2,000 Pages!?!?

Pelosi's new health care bill arrived yesterday - and it comes in at 2,000 pages. Any bill that long is guaranteed to be a compliance and enforcement nightmare that will dramatically increase bureaucracy, inefficiency and cost (pardon the redundancy). Does anyone really believe that health care can be made more effective and efficient through a bill that's 2,000 pages long?

Anyone in Congress or the media who comes out today in favor of this bill is revealing themselves to be an ideological kool-aid drinker. They cannot possibly have read the bill and judged it on its merits, so it's clear they'd be supporting it only because Obama, Pelosi and the special interest groups that actually wrote it told them to.

Democrats will say that anyone who opposes this bill is simply being obstructionist. But which is more logical and responsible - supporting legislation that hasn't been read (as the Democrats do), or NOT supporting legislation that hasn't been read?

If the real goal was improving health care (as opposed to the increased government control and social engineering that are clearly driving the Democrats' agenda), the legislation would be concise and targeted to the major issues needing improvement:

• portability of health insurance among employers and locations
• encouraging increased competition and reduced cost through the sale of health insurance policies across state lines
• equality of tax treatment of health insurance premiums regardless of where or from whom policies are purchased
• allowing the sale of policies customized to buyers' needs rather than mandating one-size fits all policies that make people pay for coverage they'll never need.

These are simple concepts and each could be documented clearly in just a few pages. Even if each took 10 pages to outline you'd have only a 40 page bill. But the House version is 2,000 and the Senate version is currently over 1,500 pages.

Congress doesn't read bills before passing them, and we know they didn't write this themselves. Bills this long simply create the impression that Obama and Congress have told their favorite special interest groups to load up the legislation with whatever they want. And they're hoping to rush it through before we catch on.

We should trust these people because.............?

Perhaps the most critical element in the long-term success of any democracy is mutual trust between a nation's people and their government. Such trust must be earned through demonstrated integrity, fidelity to common principles and performance over time.

Right now, our government is asking us to trust them as they develop their plan to radically transform our health care system. So I thought it appropriate to review some relevant history to find out what our government has done to merit such trust.

• Social Security and Medicare are the most analogous programs to what Obama and Congress wish to impose upon us with health care reform. Both are effectively bankrupt (the "lockboxes" don't actually exist) and contribute enormously to our federal deficit. How Obamacare will be any better on this account has not been explained.
• When Medicare was started in 1965 the government estimated it would cost $9 billion per year by 1990. In fact, Medicare was costing $67 billion per year by 1990 - more than 7 times the government's estimate. Why should the American people believe the forecast on the new health care reform will be any better?
• Obama promised that the $1,000,000,000,000+ spent on his various programs to "stimulate" economy would keep unemployment under 8%. He dramatically missed that forecast in less than 6 months and there's no prospect unemployment will be under 8% any time in the foreseeable future.
• We were promised by Obama and Pelosi that all health care debate would be open to the public, even broadcast on C-SPAN, and that everything would be available to Americans to review before legislation is voted on. They've already proven multiple times that they have no intention of living up to that commitment. What are they hiding - and why?

Based on these facts it would be difficult to make the case that our government merits the trust of the American people in crafting health care reform (or much of anything else for that matter).

While a nation's long term success depends on mutual trust between a government and its people, I maintain that under our Constitution - with its foundation on individual rights and responsibilities - the onus is on the government to earn the trust of the people rather than the other way around. Obama and Congress have done precious little to earn that trust.

Questions for my Senators

This evening I sent the message below to my two Senators, Warner and Webb. My expectation is that they will respond with the usual form letter about all of the great things they are doing on behalf of their constituents (although their previous responses have caused me to wonder how they define "constituent" - since it doesn't appear they're as interested in the welfare of Virginia's citizens as they are with the welfare of their party and Obama's agenda).

Senators Warner and Webb,

Why are Democrats hiding behind closed doors while crafting the health care reform bill? Obama promised that all debate and discussion on health care reform would be open for public viewing on C-SPAN. Why are you not doing that? What is it that Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi are trying to hide? Who is actually writing the legislation – and why should the American people trust those authors? Congress has already proven it doesn’t read legislation before passing it so members of Congress surely aren’t writing the health care bill. Who is? And why can’t we watch the debate as Obama promised?

Also, what happened to Obama’s promised “new era of post-partisanship”? Democrats in Congress are literally locking Republicans out of meetings and Obama is going to battle with anyone who dares propose ideas different than his own.

This is no way to build trust and confidence among the American people. And you’d be well advised to tell Obama to stop his incessant whining about what he inherited and blaming everyone but himself for the problems he faces. That behavior is undignified and cowardly and it needs to stop.

The courtesy of a clear, direct response to the questions I posed above would be appreciated.

Respectfully,

Lou

I'll let you know what I hear back from them, but my expectations are pretty low.

Reflecting on Predictions from a Year Ago

Below is a "letter to the editor" that I wrote on October 5, 2008. When it was written I wondered if it was perhaps a bit too pessimistic. Alas, it now appears that things are even worse than contemplated in this letter from a year ago. Take a look and let me know what you think.

Letter to the Editor from October 5, 2008:

“Hope” – untethered from logic and principle - can’t change the world, or our country, for the better. Promises of “change” are meaningless without a clear plan of action. Unfortunately, Barack Obama – without demonstrable logic or principle - seems to have gained considerable political momentum without any clear plan of action to actually create the “change” he seeks and which he has yet to clearly define.

Senator Obama appears to be an empty political vessel, into which can be poured the very worst of liberal doctrine and orthodoxy from the most leftist of ideologues, and from which may flow the class and identity warfare, income redistribution and suppression of alternative thinking that have proven disastrous multiple times throughout history.

Senator Obama has no record of being able to create or lead any substantive change. He’s a great orator, no doubt, but a man who voted “present” 130 times as a state senator clearly has no track record of making tough decisions in crunch time. Neither he, nor his supporters, can clearly articulate any reason Americans should consider voting for him. All they can talk about is what they are against, which is apparently George Bush, a man who is not even running for office. One has to wonder what the liberal democrats will do when they don’t have George Bush to hate, since they are seemingly more driven by hate for him than love for our country.

If Obama is elected, we will have turned our country over to the most liberal senator on record. A man who has taken more money from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over the last 3 years than anyone, and has the failed CEOs of those organizations advising him on economics, of all things, yet blames George Bush and John McCain for their failure. And he will be assisted in implementing his socialist vision by Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, a team that has led the most partisan and least productive congress in history. Obama, Reid and Pelosi running the country – so much for checks and balances.

We can avoid this fate, but only if the American public votes on the basis of logic and principle, and not on emotional reaction to empty political platitudes and clichés.

Who wrote it and who will actually read it?

So now we have the 1,500+ page Senate Health Care Reform Bill. This is yet another bill that no Senator will actually read and that surely no Senator actually wrote. This raises some legitimate questions that Senators - particularly the Democrats driving this travesty - owe their constituents clear, direct answers to.

These questions include:

• Will you once again vote for a bill you haven’t read? If so, why?
• If Senators did not write this bill, which they surely did not, who did?
• Why do you trust the authors of this bill so much that you’d vote for it without reading it?
• Why should the American people trust that the authors of this bill have their best interest, and not the political interest of Obama and his Democrat cronies and sycophants, in mind?
• If there are hundreds of billions of dollars in savings in Medicare thru eliminating waste and fraud, why aren’t you going after those now to prove you can actually deliver those savings?

There is not a single historical example of the U.S. government even coming close to achieving any goals such as those Obama claims will be achieved thru health care reform. Government meddling created the problems we now face in the economy and in health care. Increased government meddling will only exacerbate the problems – not solve them.

There are things that government can do to improve our health care system, none of which involve the government increasing control over our lives or forcing a “public option” upon us.

These include:

• Eliminate the restrictions on insurance companies selling across state lines. This will increase competition and drive down costs, while adding a government insurance option will crush competition and dramatically increase costs and drive up the deficit.
• Equalize the tax treatment of all health insurance policies, no matter where or how they are purchased.
• Allow insurance companies to sell and Americans to buy policies customized to the needs of the insured, rather than forcing Americans to buy coverages they neither want nor need.

Senators need to remember that they are elected to represent and serve their constituents, not Obama and the special interests. They may think that’s an antiquated notion, but that does not make it any less true.