Snow Job
Posted on December 21, 2009
Snow Job
For an old-timer like me, the snow that blanketed the Washington DC region was a beauty to behold. It brought back memories of snowball fights, and snowmen, and sledding in the days of my youth.
My three-year old son, on the other hand, hated the snow. He doesn’t like to be cold, and while he liked the snow to look at through the window, he hated the idea of going outside.
It made for a long weekend, me wanting to go outside and recapture my youth, and him wanting to stay inside and keep warm.
What made the weekend longer was the specter of poorly named health care bill gaining momentum in the Senate. They call it health care reform, but if this is reform, I have a snowman to sell you. Get it now before it melts away.
This is a first class snow job. It is so bad, even Olympia Snowe is going to vote against it.
It should be called, first and foremost, a tax increase, not a health care reform bill. It raises taxes on old people, young people, tan people and pale people. It raises a lot of taxes to pay for a lot of bad spending.
I am proud of Ben Nelson for cutting his deal to have the rest of the country pay for Nebraska’s Medicaid spending in perpetuity. Nebraska gets this great deal, not because it has any kind of particular Medicaid problem (Nebraska doesn’t have that many Medicaid patients, in the great scheme of things), but because Mr. Nelson is willing to compromise his principles on abortion in order to get the rest of the country to pay for his state’s Medicaid patients.
Think about it for a second. Great deal if you are a pro-choicer who happens to live in Nebraska, but an outrage if you are in the 99.9 percent of the rest of the country.
I would rather build Mr. Nelson some bridges over the some acres of corn in the center of his state than set this terrible precedent. What comes next? Let’s give Florida residents the ability to not pay into the Medicare system. Or Nevada residents a break on paying for Social Security. Or how bout we just tell those Montanans that they don’t have to chip in for Defense spending this year?
This is a joke. This isn’t health care reform. This is a Turkish Bazaar, where the rugs being sold are those rugs that are being pulled over the collective eyes of the American people.
The weather outside the Capitol dome was frightful over the weekend, but not nearly as frightful as the action inside the Senate chamber.
I would rather get a lump of coal in my stocking than this snow job the Senate delivered us for Christmas.