Amazingly, this bill has produced the broadest political coalition I have seen in my lifetime. Peruse the liberal blogs and you’ll discover widespread disgust at this corporate boon. Cruise over to the conservative sites, and you’ll encounter much the same thing. Then, check out the opinion polls and you’ll find a mass public that is staunchly opposed to this bill.
And yet Democrats in the Senate have decided that all of us – left, right, and center – are wrong. We need this bill.
Welcome to the new gilded age. The original hope behind the 17th Amendment – the direct election of senators – was to get the upper chamber out of the pocket of mega-industries that could buy and sell senators. So much for that, I suppose. This has to be one of the biggest giveaways to corporate interests in the nation’s history.
Andrew Jackson must be spinning in his grave this evening. The Democratic Party was founded in opposition to “corrupt bargains” among entrenched interests that Democrats believed were undermining the will of the people. Today, such interests are called “stakeholders.” They are to be wooed, bought off, and neutralized. Can’t afford a K Street lobbyist? Sorry, you’re not a stakeholder. Don’t like this bill? Eh…you don’t know what’s good for you. You’re either a tea-bagging moron or a gutless liberal who will fold sooner or later.
Like I said, Jackson must be spinning.
I have no idea what RPM Andy is up to at the moment, but Cost is dead right in his assessment: This is going to be politically bloody for the Democrats. If they pass this monstrosity, the payback for them is not going to be manageable and will be quite possibly irrecoverable. As in a permanent damage to the brand.
I’m fully aware that politicians like Pelosi feel invincible in their deep-blue seats, but the rest of the Democrats will be – frankly – in very, very bad shape.
The true cost of this bill will be much, much higher than anything the Democrats have publicly touted. One only has to look at the true costs of every Federal program – and the rapidly rising salaries of Federal officials – to understand that they are lying about the costs.
Spending like this and taxing as they must to try to pay for a sliver of what this is going to cost will inevitably cause long-term damage to the economy of this nation.
Forcing private citizens into purchasing some form of bureaucrat approved insurance from a corporate entity – with the full might and power of the government enforcing the purchase. Didn’t we settle the issue of involuntary servitude a long time ago? We have a constitutional amendment and everything.
The voter backlash will be positively biblical.
“The voter backlash will be positively biblical.”
Yeah, the friggin ‘second coming’ is coming in November.
Government sponsored meddling in the home mortgage market caused near catastrophic economic consequences for the nation and drove us into double digit unemployment, a deep recession, and a real estate debacle still unfolding.
Now with Congress heedlessly pressing on against the objections of the overwhelming majority of Americans, and determined to gut Medicare funding by nearly $600 billion as the first step toward a forced imposition of socialized medicine, we can only wait for the other shoe to fall.
Economic ruin and healthcare disaster will follow these two wrongheaded Democrat initiatives as surely as night follows day. Courtesy of the Democrat Party, Barack Hussein Obama, and the gullible idiots who put them in office.
“Didn’t we settle the issue of involuntary servitude a long time ago?”
You have to remember that the people in power now, The Obamessiah, Reid, Pelosi, et al view the Constitution as nothing more than an impediment to their goals. They will ignore it and circumvent it whenever and wherever they think they can get away with it. And, so far, that’s pretty much daily.
“Then, check out the opinion polls and you’ll find a mass public that is staunchly opposed to this bill.”
Again, you have to understand the way the Democrats, especially the far left ones, think. They truly believe, in their own fevered brains, that the majority of the American people are ALWAYS on their side. It doesn’t matter what the polls show. If the poll numbers don’t agree that the majority is with them then the poll simply isn’t a valid poll or, suddenly, polls don’t mean anything.
My big worry is that, if they do pass this boondoggle, by the time the ill effects of it are felt by the general public it will be too late to vote them out and try to fix the fiscal disaster these morons are creating.