For a lot of you those are the only choices available to characterize your U.S. representative for his/her vote yesterday on the repeal of the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act. I am not one of you (this time), but that doesn’t mean you can’t play the game.
The Republican Party majority in the House and Speaker John Boehner made it a top priority to vote on repeal of last year’s health care insurance reform. They did it even though they know that the Democrats who control the Senate won’t bring it up for a vote there, and that even if the Senate voted for repeal the president would use his veto. But they wanted to make a political point, get members on the record on this issue, and keep one promise in that Pledge to America many of them took last fall. I don’t have an issue with any of that.
I do have an issue with a party that claims to be a champion of fiscal responsibility and deficit lowering voting for repeal after they all but covered their eyes and ears and refused to believe the Congressional Budget Office report which found that repeal would actually increase the deficit and leave more than 30 million more people without health insurance. Boehner said CBO is entitled to its opinion!
If a CBO report is an opinion, it’s the considered opinion of the experts employed by Congress to provide lawmakers with numbers that are not influenced by political needs and desires…it’s the closest thing to a truly non-partisan statement you’ll find in Washington, D.C. What’s more, a group of independent experts found that the Republican claim that the new health insurance law will kill jobs is not justified by the facts. The GOP offered an analysis that claims the new law “may” make the nation’s fiscal situation worse; among others, economist Paul Krugman doesn’t think much of that report’s reasoning or logic.
OK, game time. Here’s a list of how the members of the House voted on repeal of Obamacare; check to see if your rep, who campaigned as an agent of deficit reduction, got to Washington and started off by voting for a bill that would raise the deficit (if it ever became law, which it won’t). Then you can ask him/her what they hell they think they’re doing.
HEY, IT'S PAT RYAN'S BLOG! 
In the political world facts don’t matter, perception is everything. That’s why everybody loves the symbolic gestures the republicans are making. Now, if they could just figure out a way to make real things, you know, like jobs and money and stuff – symbolic; they’d be more popular than ever!
If facts don’t matter in the political world, it’s only because we citizens/voters let the politicians get away with that. Look what that’s gotten us.
Thanks for the comment.
Oh, Pat. I agree with you completely. Sorry, my comment was a little snarky, but we’re on the same side.
Maybe I should just stick with poetry! 🙂
I’m not sure I believe repealing the act would increase the deficit.
I could write a legitimate-sounding report which would say the opposite.
I’m irritated the act passed in the first place, and now I am irritated Republicans are wasting time with a symbolic attempt to repeal it.
And I am irritated that poop smells funny.
It doesn’t smell funny, it’s supposed to smell like that.
If Doug is suggesting that CBO’s analysis of the repeal of the health care law is only “legitimate sounding,” then I would ask Doug to point out why the analysis only sounds legitimate rather than being substantively legitimate. If Doug is suggesting that the CBO’s analysis is measured and amenable to multiple interpretations, that I agree wholeheartedly.
If Doug’s “sounding legitimate” and Lavender’s “perception equates to facts,” are the same or even congruent concepts, then they both call for the same solution: let’s test whatever the premise de jour is. We should never be afraid of any premise so long as we are ready to test it. If the facts support the premise, then the premise not only sounds legitimate, it may just be so and it may be more than perception.
I recently had a debate with a colleague about whether folks who make more than $250,000 in annual gross taxable income actually are the economic engine that creates jobs. When I asked him for proof, his response was the incredulous look that [said,] everyone knows that to be true. When I responded that I am a business owner and the job creation that I am responsible for and that my clients are responsible for have nothing to do with personal after tax income, he still simply looked incredulous. When I asked him to explain how the premise obtains when he also believes that a corporation’s principal purpose is to generate shareholder yield even if that means sending jobs to China and eliminating jobs in the U.S., again he just simply repeated the premise. The premise may be true (even though I am a skeptic). I welcome the facts on both sides of the premise. Without these facts, the premise, however, ceased being a rational proposition and instead became a tautology.
Then again, maybe we should all just read Lavender’s poetry! Merci. Pace e salute. Pascal