who hasn’t already bought into the program.
What is this “health care” of which you speak? Does “health care” not already exist? Can it only come into existence if the government does it?
Your terminology betrays much about you.
“…cutting special deals for certain states to get a bill passed has been done since the Republic was founded.”
Tell me about a federal program one state’s citizens are exempt from and the rest have to pay, other than this one.
“Obama is only a liberal by the standards of this blog – which is why various liberal and progressive groups are sniping at him.”
I’m glad I wasn’t drinking when I read this. His 100% rating from NARAL, his embrace of Alinsky and teaching his principles, his “spread the wealth” comment all point to a very liberal politician. Progressives are sniping because they aren’t liberals. This presidency is SO Jimmy Carter 2.0
Chris, I’m going to cite the 10th amendment US Constitution, and ask you to quote the passage authorizing congress to pass this obamanation of a bill.
Consider this an open book exam.
health care doesn’t appear to me to be unconstitutional.
Of course health care isn’t unconstitutional. The Constitution grants everyone in the nation the right to purchase whatever health care they wish and can afford.
What’s unconstitutional, on various bases, is the legislative atrocity currently working its way through the digestive system of Congress, and the results (like those of other digestive processes) won’t be known until it emerges.
I’m only a liberal by the hard-right standards of this blog. Obama is only a liberal by the standards of this blog – which is why various liberal and progressive groups are sniping at him.
Neither of you are liberal by any sane definition of the word. I’m much more of a true liberal than either of you.
That’s why we have a system of checks and balances.
It’s not just the system of checks and balances. It’s also a constitution premised not on what the government can do for you, but what it cannot do to you.
Nor has the loyal opposition been shut out of the debate. Great pains were taken to bring them into the debate (Baucus’ “Gang of Six,” the extensive courting of Maine’s Senators) but in the end, the opposition decided to entirely obstruct progress. In fact, the Senate votes on the week of Christmas were attempts to end perpetual debate, AKA filibusters, launched by the opposition.
If this is what you think is “bi-partisanship,” or “reaching across the aisle,” it is lunacy. The “extensive courting of Maine’s Senators”? Was that some kind of a joke?
It’s hard to read things like this and not think that you’re nothing but a shill for Pelosi and Obama.
…providing health care for all Americans is the exact opposite of poisoning the food supply.
If that’s were all that the bill did, it might be true. Again, do you really expect intelligent people, with more than a sixth-grade education, to take this kind of argument seriously?
Chris, you have so many unquestioned assumptions in your belief system, I doubt rational debate is enough to cure your condition.
No kidding.
Extending Medicaid to the 7 million who reasonably want it (or even whatever the illegals and invincible twenty-year olds add to) wouldn’t cost anywhere near what this bill does. Nor would it take 2000×2 pages. A first-order estimate is 30 billion a year.
If that was the true goal (not the stated goal, but the true goal), this would have been over in March. The Maine sisters and a solid 5+ other Republicans would have laid down and just played dead saying “Well, what can we do.” That’s worst case. They might easily have played it up and had a vast majority vote for a simple solution along those lines.
But that isn’t the goal. The goal is fundamentally to be able to limit liberty by doing things to us “for our own good.” The number of ways “health care” interacts with life is essentially limitless. “Sorry, we no longer insure mountain climbing – it is too freaking dangerous for us to pay for, so stop trampling the rare flowers now. Now!” Ok, far more likely “Double cheeseburgers are proven harmful when you overdose on them, so …” Or “Driving is dangerous compared to buses, surcharge for driving.” Those are mere regulation changes at this point. You don’t need a new law. Think of the EPA’s potential plan to regulate carbon dioxide without the cover of any ‘cap and trade’ bill at all.
Seem crazed? Sure. But the bill has a “irrevocable” clause in it – requiring 61 Senators as the minimum on any vote to overturn it. And if you can’t revoke it, you argue over adding new clauses. Think: Income tax rules. Just think of the plausible insanity if the bible-thumpers wrote the clauses. A variety of homosexual behavior is arguably more risky. Tats are undeniably more risky than -no- tats. Piercings? Free love? Transgendered?
And it won’t be a matter for congress directly any more – they’re forming the regulatory agency. And there will be political appointees. So even when you do get a sane leader of the opposition, that doesn’t guarantee a sane appointee for every single political position. Holder, Holdren, Napolitano, Geithner – those are cabinet position. But the current head of Medicare isn’t a cabinet position – they’re under HHS.
Is it -possible- to run this arrangement sanely? Absolutely. But that fundamentally isn’t the goal. Otherwise we’d be back at adding a few million people to the medicaid rolls, and winning kudos.
We seem to be arguing the same points over and over again, so this will be my last comment on the thread.
PeterH: The Congress shall have Power To lay and collect Taxes, Duties, Imposts and Excises, to pay the Debts and provide for the common Defence and general Welfare of the United States (empahsis mine). BTW, the “must be uniform” part of that clause was repealed by the 16th Amendment.
Rand: providing a funding mechanism to pay for people’s health care is not unconstitutional. One could drop the requirement to buy insurance and just raise taxes while providing health insurance. Doing it in reverse as we are should also work.
For all – yes, “health care” is available to all. The issue is and has always been figuring out a way for those who can’t pay for care to be able to afford it. If not wanting to see my fellow citizens sleep in their cars overnight so they can receive health care is a problem, I am proud have that problem.
Al – you’ve taken the “slippery slope” argument to stupid and unsupportable extremes. We’ve had “socialized medicine” for years (Medicare, VA) and neither of those organizations have banned mountain-climbing in their covered groups.
If not wanting to see my fellow citizens sleep in their cars overnight so they can receive FREE health care is a problem, I am proud have that problem.
Fixed. You only make sense to people who drunk that kool aid. Health care is not free. Someone pays for that.
Let me add, that just about anywhere there’s free stuff given out, especially extremely valuable free stuff, there will a line. This says nothing about the state of health care except that it normally costs some group of people to get it.
Chris, then you’d be happy with Medicaid for all – and we’d have been done in March. If goal is eliminating the “sleeps in the car for operation” craziness, Medicaid for all should do the majority of the trick. Of course, it won’t do the entire trick because there will always be some uncovered procedure. No matter what we end up paying for, we won’t get Kennedy-care. No 24/7 bevy of nurses, 24/7 doctor, medical airlift to and from work – not freaking happening.
Of course that’s completely ridiculous. But it is to point out “There will be a line somewhere.” Please recognize at least that much. And any time there’s a line somewhere, there’s going to be someone who wants something on the other side of the damn line. Someone who has 100% paid up Obamacare, but decides to sell the house, or spend the housing allotment, or sublet the free housing he’s provided to get that one miracle he’s been hoping for.
IOW: You can’t eliminate the sob stories without fundamentally eliminating ‘the line’ entirely. Canada did this by making it illegal to provide medical services outside of the system. So people started going to America. So they started fiddling with the laws to try and prevent that. They’ve currently turned back around and removed a hefty list of the restrictions, but there is still an astonishing amount of cross-border medical visits – at least there is to Seattle.
And this is with Canada – a quite tight demographic group. And this group is also very tightly distributed geographically.
The mention of mountain climbing is also clearly a reducto ad absurdam. The point is: Would you be happier living somewhere where such a restriction would need a law passed in Congress addressing this directly? Or are you content to live somewhere where a third- or fourth-tier appointee has the power to issue such a regulation? This isn’t a minor creeping issue with the interstate commerce clause, this is a fundamental shift in the view of the Constitution itself.
And I know you’ll think this is nuts too, but I’ll say it anyway: I don’t need the opinion of nine people in robes before I can form my own opinion on whether it is a reshaping.
Indeed, instead we have a bill which makes the government to nanomanage healthcare. It’s not about insuring the marginal population; it’s about transforming medicine into a socialist/facist system.
Even that much allusion is clearly racist Titus. Hate speech reported. /s
Chris:
Here’s a thought. Do you know the basic principles of operating a business?
Think about those, our unemployment figures, how much contribution to employee healthcare the government is going to demand, and the cost of doing business.
Is healthcare reform really free?
It looks to me I’ll be paying for it at the grocery store, the gas station, the electric company, the cable company, at the state level to support the continuing double digit unemployment, and well the list continues.
I’ll leave you with one last question. I make $24,000 a year. Why should I and others like me finance the irresponsibility of the middle class while they enjoy a higher standard of living than us?
There is simply nothing un-democratic, un-republican or illegal in the way that the health care bill has progressed through the Congress.
No? How about the recount shenanigans in Minnesota that seated Al Franken? How about the bullshit reversal within five years of whether the governor of Massachusetts gets to appoint an interim senator, so that Romney couldn’t but Deval Patrick could? How about the present assertion by the Masschusetts Governor’s Office that if Brown wins the special election January 19, they’ll delay his certification long enough for interim Senator Paul Kirk to cast that key 60th vote?
This is not to even mention the buying of Mary Landrieu’s and Ben Nelson’s vote with special favors for one state at the expensve of others, the deal that exempts only Florida residents from Medicare cuts, the special deals for various union contributors to Democrats, the outrageous lies about the cost of these bills, the keeping of their details secret even from the Congressmen who vote on them, not to mention the public — and on and on and on.
Oh yes, this stuff is generally within the precise boundaries of the rules — just barely. And do you know what happens when you push something on people that they don’t really want, operating just barely within the technical black letters of the law?
Bad stuff, my friend. Democracy is not just about the majority making the rules. A majority, and particularly a rather thin one — what was Obama’s winning majority? A big 5%? 3%? — that runs roughshod over the minority is setting itself up for some very painful consequences. It should be obvious to any genuinely patriotic American that keeping the country together is far, far, far more important than making sure Joe Careless, young swinger, too well off for Medicaid, too careless to bother buying his own health insurance, is covered when he racks up his ‘Vette and takes a trip to the ER for a concussion.
You may not like the end result, but it was achieved via a fair fight.
Fair enough. When the result of the next “fair fight” is a wholesale slaughter of Democrats and their interests — when Obamacare is summarily trashed, cap ‘n’ trade ignored, your favorite programs and institutions burned to the ground by furious voters, I trust you’ll accept the result with equanimity.
Ye have sown the wind, and will reap the whirlwind. Bad choices, Democrats. Very bad indeed. Through overreach and arrogance you will destroy yourselves, and bring us dangerously close to a one-party state. It’s the Kansas-Nebraska Act all over again. Why don’t you idiots ever learn?
“Health care is not free. Someone pays for that.”
Thanks for that, Karl. Up here in Canada the *average* person pays a total of over half of their income in a myriad of taxes to the various layers of government, and health care is the single biggest budget item on every province’s books. There’s a reason that the Canadian Armed Forces doesn’t even total a full brigade – smaller than the NYPD – and it’s a damn good thing we’re next door to the USA.
So the question is this — who will the US move next to once it’s like Canada?
Also, (and I’m not a lawyer) the 16th amendment doesn’t revoke the “must be uniform” clause (http://topics.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxvi). It extends the taxing power of the Federal Government to tax individuals. The “must be uniform” clause is still in effect, I believe; I think you have to specifically mention a phrase as redacted for it to be redacted, like in the 21st amendment, section 1 (http://topics.law.cornell.edu/constitution/amendmentxxi)
Actually, if you remove “from whatever source derived” as clarification to the meaning of “income” and “and without regard to any census or enumeration” as not being relevant (I think this means that you can’t ask more populous states/areas to contribute more than other states/areas? You can only rely on the income of the individuals in those states/areas?), you get the phrase, “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes without apportionment among the several states.” $0 is an apportionment to one of the several states. The Nebraska deal is explicitly prohibited in the 16th amendment, whether the “must be uniform” clause is valid or not.