The bad news is that the House passed a job-crushing, debt-exploding, health-care-quality-destroying bill on Saturday night. The good news is the Senate won’t pass anything close to the House bill (as described here and here). Thankfully, that means the fight over health care reform is far from over.
Yet certainly the willingness of House Democrats to overcome their differences and pass a bill should frighten all lovers of liberty out there. While today it seems hard to see how Senate Democrats will craft something acceptable to the many Senators who have fundamental policy disagreements, and even harder to see how you mesh the House’s version of compromise with the Senate’s, the House results show that it is terrifyingly possible. It’s especially possible with the White House twisting arms and pushing the idea that this is “historic” (and it certainly is historic — the beginning of the end of private health care in America). The Democrat Leadership, at least, seem very williing to lose their majority over this (in some ways I respect that… if only the Republican majorities had been so willing to go the mat over comprehensive tax reform or true budget cutting…).
What all this means is that it is more important than ever for people out there to stay involved in the debate and educate neighbors about just how disasterous the Democratic plan would be in terms of the health care system and our nation’s finances.
Voters should also take a step back and learn a larger lesson from this: many people who are generally right-of-center bought candidate Obama’s moderate sounding tone. They wanted to believe that he was a centrist and a uniter–in spite of all of the actual evidence to the contrary that, indeed, he was the most radical liberal that our country had ever contemplated electing. Now we are preparing to pay a very, very big price. Actions speak louder than words as we are learning today.