White Coats, Little White Lies, and “Let’s Make a Deal”—ObamaCare Revealing a Flawed Process in Washington

posted at 12:16 pm on March 4, 2010 by Rovin

A nice young lady commenter on Fox News said yesterday that “every time there’s a bill that’s not funded, the Democrats come up with, “well, we’ll just save the money from waste, fraud and abuse in other government programs”.  In the words of Toyota, “GIVE ME A BRAKE”.   If saving enough money to pay for a large portion of a health care bill consists of cleaning up a system of waste, why didn’t the Democrats start this process of “saving money” three years ago?   And, to be fair, if Democrats or Republicans have not reined in waste by now, how can we expect it to be done in the future?  More importantly, how can the CBO use these unsubstantiated figures to score a trillion dollar health care bill?

The President yesterday afternoon (pacific coast time) proceeded to give “another” speech on health care reform.  Mr. Obama put his “cards on the table” once more with a room full of doctors and nurses in white coats.  But the day was a culmination of contradictions following an unaffected health care summit the previous week filled with, what the president called “props”, just like the white coats you saw yesterday.  Hint:  The White Coats in the White House are called “props”.  Those are the same items our President told Eric Cantor at the summit were “the type of political stunt that gets in the way of lawmakers having a serious conversation.”   The President’s speech was filled with enough contradictions to supply monologues for Leno and Stewart.  The child directing air traffic at JFK seemed to be more coherent, (and trusting), than the president.

But wait!  There’s more behind door number two.  In addition to a Cornhusker kickback and a Louisiana Purchase, take at look at this.  According to The Weekly Standard, the president’s day was not over when he finished his 126^th speech on health care reform. There was more work to be done, namely have a sit down with his subordinates, House Democrats who voted no and have (unlike many others) actually listened to the voice mails from their districts, read the faxes, emails and letters from their constituents pleading that their representatives put an end to this legislation.  But, twisting arms to attain a desired result is nothing new in politics—yet quid pro quo, (the art of trading something for something), has also crept into the process:  

“Tonight, Barack Obama will host ten House Democrats who voted against the health care bill in November at the White House; he’s obviously trying to persuade them to switch their votes to yes. One of the ten is Jim Matheson of Utah. The White House just sent out a press release announcing that today President Obama nominated Matheson’s brother Scott M. Matheson, Jr. to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit” (link)

Now the White House will tell the public that the timing of this appointment was “just a coincidence” Draw your own conclusions.  With the process now evolved into a “let’s make a deal” mentality to purchase the conscience of a politician, who cares if this process has driven American approval of congress to historical lows?  When did legislators arrive at the conclusion that substituting compromise for personal gain was an accepted process?  Why should a Democrat, (or any politician), have to go home to their districts to answer these sort of questions?  If Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and President Obama all say this is “how things are done”, what happened to the promises these three campaigned on to change the status quo in Washington?  Perhaps the better question is, how can Democrats that return home explain why they voted for a bill, (that a majority of the nation has rejected), that they knew in their heart was wrong for this country?  

Ed Morrissey posted this morning that the House is still in the undecided column with Congressman Bart Stupak and his pro-life Democrats standing “firmly” in the way of passing the legislation.  Ed also points out many of these “holdouts” also reside in red districts where their political futures may very well rest on this one decision.  Suddenly, a pot full of campaign money or an appearance by the sitting President may not be enough to convince the electorate that cramming a seriously flawed health care bill down the public’s throat is a recipe for getting re-elected.  Waste, fraud, and abuse indeed.

(credit—AP photo inserted)

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