"I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help..."

Why, yes, I'd love to turn my health care over to such a hyper-competent group as this:

A proposal by Sen. Jim Bunning, R-Ky., that would have required the Senate Finance Committee to post the final language of the $900 billion health care reform bill, as well as a Congressional Budget Office cost analysis, on the committee’s website for 72 hours prior to a vote was rejected 12-11.

...

Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., himself admitted that “This probably sounds a little crazy to some people that we are voting on something before we have seen legislative language.” Indeed.

Baucus’ excuse - that it would take his committee staff two weeks to post the bill online – sounds a little crazy too. Finance Committee members are the only ones who vote based on the “plain English” version of a bill, not the legally-binding language.

So they can put together a bill that's going to a) add 15 (or 30 or 47, depending on the President's mood, apparently) million people to the insurance rolls b) while providing improved care c) at lower cost for everyone d) and allowing everyone to keep the coverage they've already got if they want to e) and not increasing the budget deficit f) or increasing taxes¹, but they can't post that freakin' bill on the internet? What the hell are they voting on? If there's something to actually debate and vote on², isn't it in some sort of document form? How low does it take to post a Word document or a .pdf online?

To paraphrase Lord Kelvin, "When you can [write down] what you are speaking about, and express it in [words], you know something about it; but when you cannot [write it down], when you cannot express it in [words], your knowledge of it is of a meager and unsatisfactory kind; it may be the beginning of knowledge, but you have scarcely, in your [committee], advanced it to the stage of [a votable bill]." And obviously, if you can write it down, you can post it on the internet.

It boggles my mind that anyone can watch any part of this process and think, "yes, this is how we're going to make the health care system better for everyone! What could possibly go wrong?"




¹ - Every time I write that out, I vacillate between giggling and rage. I giggle that the preposterousness of the suggestion, that there's somehow, some way that increased government intervention is going to lead to any one of those things happening, never mind all six simultaneously, and rage that the President of the United States actually thinks that the US citizens are stupid enough to buy it. He doesn't even have enough respect for the people of this country to try a plausible argument.

²And if the Finance Committee isn't voting on the "legally-binding language" of the bill than they're not voting on the bill at all - they're voting on someone's description of what the bill might be. Everyone knows that the devil's in the details, and they're voting on something that doesn't have those details.

US House votes yea on, well, nobody exactly knows, but it must be a good idea...

The United State House of Representatives, by a 219-212 margin last night, passed a bill that has not yet actually been written.

Through a series of parliamentary inquiries, the Republicans learned that the 300-plus page managers' amendment, added to the bill last night in the House Rules Committee, has not even been been integrated with the official copy of the 1,090-page bill at the House Clerk's desk, let alone in any other location. The two documents are side-by-side at the desk as the clerk reads through the instructions in the 300 page document for altering the 1,090 page document.

But they cannot be simply combined, because the amendment contains 300 pages of items like this: "Page 15, beginning line 8, strike paragraph (11)..." How many members of Congress do you suppose have gone through it all to see how it changes the bill? [LB: My guess is approximately zero (0).]

Global Warming is apparently so urgent that we can't even wait until members of Congress know what they're voting on.

Of course, only a fool or a racist (Obama supports this) or a sexist (Pelosi supports this) could possibly be opposed to this kind of behavior...

"I'm from the Government, and I'm here to help..."

Investors Business Daily:

The House of Representatives is preparing to vote on an anti-stimulus package that in the name of saving the earth will destroy the American economy. Smoot-Hawley will seem like a speed bump.

Not since a misguided piece of legislation imposed tariffs that turned a recession into a depression has there been a piece of legislation as bad as Waxman-Markey.

...

It's what Janet Napolitano, secretary of Homeland Security, might call a "man-caused disaster," a phrase she coined to replace the politically incorrect "terrorist attack." But no terrorist could ever dream of inflicting as much damage as this bill...

I've actually, for the first time, called my "representative." She'll vote for it anyway, of course.