The recent effort by House Republicans to repeal the health care law, which was passed by Democrats, was an exercise not only in futility but also exercises in contradiction and hypocrisy.
They argued that the legislation should be repealed because the American people, in Nov. 2010, voted to have it repealed. But they act as if they (and so did the Democrats, for that matter) forgot that these same American people, in Nov. 2008, voted for universal health care when they elected Barack Obama President of the United States.
Republicans are acting as if they misunderstood what voters were voting for in Nov. 2010. Voters were saying repeal the law if Republicans are elected in numbers sufficient to (1) have the repeal approved by both the House and Senate, (2) override a presidential veto, and (3) have written and passed a better law in its place.
But Republicans didn't not win in sufficient number to achieve those ends. Sufficient numbers in the Senate were impossible, anyway. Voters made sure they wouldn't even have enough members in the Senate to control the agenda, The American people spoke, but they said something different from what Republicans claim they heard.
What voters did said, and what recent polls suggest they are saying now, is: If you cannot repeal the health care law and pass another law, then, at least FIX the present law. But Republicans have failed--or refused--to draw that conclusion about the American people's intent. They persist in believing, or acting as if they believe, that the American people don't have much sense, and that the people really don't want universal health care.
But it is Republicans who don't want health care. What better evidence of that than the fact that during all of the time when they controlled the Congress, during the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, they did not seek to implement health-care legislation. And as Dr Phil continues to remind us: The best predictor of what people will do in the future is what they have done in the past.
Republicans have come up with four committees presumably to work on a Republican proposal for health-care legislation. But there is no timeline for them to complete their work. I understand that Republicans under Bob Dole had a plan, but Republican cannot use that one because it already incorporated in the present law.
Concerning whether everyone should be required to buy health care insurance, this was a source of disagreement between Obama and Hillary Clinton during the Democratic primaries: Clinton thought everyone should be required to buy insurance. Obama thought that a mandate would not be necessary because the only reason people would not buy insurance was be if they couldn't afford it. The present law seeks to make insurance affordable for everyone by helping those who cannot afford it. People who want to be thought of as Christians but who don't want to act like Christians call such an accommodation for the less able Socialism. But sometimes Christians and Socialists do the same kinds of things.
Republicans are trying to get the courts to get rid of the bill by saying its unconstitutional to require those who can afford insurance to buy insurance. But care of the uninsured is one of the main reasons why the skyrocketing health care cost is being passed on to those who have insurance. Will those who refuse to purchase health care insurance be saying by not buying insurance that if they have serious accidents or become ill at home, they should be treated at home, or if they are injured in accidents in the highway, they want to be treated by the side of the road or taken home? How do they expected to be cared for? If they have the right to not buy insurance, will ambulance services and hospitals be given the right to deny them serviced?
Republican actions have become irrational. Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck and the Tea Party are running them crazy, or at least causing them to act as if they are.. Their arguments are sinking to level of outright lies that everyone now recognize as being untrue. Their augments are becoming sinking to levels liken to justifying the Tuscan shootings. Even Jared Loughner's defense attorney won't try to make that case.
But if normally rational people like congressional Republicans can act irrationally--even when they know better--how can one expect better from those who don't know better. Unfortunately, Republicans believe--or act like they believe--that the American voters are among those who don't know any better.
The way to satisfy what the people voted for in both 2008 and 2010 (and the American people are smarter than Republican hope they are) is to use this time for Republicans to work with Democrats to fix what wrong the law that's on the books, now. These four House committees should be committees of Republicans and Democrats. And these committees should do all of their deliberating before the camera on C-Span--like Obama promised but did not do.
A government that is publicly irrational in its pursuits of solutions to its own problems can't gain the confidence of the Chinese nor sustain the confidence of its allies and the rest of the world.
The nation's economy and the world need a strong United States of America. But both also need a rational United States because only a stable United States can survive.
Ronald
