President Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and other congressional leaders among the Democrats hailed the passage of the Senate health “reform” bill as a Christmas gift to the American people. That’s about the equivalent of trying to convince the chief income earner(s) in a home that the real gift of Christmas for them is the increased balance on the credit card (or the reduced balance of their checking and/or saving’s accounts) rather than the presents they got.
In response to the news that the bill had finally passed my wife had a great idea for a real gift that the Senate could give us for Christmas some year (besides repealing that bill). If they have the authority to mandate that we buy insurance that opens up a world of possibilities. First and foremost her suggestion is that they should mandate that everyone in America should get an answering machine. Just imagine and end to:
Ring . . .
Ring . . .
Ring . . .
Ring . . .
Ring . . .
Ring . . .
Ring . . .
Ring . . .
The person you are calling is not available. *click*
I’m quite confident that universal telephone answering machines would have a positive impact on interstate commerce.
I see that there are a group of progressives and conservatives saying that this bill is unconstitutional – if that’s what we have to do to kill it then let it be so. In the meantime, I want something for Christmas that every one of my representatives in Congress has – I want my own personal collection of 5 lobbyists plying me with gifts, meals, trips and money for the next 2 years. Why should they have all the fun?
Merry Christmas to you and yours!
Charles,
I’m liking that idea – five people who dedicate their energies to thinking up ways to pamper and influence me.
Merry Christmas to you as well.
Its fun to see a bipartisan populist uprising, While I don’t think that the health bill will be stopped, I do think it will lead to modifications through a future bill sooner rather then later that improve the bill to something much better(with any luck single payer *hey I can dream*).
Having bipartisan opposition might help bring about reforms to this atrocity sooner but I would not be surprised if Congress decides to take a break from dealing with anything like this – they’ve probably exhausted their offices already and might wish to deal with tamer issues.
This isn’t just bipartisan opposition, its populist opposition which well beyond simple bipartisan opposition. We haven’t had a populist uprising sense the 1930’s, and that lead to The New Deal So be careful what your wish for as you just might get it.