Irreconcilable differences
Reactionaries rail as Democrats hail historic health care reform law that some say doesn’t go far enough
By André Coleman , Carl Kozlowski , Kevin Uhrich 03/25/2010
He may not be fair or balanced, but Carl Cameron of ultra-conservative FOX News offered the best description yet for the historic health care bill signed into law Tuesday by President Barack Obama, calling it “the crown jewel of the Democratic agenda over the past 50 years.”
So monumental was the vote in the House of Representatives Sunday night that some have compared the legislation to the Social Security Act of 1935. Democratic Congressman Jim Clyburn of South Carolina dubbed it “the Civil Rights Act of the 21st century.”
Clyburn, who is African American, had good reason to make that historical connection, considering some of the ugly remnants of those times that emerged in the final days of the national health care debate.
On Friday and Saturday, thousands of protesters, among them members of the conservative Tea Party, converged on the nation’s Capitol, some carrying signs that read “Kill the Bill” and others subjecting lawmakers to withering insults. In one instance, an aide to Georgia Congressman John Lewis said an anti-reform protester called the civil rights icon a “nigger.” Another black congressman said a protester spat on him, and another called Congressman Barney Frank, who is gay, a “faggot,” Frank told the Associated Press Monday.
Numerous bloggers defended Tea Partiers as generally civil and polite people and suggested that spitters or people using racial or sexual epithets were planted among legitimate protesters to generate sympathy for the Democrats. Brian Fuller, an officer with the Pasadena Republican Club and a former GOP candidate for the Assembly, said it is irresponsible for journalists to repeat claims of racism without further evidence.
“I’m sure there are jerks out there and they should be called on it. But to tar and feather the whole movement as wacko John Birchers is terribly unfair and an abuse of journalistic power,” Fuller said.
In the end, this divisive and dramatic example of democracy in action hinged on the question of federal funding for abortion, a provision that is not included in the new law to the chagrin of some women’s rights advocates.
Democratic holdouts, led by Michigan’s Bart Stupak, were assured by Obama that federal funding for abortion would not be included in the bill, and the president backed that up by signing an executive order affirming federal funds cannot be used for the procedure.
“We regret that a pro-choice president was forced to sign an executive order that further codifies the proposed anti-choice language in the health care reform bill, originally proposed by Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska,” Sheri Bonner, president of Planned Parenthood of Pasadena and the San Gabriel Valley, wrote in an email to the Pasadena Weekly.
“While it is unfortunate that it has diverted the nation’s focus away from this bill’s accomplishments, including the extension of family planning to millions of women, it is critically important to note that it does not include the Stupak abortion ban, which would have meant a complete and total ban of abortion coverage in private health insurance.”
As Stupak, a Blue Dog conservative Democrat and one of the most fiercely anti-abortion lawmakers in Congress, stood during a portion of the dramatic televised weekend proceedings, Texas Republican Randy Neugebauer shouted “baby killer,” reminiscent of Republican Congressman Joe Wilson of South Carolina calling Obama a “liar” during his State of the Union Address in January.
In an interview with McClatchy News Service, Clyburn said he’s been friends with Stupak for years and helped bring him back into the party fold by brokering the deal that led to Obama’s executive order and his support.
Pasadena Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff, also a Blue Dog Democrat, said he was proud to vote with the majority.
“Just in my district alone that will mean 80,000 people without health insurance will be able to get it, 93,000 seniors will get help with their prescription drug plans, 15,000 people will avoid bankruptcy, another 15,000 will be able to find health care even though they have pre-existing conditions,” Schiff said.
But Schiff said hateful remarks had no place in the debate and protests over the bill.
“I had a chance to march across the street to vote, with John Lewis leading the way,” Schiff recalled. “He told us before we left that 45 years ago he had been part of a march in Selma. To think that the day before people hurled racial slurs at him like they did 45 years ago is appalling and it really does undermine what civil discourse we have left in the political sphere. It turns the Capitol and the Congress into late-night TV in the worst sense of that term.”
HR 3590, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which in December passed the Senate by a vote of 60 to 39 and made it through the House Sunday on a 219 to 212 party-line vote, now guarantees health care coverage for 32 million people with or without pre-existing health conditions — 94 percent of all uninsured Americans — at an estimated cost of nearly $940 billion over the next decade, along with a simultaneous reduction of the national deficit by approximately $1.3 trillion over the next 20 years.
The provisions contained in the Senate version of the bill were signed into law Tuesday by an elated Obama, the same day the bill went back to the Senate for reconsideration and possible changes. If the bill is changed, it would have to go back to the House for approval. Some Republicans have vowed to try to hold up passage, but that appears unlikely at this point since this special “reconciliation” process used by Congress allows for a simple majority vote once the House bill returns to the Democrat-controlled Senate.
Fuller said the new law is “fatally flawed.”
“Health care mandates and higher taxes at a time of 10 percent unemployment could hang the Democrats. It’s a millstone around their neck,” said Fuller.
On Monday, 13 states filed suit in Florida challenging the new law on constitutional grounds. They are Alabama, Colorado, Florida, Idaho, Louisiana, Michigan, Nebraska, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah and Washington. At the heart of the claim, the Los Angeles Times reported, is the question of whether Congress has the authority to force people to buy insurance, which the law requires beginning in 2014. White House spokesman Robert Gibbs expressed confidence that the legal challenge will fail, according to reports.
“It wasn’t an easy vote for a lot of people, but it was the right vote,” Obama said soon after the bill passed. The president called the House action “a victory for the American people and a victory for common sense.”
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At its most basic, Obama's HCR bill -- without even the ghost of a public option -- STILL requires virtually all the public's hospital money to be completely diverted towards all those corporations that were in control of health care before it became law. This also means that all those millions of people who couldn't afford healthcare before it passed will now be required anyway to still buy unnegotiatable private corporate healthcare at the point of an IRS subpoena.
Some reform.
In the meantime, Iraq and Afghanistan are still sucking billions of dollars a month from the public pocket book (as also is our prospective war with Iran), our second-team war-president mandates that America's drone assassination robots must still regularly blow up innocent noncombatant civilians in Pakistan, and Obama just accomplished what even the Bush Cabal couldn't achieve --
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/31/scienc...
-- by opening up America's costal waterways to the globes environmentally devastating polyglot of oil cartels.
Obama's giving us "change" alright, he's changed into this century's greatest political salesman of high-end, neo-confidence propaganda, and this is a feat that Dubya Bush's and his daddy only dreamed of ever accomplishing!
Meantime, the Bill of Rights continues to get waterboarded by America's recently elected, Constitutional professor in the Whitehouse.
DanD