It looks like we can add Representative Louise Slaughter (D-NY) to the list of people that are showing signs of mental duress in Washington. First there was her odd story during the Healthcare summit of call she received from some phantom constituent. According to Ms. Slaughter, this person had to resort to wearing her dead sister’s dentures because she had no health insurance and could not afford her own. About the only thing missing from that exchange was the image of her grasping at the air trying to catch the imaginary butterflies circling her head. Apparently Louise’s condition has worsened and she has slipped beyond eccentricity and is now living in her own little world; a world where the Congress has a whole new set of imaginary rules they can use to pass healthcare reform so her friend can stop wearing someone else’s teeth.
The Senate Parliamentarian has already ruled that a Bill that has not been signed into law cannot be subject to reconciliation and that places a difficult burden on House Democrats. They must accept the Senate Bill as written and pass it without modification so that the President can sign it before any reconciliation measure is possible to work out the differences between the House and the Senate versions. Of course the Senate crafted their own bill because there was no possible way the House bill could have passed the Senate. There is in fact, no reason to believe that the Senate will yield on anything the House wants once this thing has actually been signed into law. Herein lays the quandary. Certain House Democrats will not vote for the bill unless they have concrete assurances that their issues will be acted on in reconciliation and the Senate says they can offer no such assurances on a bill that has not been made law yet. Catch 22.
Now in another leap into the bizarre, Slaughter has suggested her own idea to move the Healthcare Bill forward; an idea that seems to appeal to her fellow dementia sufferer, Nancy Pelosi. Her thoughts are that since the House passed a bill and the Senate passed a bill, we’ve both passed a bill already. Let’s skip the vote and send this to the President since we both passed a bill! Well, the only problem with that idea is that they both passed different bills. Even the President’s odd-ball compromise presented just prior to the Healthcare summit was only a list of un-scored ideas that would modify the Senate bill and if any of those changes were incorporated into the Senate bill then, in fact, the Senate bill really hasn’t passed either….has it?
All jokes aside, this is a critically serious issue. To use the “Slaughter” plan, Congress would have to abandon every known rule of the legislative process and not only ignore the public rejection of this bill but circumvent the justifiable opposition posed by other members of Congress as well. The reason this bill has not passed on its own merit is that there is a bi-partisan rejection of it on a number of critical issues. To use Slaughter’s idea to move it out of the house would not only damage the efficacy of the Democratic Party as they face a difficult election year but would also raise serious questions about the legitimacy of the Federal government as legislation ceases to be legislation and wants becomes laws through the dictates of a minority group of radical ideologues.
The loss of legitimacy is a serious charge, but have any of the processes used in conjunction with this Congress and this President resembled anything we have ever seen in the past? Agency heads threatening Congress to pass legislation “or else”; threats of using reconciliation to pass bills that have not even been signed into law; the use of Presidential executive orders to seize an additional thirteen million acres of land to deny access to oil, gas and coal reserves and now, the Progressive wing of a single Party bypassing all of Congress to achieve a bullet point on their agenda?
True Democracies are never overthrown by violent means; they are consumed by malevolent forces from within. The apathy of an appeased electorate opens the door for the systematic encroachment on personal liberty under the guise of “providing for the good of the people”. The government can only provide a benefit if we agree to surrender certain rights in that area. What is the Healthcare bill really about? Well, Nancy Pelosi unwittingly admitted that the other day. In a speech she was giving about the “wondrous” gift they are about to give the American people she said that for the first time we will be able to address the health of the nation. Pelosi continued: this is more about “diet than diabetes”. Really? And how does the bill accomplish that lofty goal unless there will eventually be mandates controlling your diet?
Cass Sunstein, Obama’s regulatory Czar, would love nothing better that to see people “nudged” into a meat free diet. He’s even said in papers written earlier in his career that animals should be represented by attorneys. Well, with health mandates we can just “regulate” you away from those barbarous acts of eating poor defenseless animals and dispense with the need for animal lawyers altogether. Don’t forget the nuts and bolts of this plan are not described in the bill itself. They will be crafted later by the massive new agency and controlling board it will create; a controlling board appointed by Barack Obama and guided by the wisdom of Cass Sunstein.
Some may yell out “That is absurd! The United States government doesn’t have the right to tell me what I can eat!” Well, that’s true (for now) but they didn’t have the right to tell people they can’t smoke either. What they have seized the right to do, now that the Constitution is nothing but an obstacle to skirt, is tax something out of existence. One of the first acts of the Obama administration was to increase the sin tax on cigarettes more than 250%. Of course anti-smoking activists applauded the move with little consideration of how heavily the application of “sin” taxes depends on who is identifying the “sin”. Now that the likely targets for the new healthcare sin taxes will be hamburgers, fries and a cold soda, how do the supporters of cigarette taxes feel about delegating that amount of control to the government now? A little cheated maybe?
But wait, there’s more! Red meat has been accused of causing heart problems and cancers, so kiss your delicious steaks goodbye. Sugar? I’m sorry…diabetes. Salt? Well, New York is already working to ban that from restaurants because of the link to high blood pressure so that’s probably out too. Butter; cream; candy and that dreaded of all criminals…pizza! Life is about to become very bland indeed.
If you’re willing to foot the added expense of the “chubby-foods” sin tax you can still eat like its 1999 but the part we don’t know is if the new healthcare guidelines will impose insurance premium surcharges for people that don’t fit the healthcare board’s idea of physically fit. What’s your BMI? How much do you exercise? Are you engaged in risky behavior like skiing or skydiving? You know anything that can harm you is bad and therefore in dire need of behavioral modification.
That is just a dream though. This is the United States of America; the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave! The Federal government just doesn’t have that kind of power under the Constitution. But then again, what does the Constitution mean anymore if laws can be passed by ideological zealots that can get away with only pretending there was a legitimate vote? Sounds like Election Day in the old Soviet Union doesn’t it? One candidate scoring a landslide victory… that’s a perfect example of Progressive Democracy for you!
God help us now!
Paul
The Senate Parliamentarian has already ruled that a Bill that has not been signed into law cannot be subject to reconciliation and that places a difficult burden on House Democrats. They must accept the Senate Bill as written and pass it without modification so that the President can sign it before any reconciliation measure is possible to work out the differences between the House and the Senate versions. Of course the Senate crafted their own bill because there was no possible way the House bill could have passed the Senate. There is in fact, no reason to believe that the Senate will yield on anything the House wants once this thing has actually been signed into law. Herein lays the quandary. Certain House Democrats will not vote for the bill unless they have concrete assurances that their issues will be acted on in reconciliation and the Senate says they can offer no such assurances on a bill that has not been made law yet. Catch 22.
Now in another leap into the bizarre, Slaughter has suggested her own idea to move the Healthcare Bill forward; an idea that seems to appeal to her fellow dementia sufferer, Nancy Pelosi. Her thoughts are that since the House passed a bill and the Senate passed a bill, we’ve both passed a bill already. Let’s skip the vote and send this to the President since we both passed a bill! Well, the only problem with that idea is that they both passed different bills. Even the President’s odd-ball compromise presented just prior to the Healthcare summit was only a list of un-scored ideas that would modify the Senate bill and if any of those changes were incorporated into the Senate bill then, in fact, the Senate bill really hasn’t passed either….has it?
All jokes aside, this is a critically serious issue. To use the “Slaughter” plan, Congress would have to abandon every known rule of the legislative process and not only ignore the public rejection of this bill but circumvent the justifiable opposition posed by other members of Congress as well. The reason this bill has not passed on its own merit is that there is a bi-partisan rejection of it on a number of critical issues. To use Slaughter’s idea to move it out of the house would not only damage the efficacy of the Democratic Party as they face a difficult election year but would also raise serious questions about the legitimacy of the Federal government as legislation ceases to be legislation and wants becomes laws through the dictates of a minority group of radical ideologues.
The loss of legitimacy is a serious charge, but have any of the processes used in conjunction with this Congress and this President resembled anything we have ever seen in the past? Agency heads threatening Congress to pass legislation “or else”; threats of using reconciliation to pass bills that have not even been signed into law; the use of Presidential executive orders to seize an additional thirteen million acres of land to deny access to oil, gas and coal reserves and now, the Progressive wing of a single Party bypassing all of Congress to achieve a bullet point on their agenda?
True Democracies are never overthrown by violent means; they are consumed by malevolent forces from within. The apathy of an appeased electorate opens the door for the systematic encroachment on personal liberty under the guise of “providing for the good of the people”. The government can only provide a benefit if we agree to surrender certain rights in that area. What is the Healthcare bill really about? Well, Nancy Pelosi unwittingly admitted that the other day. In a speech she was giving about the “wondrous” gift they are about to give the American people she said that for the first time we will be able to address the health of the nation. Pelosi continued: this is more about “diet than diabetes”. Really? And how does the bill accomplish that lofty goal unless there will eventually be mandates controlling your diet?
Cass Sunstein, Obama’s regulatory Czar, would love nothing better that to see people “nudged” into a meat free diet. He’s even said in papers written earlier in his career that animals should be represented by attorneys. Well, with health mandates we can just “regulate” you away from those barbarous acts of eating poor defenseless animals and dispense with the need for animal lawyers altogether. Don’t forget the nuts and bolts of this plan are not described in the bill itself. They will be crafted later by the massive new agency and controlling board it will create; a controlling board appointed by Barack Obama and guided by the wisdom of Cass Sunstein.
Some may yell out “That is absurd! The United States government doesn’t have the right to tell me what I can eat!” Well, that’s true (for now) but they didn’t have the right to tell people they can’t smoke either. What they have seized the right to do, now that the Constitution is nothing but an obstacle to skirt, is tax something out of existence. One of the first acts of the Obama administration was to increase the sin tax on cigarettes more than 250%. Of course anti-smoking activists applauded the move with little consideration of how heavily the application of “sin” taxes depends on who is identifying the “sin”. Now that the likely targets for the new healthcare sin taxes will be hamburgers, fries and a cold soda, how do the supporters of cigarette taxes feel about delegating that amount of control to the government now? A little cheated maybe?
But wait, there’s more! Red meat has been accused of causing heart problems and cancers, so kiss your delicious steaks goodbye. Sugar? I’m sorry…diabetes. Salt? Well, New York is already working to ban that from restaurants because of the link to high blood pressure so that’s probably out too. Butter; cream; candy and that dreaded of all criminals…pizza! Life is about to become very bland indeed.
If you’re willing to foot the added expense of the “chubby-foods” sin tax you can still eat like its 1999 but the part we don’t know is if the new healthcare guidelines will impose insurance premium surcharges for people that don’t fit the healthcare board’s idea of physically fit. What’s your BMI? How much do you exercise? Are you engaged in risky behavior like skiing or skydiving? You know anything that can harm you is bad and therefore in dire need of behavioral modification.
That is just a dream though. This is the United States of America; the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave! The Federal government just doesn’t have that kind of power under the Constitution. But then again, what does the Constitution mean anymore if laws can be passed by ideological zealots that can get away with only pretending there was a legitimate vote? Sounds like Election Day in the old Soviet Union doesn’t it? One candidate scoring a landslide victory… that’s a perfect example of Progressive Democracy for you!
God help us now!
Paul
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