Last August 21 (2009) I wrote the following on my WhereTheGuysAre.com web site: “Plainly, the Health Care Reform act of 2009 will NOT be passed with ANY Republican participation. It's time to give up on any illusions of bi-partisan support from the party of 'No!’ and move on.” If it hadn’t become clear to the Democratic majority, it certainly was clear yesterday when the Republicans participating in the historic “Health Care Reform Summit” at Blair House went around the table stupidly parroting the same 3 or 4 “talking points” that mostly amounted to “scrap this bill and start over”, “a better approach is to go step-by-step” and “starting with a clean sheet of paper”. (Matthew’s production staff put together a sound-bite montage that frankly scary in revealing the obvious collusion between the various Republicans. I hope you’ve had a chance to catch it on YouTube or MSNBC.) What these same Republicans fail to mention is that they, for the most part, totally abdicated on input to the bill as it was developing, steadfastly taking the position that "all this health care reform stuff really isn't what the country needs". Well, perhaps not YOUR millionaire friends, Senator McConnell or Congressman Boehner, but I daily see ordinary American citizens who are struggling with the "realities" of their health care (or lack of it, or the threat of it being about to disappear) and that seems like a pretty apparent NEED to me.
The day before on “The Rachel Maddow Show” (also on MSNBC) guest Barney Frank (congressman from Massachussetts) made the plain and simple statement that the “dominant Republicans today do not want Barack Obama to succeed either in job creation or in deficit reduction and that’s why you get this intellectual inconsistency. It’s not intellectually inconsistent—it’s dishonest.” To me this combination of the collusion of the talking points to kill health care reform and in plainly WISHING FOR the worst outcome for the country as far as jobs and the deficit/economy removes ANY bit of credibility from 95% or more of those who have ‘R’ by their name as their party designation.
How can these folks consider themselves patriotic Americans if what they hope for is the “failure” of an administration and majority party that is working so hard to put thing right for common working folk? It was the departing Bush administration that left the country with the biggest deficit in history (following on the heels of inheriting the largest SURPLUS in history on Bill Clinton's departure). A country and world financial system literally teetering on the edge of collapse and a pending (and mostly in-place) TRILLION dollar bail-out package put together by Bush's departing Treasury Secretary Hank ("take good care of my buddies at GoldmanSachs") Paulson.
It’s obvious who the masters of these Republicans are because of their constant emphasis of pushing for tax “relief” for the top 1% of the population while at the same time having complete and total disregard for those who are daily losing their health care whether through collusion on the part of the insurers, rising and crippling insurance costs or other unregulated measures designed to maximize profit and the nice big bonuses for upper management.
Health care reform MUST be passed and RECONCILIATION is the way to do it. It simply galls me that the Republicans now are trying to re-sell reconciliation as “the nuclear option”. (It never was. The “nuclear option” was something the Repubs threatened the Democrats with when some judicial appointments were being held up procedurally by Democrats. And while we’re at it, it’s important to put some facts on the table: Republicans in the Senate used “reconciliation” 16 out of the past 22 times it was used.)
It’s time to bypass these nay-sayers and get ‘er done!
As Chris Matthews said today on MSNBC’s “Hardball”: “No more yelling ‘No!’ from the belfry.”
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