By Justin Williams
This week, as Congress reconvenes, the pressure from the White House is building to put the final touches on health care reform. While news outlets describe the Congressional debates as “wrestling” and emphasize the inevitable “compromises” that will be reached, any opposing opinion is being ignored.
The Associated Press reports that a deal is being made is between Congressional Democrats and health care companies, but not with any members on the other side of the aisle. This sounds more like a “deal” to make sure the legislation panders properly to a special interest as the government will be “creating a huge new pool of customers — and possible source of income — for hospitals, drug companies, doctors and insurance companies.”
Not only are Republicans being shut out of the debate, it seems that the Democrats do not want them to get any piece of the pie, as all Washington favors are returned with campaign contributions.
In a recent interview with the Washington News Observer, Representative Brian Bilbray (R-CA) stated when describing the current work on the proposed health care legislation, “It is almost [as if] you don’t agree with the majority or the White House, you are not really asked to participate. They do not want discouraging words.”
But on the other hand Harry Reid’s spokesperson Jim Manley was recently quoted saying that “with a little bit of cooperation from the Republicans—cooperation that has been mostly—we can get all of our work done.”
But are the Republican’s really holding up the Democrats? No. Because they can’t: Both houses of Congress have large enough majorities to move legislation at frightening speed.
In another WNO interview, Representative Michael Burgess, M.D. (R-TX) stated “honestly, they have the numbers where they do not need to include Republicans.”
This is not surprising after the House’s vote on cap and trade. Even with the near unified Republican vote, it took 44 Democrats to vote “No” to even bring the bill close to defeat and yet they still lost.
Now, socialized health care seems to be a lot more popular than the cap and trade bill was for the public. Rasmussen reported right after the Waxman-Markey climate change bill passed that 56 percent of Americans do not support paying more money to fight global warming while their polls have also recently found that 50 percent of Americans support Obama’s health care plan.
If the health care reform bill came to the House floor today, it appears then that the margin would be much larger than cap and trade.
Simply put, the Democrats do not need the Republicans.
But with such a large move to universal health care, Democratics desperately want Republican votes to help provide political cohesiveness, which then enables them to claim that the measures were “bipartisan.”
What isn’t being discussed is including the 200 million Americans who already have private health insurance. Surely, if their voices were included, the debate would not be about sweeping government-mandated insurance.
Justin Williams is a Contributing Editor of ALG News Bureau.
