Snow Job

Monday, December 21, 2009






I know that's snowing up a storm in Washington.












While many are focusing on Frosty, Santa, and the Tiger Woods Mistress List, we should look at the orgin of this critical storm.











Capitol Hill.










Fellow Americans, the rush to health care reform has been a race to spend money in a time of recession while the benefits for needy Americans have been given a multi-year timeout by the supermajority in Washington. Never before has there been a time in American history where such a race against the clock has been performed by legislators intent on spending historic amounts of dollars, raising taxes on a plethora of items, and expanding the role of government without the American people and their representatives having a prudent opportunity to examine the facts and debate the merits.







This bill – perhaps well-intended – is un-American and wrong. The rush to get it down under the cover of night proves to be nothing more than one historic snow job coming on the cusp of a significant snowfall on the nation’s capital.







It’s ironic and appropriate, actually.







Any amount of spending coming from the fat cats in Washington must be challenged on its merits to find the levels of responsible spending that is required during these tough times. Yet, it is not to be found in the Senate’s version of the bill. Fiscal responsibility has been summed up as robbing Peter – in this instance, robbing Medicare – in order to pay Paul – in this instance, expansive coverage paid for by the same inefficient manager that we are cutting money from – federal government-led health care – because of its inefficiencies.







Yes. Only in Washington does this circulate round of thinking make sense, sense enough to the politicians racing to work under the protection of political power to rush this bill through.







And with the level of spending found in the bill as well as the questions concerning the actual procurement of American-quality health care for more Americans, many Americans will be left out in the cold, between increased taxes (a broken Obama promise), dampened business opportunities (another broken promise), and without bipartisan ideas and solutions (yet another broken promise.) In essence, the statements earlier this year of working together with the GOP’s legislators have become nothing more than the precursors to a huge snow job of partisan politics, acting as if only one party has the monopoly on the best interests of Americans.







And with this going on, the true inefficiencies in health care management in America – monopolies within states borders, lack of tort reform, increased employment and educational levels within the communities of everyday Americans – issues that have been shown to improve the quality of care while reducing the cost of health care in America – all items have been ignored by the supermajority intent on using this bill as a means to an end – namely, the end of civil liberties, job-creating environments, and lower taxed communities throughout America.







A mandate to buy health insurance despite one’s personal and professional standings in life is not liberty. It takes Americans back to the hard choices – paying for mandated health insurance for a single woman just out of college or paying rent and lights. Increased taxes on medical procedures make more bureaucracy impeding health care improvements for everyday Americans. Do women move forward with elective procedures that prove to improve quality of life or risk having the surgeries be deemed “elective”, and thus hit with a luxury tax courtesy of Obamacare? What do the additional taxes on “Cadillac plans” do for job creation? How does this health care reform allow for job creation?







If this bill was so great, why did it cost $300 million to buy the vote of Mary Landrieu? If this bill was so great, why did it take another round of convincing to get buy in from Joe Lieberman and Ben Nelson? If this bill was so great, why are we rushing to pass this bill before Christmas 2009?







The more that the government tells you that it is going to do more for you, the more that it is going to charge you for it, the more structures that will be built to provide less service to you, and the more that – in essence – government will have to expand in order to fix what comes as a result.







Doesn’t seem to fix an already problematic issues does it?







It does seem to be shoveling it deep, though, even as we continue to dig ourselves into more debt daily.










And the more we hear about historic change, the more we see that we're being blinded by the definition of change as it is being whitewashed by a snowjob blowing in from the left.







If this type of reform and change only comes from this type of direction (particularly with all of the spending coming from the Obama Administration and the supermajority so far in 2009), perhaps it's time to change - course, that is - coming in 2010.