Why Republicans Should Vote Yes Tomorrow
We’ve reached a point where my friend Ed Morrissey and I must come to a parting of the ways on the current health care debate, though we’ve seen eye to eye on most portions of it up until now. Tomorrow, the Senate will face a procedural vote to open debate on their version of the bill. Note: This is not a vote on the bill itself, signaling approval or disapproval. It’s simply a vote to allow debate to begin.
Ed is urging his readers to melt the phones and get their Senators to vote against this. I’m sorry to say, this is entirely wrong headed thinking. (Though I did call both of my Senators today to remind them of my opposition to the bill itself in its current form.)
Whether they be Republicans or moderate Democrats, I would urge a full throated yes vote tomorrow. To vote no on this action is to say, “No. We are, as you have suggested, nothing more than the Party of No. We have no ideas to present. We have no alternate suggestions. We just don’t want to talk about it.”
You have plenty of ideas and many valid objections to the bill as presented, and an open debate on the floor of the upper chamber is exactly where this should play out in full view of the voters, the press and the public. You should be pointing out that the proposed methods for paying for this plan are mostly fiction. You should be pointing out the across the board taxes which will be imposed. You should be pointing out the highly dubious constitutional basis of any mandate by the federal government forcing citizens to purchase a product from a private provider. You should be pointing out the damaging effect on a major private industry (along with all the jobs that entails) of any so called “public option.”
These are all valid, solid selling points for your argument. You need to make these points like adults and then move toward starting over with a new, leaner bill that accomplishes what so many Americans want in health insurance reform without all of the damaging side effects and costs. But if you vote no on even opening debate, none of this happens. You are simply the party of no. There will be time over the course of this debate to continue digging into the bill’s particulars and bringing these items to the attention of the public. If you vote no, you should be ashamed of yourselves and just get out of the way.
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7 Responses to “Why Republicans Should Vote Yes Tomorrow”
I don't know, perhaps the bill could be tweaked a little before opening debate. If nothing else, just to show the Reps that the Dems are a little flexible. Or, maybe, that stage has already passed. If so, let the debate begin.
This is like the poultry on Colonel Sander's chicken farm urging them to move to the next step in the process in the hopes that there can be an open debate on the end result. I don't think most Americans are that naive.
What open debate? 10 hours on a 2000+ page bill? What amendments? Reid has already bought off as many votes as needed to pass a bill. After that it's a behind closed doors sausage making operation with a push to pass whatever the Democrat leadership wants under reconciliation. Any delay in ramming this down our throats is at the very least a delay in having it rammed down our throats.
They should debate this bill now. Then in another ten years, when health care is 25% of the GDP, when half the country doesn't have health insurance, we can think back fondly to when we almost passed HCR. And we will be proud we prevented the government from taking over health care, leaving it in the benevolent hands of the private insurance companies. Proud but broke. And really sick of course.
I think I agree Jazz. After complaining about not having time to consider the bill, etc, I think it wouldn't look very good to vote against starting the process of considering the bill.
But even besides that, I think it makes sense politically. No one would would vote “No” today is going to change their mind and vote “Yes” later (I understand another procedural vote would happen after the debate that would also require 60 votes). But, with a few weeks of debate, and a few weeks of the public getting a taste of the bill, a few people who would vote “Yes” today might vote “No” in a few weeks.
So, instead of the bill failing with 59 votes today, it could fail with 55 votes in a few weeks. If a few moderate Democrats bail out then it helps the Republican image because it bolsters the argument that they are opposing the bill for legitimate reasons and not just political ones.
That's enough raw political analysis for me. I feel so dirty. I need to go take a shower or something.
Why bother. The bill is so weak that it might just turn to dust upon being exposed to light. We need a single payer system, Medicare for all. Anything else is an unholy mess. The Senators especially have put politics above the good of the country and I don't see them actually doing the job. Let's get this past us so they can figure how much to spend in our useless wars and how to block judicial nominees, thus making good service to the country from the juduciary impossible because of vacancies. And other important things.
“I don't think most Americans are that naive.”
ObamaCo and the Congre-Dems think so — or that we're all gullible or will accept whatever they do.
At this point, we know the Senate Demmies will play their games, and I simply await not the next Senate vote after the very predictable vote today, but the conference. That they're progressing is no surprise.
Why vote to debate a bill that is designed to fail so that the left side of the Democratic Party can get want it really wants, single payer with the government in control of all aspects of healthcare. The current bill is desgiend to leave millions without insurance and to have the public option be too expensive.
The next step will be to use tax dollars to subsize the public option so that the insurance companies can be put out of business. The last step will be to lower reimbursements so that only minorities and recent immigrants will be left working in healthcare.