Obama to Circumvent Normal Congressional Vote on Health Care Reform

Our lovable president got on national TV Wednesday night and waxed eloquent about how Congress was actually in agreement on about 80% of the ideas needed to pass health care reform and that the bickering needed to end so they could get something done. He talked about his grand ideas to provide affordable health insurance to all Americans without adding a penny to the deficit, despite the fact the Congressional Budget Office, using the numbers given to it by the White House, predicted a $220 billion increase in the deficit over the next 10 years as a direct result of Obama's health care plan.

The president made a noble request for bipartisanship to get this reform done "because something has to be done." And less than 48 hours after his speech on Wednesday night, he's laying the groundwork to use the budget reconciliation maneuver to circumvent a true congressional vote on the bill.

So much for listening to the people who turned out in 10s of thousands at town hall meetings in August to express their concern about this health care bill. We the people can state our opinions all we want, but our leadership simply doesn't care. According to a recent Gallup poll, 39% of the people polled said they would direct their representative to vote AGAINST Obama's health care plan as opposed to 37% who would direct their representative to vote for it. The other 24% had no opinion. 64% of the people said their vote in 2010 would be directly affected by how their representative votes on health care.

Despite all of this, Obama continues to ignore the citizens. In the article above talking about use of the reconciliation measure, Obama is quoted as saying, "there are a lot of politicians like that who, all they're thinking about is just, ‘How do I get reelected?’ and so they never actually get anything done." That quote was followed by this one from an administration official:

“I think getting something done is paramount here," a senior administration official said before Obama’s address to Congress. "We want to bring along everyone who’s willing to come with us, but the fact that not everyone is willing to come with us is not an excuse to fail in dealing with what is really a fundamental issue that has to be done."

There you have it. This administration has an agenda and they couldn't care less what you and I think. We need to "get something done" because we the people are apparently too stupid to decide what's best for us. We need some out of touch elitists in Washington to make those decisions for us.

In summary, our president thinks that a representative or senator who votes against health care reform because his or her constituents have requested him or her to do so is purely an act of selfish desire to get re-elected. Sounds like a classic Catch-22 to me--represent your constituents by voting against health care and be smeared by the president and his democrat buddies for playing partisan politics, or ignore the majority of your constituents and vote for health care, thereby ensuring you don't get re-elected.