Tom Kawczynski - Off the Record

The bills that are floating in the House and Senate for health care reform are absolutely terrible.  More terrible still is that I can say this without even saying the first thing about health care.

Whether you believe health care is a right or not, whether you believe government should or should not provide a solution, the process alone should be abhorrent to anyone who believes in financially sound, well rooted reform for the future.  The passage of this bill has absolutely nothing to do with the quality of the ideas (which we know must be true because no time has been given for reading of any section of the legislation), but it is a desperate attempt to simply pass something.

That bribes are casually being bandied about to ensure passage is nothing but the most disgusting of legislative politics as usual.  I hope the good people of Nebraska, Louisiana, Connecticut, and those other states where Senators basically have managed to include several hundred millions of kickback dollars will be remembered for such when their respective terms end.  Health reform is too serious an issue to be bought in this way, to be bungled with a bad bill, and to be nothing to everyone.

Were I a liberal, I would ask how this bill provides for public health care for everyone: it doesn't.  I would ask how it protects a woman's right of choice: it doesn't.  I would ask this and more, but people on the left already are and we see unions and other prominent left sympathetic constituencies lining against final passage.

Were I a conservative, I would ask how this bill will be paid for: no one know.  I would ask how it will save costs: that doesn't matter.  I would ask this and more but expect nothing but attacks and threats.  I already know how many have lined up on the right to defeat this, but they are silenced by the majority.

But my question is this:  if there is a bill that so many people oppose on so many reasons, and that seems to be capable of passage only with such blatant bribery, why should it be passed it all?  A good bill, which addresses the serious issues of health care reform, should have been written deliberately with concerns for both the costs of the program, the needs of those not served, and mindful of the fact that millions of Americans who do have health care do not want and cannot afford to see their services lessened or made more expensive by government intervention.

I think there was a majority, on both sides, who could have come together on that basis, to build something better and lasting.  But that is not this bill, and the legacy of this Congress will be that it chose to go it alone, ignoring the will of the people, and butchering the chance for better health care reform.

2010 is coming.  Remember.