Friday, October 30th, 2009 - Health Care, Stalling, and Halloween
Boo: By far, the scariest things out there will not be at your door tomorrow night but will be in Washington DC next week. That is when the Speaker intends to call a vote on her 1,990 page Pelosi Health Care Bill. This bill, which was crafted entirely behind closed doors, was just revealed publicly yesterday. But already we know that the mandates, taxes, deficits, spending, lawsuits, and restrictions in this bill are enough to scare any freedom loving American.
I write you this, as I usually do, while flying home Friday for a short weekend in Orange County. We were in session in DC all week. What did we do all week? Well, here is a complete list of every bill or resolution we voted on the floor. All of them passed. I have excluded only the procedural votes:
H. Res. 368 - Congratulating the University of Iowa wrestling team on winning the NCAA national championship
H. Res. 562 - Congratulating The Syracuse University's Men's Lacrosse team for winning the NCAA national championship
H.R. 2489 - National Land Remote Sensing Outreach Act
H. Res. 854 - Recognizing Weber State University on its 120th anniversary
S. 1694 - Allowing Funding for the interoperable emergency communications grant program to extend through 2012
H. Res. 838 - Welcoming to the United States His All Holiness Bartholomew, Archbishop of Constantinople.
H. Res. 784 - Honoring the 2,560th anniversary of the birth of Confucius
(No, I am not making this up. We do some lame resolutions in Congress but this one has to be one of the top 5 most inane. We are honoring a guy who is not an American, who has been dead for 2,500 years, on the 2,560th anniversary of his birth? Not the 2,500th or the 3,000th. The 2,560th! Huh?)
H. Res. 824 - Congratulating the Northwestern University women's lacrosse team on winning the NCAA championship
S. Con. Res. 45 - To call on the government of Iran to release the 3 American hikers held captive
H.R. 2996 - The Interior Appropriations Bill
H. Res. 783 - Recognizing Hispanic Heritage Month.
H.R. 3854 - Small Business Administration Financing and Investment Act.
H. Res. 729 - Designating National Firefighters Memorial Day
Not a lot of critical issues there. You might think that instead of, or in addition to, some of this stuff we might be....oh...trying to help improve job growth or dealing with the situations in Iran or Afghanistan or a myriad of other actually pressing issues to the country. So why aren't we?
Well there are a variety of reasons. A bipartisan bill to impose refined petroleum sanctions on Iran until they end their nuclear program is being held up by the White House. Even the French have decided that we need to get tough with Iran but the President has not. Additional stimulus for the economy is running into trouble as the Democratic leadership worries about the political ramifications of admitting that the existing stimulus is not working and tries to figure out how they can create jobs while simultaneously raising taxes. Any action on Afghanistan is awaiting the President's decision on whether to keep or change his strategy that he announced 6 months ago. And they are completely flummoxed on how to reduce the massive deficit they created while still increasing spending.
Furthermore, the Speaker and the President are determined to socialize medicine and to permanently put 1/6th of the American economy in complete control of the government. But the American people don't want that, not a single elected Republican in Congress wants that, and a significant number of elected Democrats don't want that. Pelosi needs to get 218 Democrats to vote for her bill. That means she can lose 39 Democrats, but no more. She is keeping Democrats in town "working" because she wants to keep trying to convince them to vote for her bill. She also knows that if they go home, most of them will hear the opposite message from their constituents. So, she keeps us all in town with busy work so that she can keep using carrots and sticks to get the votes for her awful bill. Don't underestimate the power of the Presidency and the Speakership to convince Members of Congress to vote their way.
And just what is in this bill? Well, having had it for less than 24 hours, I can't tell you everything. But here are a few facts you may find interesting:
- It is 1990 pages long.
- It has about 400,000 words. That is 5 times the length in words of the Torah.
- It contains a government-run "option,” which will effectively not be optional over the next 5-8 years.
- It spends over $1 trillion. That amounts to over $2.2 million per word.
- It uses the word "shall" 3,429 times. So, 3,429 times it compels someone to do or not do something.
- But one place where it uses the word "may" is in reference to whether Members of Congress "may" join the government run system. So, much of the public will be forced onto the government-run system but we in Congress will not. (Do what I say, not what I do)
- It increases taxes on small business, wealthy individuals, all medical devices (including wheelchairs, bandages, and such), people who save for their own health care costs through health savings accounts, payroll taxes and anyone who does not buy health insurance.
- It authorizes government funding of abortions, which is not allowed under current federal law.
- Any state that has a limit on attorney's fees or punitive damage awards in malpractice cases (like California) must change that law to remove all limits or the state loses federal money under the bill. (blatant trial lawyer provision)
And that's just the beginning.
Next week is D-day week for this bill. You will receive updates from me during the week as news progresses.
I sincerely hope that all of us together can persuade at least 40 reasonable Democrats that there are much better ways to reform health care than this monstrosity.
Happy Halloween. Let's hope that we can keep this ghoulish policy locked away forever.
I remain respectfully,
Congressman John Campbell
Member of Congress
