Letter From America

What’s Pork for the Goose is Pork for the Gander
The Health Care Debacle Explained

By David L Bahnsen on December 21, 2009

The majority of the political world right now is obsessed with the Senate’s having obtained sixty votes in the cloture motion to move along their passage of this deeply flawed and tremendously watered down bill. In all my years of obsessively following politics, I have never seen such huge political blunders made by one side, and I am utterly shocked that the Democrats have traded so much of their political capital and 2010 chances for such an impotent, expensive, and idiotic piece of legislation. The entire debate started around one major issue: a public option for health care run by and paid for the government. They repeatedly said that the entire debate hinged on accomplishing this singular component. It is dead and gone. When all is said and done, the far left in this country are passing a bill that:

(a) Breaks Obama’s promise to not raise taxes on the middle class
(b) Calls for massive, and I mean massive, reductions in Medicare coverage, the likes of which will make “health care rationing” look like the understatement of the year
(c) Pushes the cost of coverage uniformly higher (no one is cutting any expense here; they are just shifting who pays for it)
(d) Alienates some of the Dems most loyal followers – the radical abortion lobby – who are piping mad that federal subsidies will be taken from their precious abotion industry
(e) Forces people who do not want insurance to buy it (I am not referring to people who can not afford it; I am referring to people who do not want or need it), or else be fined by the federal government

This is a bill that makes no one happy. Howard Dean, the leader of the Democratic Party, pleaded with Democrats to vote it down. Olympia Snowe, a RINO if there ever was one who would love nothing more than to side with the left, is disgusted that they are so determined to force this thing through despite the fact that none of the changes are effective for years. (Politics, anyone?). The self-anointed Messiah of the human race, BHO, has seen his untouchable political popularity collapse like a Tiger Woods endorsement contract. Republicans are disgusted that such a huge spending bill is becoming law, and one that so eggregiously violates the basic principles of our country’s founding (”buy insurance or you go to jail”; ay yi yi). No one is happy. Yet the Democratic chest-beating goes on. It is a sight to behold.

And to top it all off, they could not get their needed 60th vote without bribing a member of their own, Sen. Ben Nelson (soon to be ex-Senator) of Nebraska. This laughing-stock whore traded his vote for special treatment in his own state’s medicaid program, concessions given to him by the Senate that the 49 other states will pay for. I have watched with curiosity over the last 24 hours as Democrats have defended this horse-trading (”this is the way politics gets done”), and as Republicans have expressed outrage that this kind of thing could ever happen (”this is not legislation; it is corruption”). Well wait a minute!

It most certainly is corruption, and there is absolutely no way a true American patriot could say that the buying of a vote with unconstitutional special treatment is in the least bit ethical. But let me suggest something to my Republican friends and colleagues. If we want to oppose the politics of corruption that allows a blatant pork bill concession like this to pass the most massive expansion of government in a generation, perhaps we need to be opposed to such pork and earmarks whenour own people are doing them!!! What the Dems are doing is morally repugnant, but hasn’t our own party maintained a sizeable faction for several years now defending the role of backroom earmarks and horse trading politics to “meet the needs of local constituents”, even when done on the dime of the other states? If it is pork when they do it, it is pork when we do it. Period.

I do not know what comes of this atrocity in the coming months. By the time this gets out of committee, I would not be surprised if the only line left in the bill is, “We shall change nothing whatsoever but it shall be a civic requirement for people to walk around saying Barack Obama passed sweeping health care reform.” This is not over yet. But I hope patriots and those who are actually sensitive to cogent political philosophy are taking notes: Hypocrisy comes at a cost. The Dems are about to find that out in ways that will turn their world upside down. Maybe us Republicans are finding it out now?