Posted by
Steve on Tuesday, September 15, 2009 3:44:10 PM
On the way to work today, there was some disturbing news. Nobody else seemed disturbed by the news that the gang of 6 seems to be reaching some kind of agreement on a health care bill. That is exactly the wrong thing that should happen. The healthcare bill should go down in flames and then you start over with realistic ideas. You don’t try to pull Obama’s bacon out of the fire at the last minute. Obama needs a healthcare bill to sign into law. Any bill that gives the government authority over healthcare is a win for him. Since Max Baucus (D-MT) is happy about the bill, you can bet that the government will have lots of authority over healthcare. It would be a fantastic win after the long series of defeats in July, August and September.
The tendency of Republicans in the Senate is to roll over and play dead when negotiating with Democrats. The Democrats always get what they want and the Republicans never get anything more substantial than it will be considered at some future time, to be determined. Democrats get concrete things they can count on today. Republicans never get anything more than promises. With the reaction of Max Baucus, that would seem to be happening again.
Didn’t the Republicans see all the people that showed up in Washington over the weekend? Maybe they thought it was just a coincidence that they all showed up at the same time to protest about something. They obviously could not be serious or the Democrats would be calling them racists or something like that.
Barack Obama is in a “Take No Prisoners” mood. His talk last week to Congress was full of “My way or the highway” talk. For someone who is being actively opposed by large numbers of people, that is not the way to talk. If he persists in talking that way and forcing his minions in the House and Senate to vote that way, 2010 will be a bloodbath for the Democrats that they will not soon forget. The upshot of that is that it might make Obama into a halfway decent President. That’s what happened to Bill Clinton in 1994. After his Democrats got their clock cleaned, he learned and adapted and became an almost decent President, scandals aside. The same could happen with Obama, except I do not think he has it in him. I do not think that he is one who learns from mistakes. He has always had things handed to him, so he would expect that to continue.
Since the Obamacare bill will not take effect until 2013, nobody will be impacted by Obamacare until then. That would give people time to forget about all the promises that were made to get the bill passed. People will forget about Obamacare until it bites them in the behind. Then it will be too late to do anything about it. That is why action now is so important.