Politicians in the U.S. stink. They posture and hide, posture and hide. They tell you and the whole world that they are for health care reform, but once hidden from the public eye, they do what's best for the industries that reportedly bankroll their political campaigns. The biggest contributors to political campaigns are health insurance companies and big pharmaceutical industries, so it is only natural that those industries would command the passionate loyalty of love-struck suitors.
So many of the Democratic and Republican legislators are in the pockets of the health care industry and the behavior of many legislators reflects this Mephistophelian influence.
Fed up over the impasse on health care, I decided to write an "I'm fed up" letter - a reverse psychology, a devil's advocate kind of letter - to the liberal-leaning Las Vegas Sun last Monday. The Sun published it on Wednesday and unleashed a torrent of befuddled, annoyed, defensive reactions from other readers. Even the Sun editorial writers chimed in - twice.
Here was my letter that elicited the cascade of other readers' reactions:
"... President Obama and the Democrats promised the country health care reform legislation during the 2006 and 2008 elections and the country responded by giving the Democrats overwhelming majorities in Congress, not to mention the Presidency itself.
"If the Democrats fail to reform health care this year, the resultant carnage in the 2010 elections will make the 1994 Democratic debacle look like a 4th of July picnic. Democrats and Independents are fed up with the Democratic legislators they elected in Congress.
"I am a dyed-in-the-wool Democrat - have been since JFK - yet I have become convinced that for the sake of the country the Republicans must control both Houses of Congress. Many of my friends also feel this way. (This is known as the take-away close: if you don't shape up, we will take away your Democratic majority in Congress, hold up our noses, and give it to the other side.)
"The reason is simple. The Republicans act as one, think as one. They proved during the George W Bush years that they could pass major legislation with narrow majorities in Congress. The Democrats, working with absolute majorities last year, could not pass health care reform. They passed a stimulus bill, true, but it was an anemic bill. They rescued the banks but did not insist on restraint on bonuses and a promise that the banks would start lending.
"Many of the Democratic legislators are compromised in that they take money from lobbyists for industries they are trying to regulate. The Republicans are also in the pocket of the same industries, but at least the Republicans are not being hypocritical. We know what we are getting when we elect Republicans. They're the devils we know."
The Sun published Las Vegan Bart Atwell's letter which read in part:
"Regarding Cesar Lumba's Wednesday letter to the editor...Republicans offered little but obstructionism, publicly stating that they were going to use the health care issue to undermine the president... It strikes me that the real solution is to increase the Senate's Democratic majority so that legislation doesn't require unanimous Democratic support to pass. Increasing the number of Republicans would only further stymie the legislative process."
The Las Vegas Sun editorial writers joined in the fray - twice - by claiming that the Republicans offer nothing but obstructionism. It's lead editorial "Blocking Progress - Republicans should quit slash-and-burn tactics, help push country forward" argues that "Republicans have mounted an incredible effort to try to derail the president, and in doing so, have further inflamed the nation's angst. Republicans have spread their dire prophecies of doom and gloom about health care, the economy and just about anything else the president has supported. They have consistently derided Obama's plans and refused to work with him - and then they blame him."
I checked out the Las Vegas Sun website and to my amazement, there was an ongoing debate raging in the "Letters" section featuring Democratic and Republican partisans' reactions to my letter.
I am a Democrat first and an American second. In the end, I will always vote for the Democratic candidates. But I wanted to stir up a hornet's nest, hoping that some good might come out of going public with my frustration over the failure - so far - of the Democratic majority in Congress to pass health care reform.
Because health care has not been reformed, the issue hangs over the head of Obama and he cannot give 110% to his efforts to create jobs. Because health care reform has not passed, the country calls into question whether Obama and Congress shall be able to come up with a jobs-creation bill that is pure job-creation and not a sausage made up of Republican and Democratic pork.
Because health care has not passed, other major legislations that will transform the country are now called into question. Will the country pass cap-and-trade, which will limit the volume of noxious and global-warming gases released by industry into the atmosphere? Will the country finally make the huge effort to convert to renewable sources of power - solar, wind, steam - creating jobs and rendering the Middle East sheiks irrelevant in our major foreign policy decisions?
Will the President be able to pass another stimulus bill that will provide a much needed push to the earlier stimulus bill that is currently stalled in the extremely complicated maze of government and private industry bureaucracies?
There is so much work to do to make sure the country - the world - does not slip into a double-dip recession and push the world economy into another Great Depression.
Will President Obama and the Democrats be able to pursue the agenda that got them elected in the first place?
My disappointment was not over the Republicans' obstructionism. Republicans have always been obstructionist in recent memory. But they are not to blame for the failure of health care reform last year.
The Democrats had a huge majority in both Houses of Congress in 2009. They still do, the only change being that in the Senate they have one vote short of a filibuster-proof majority. Last year, the Democrats could pass any legislation they wanted to pass because they had a super majority in the Senate and the House, but they failed to pass health care reform.
The Republicans did not succeed in obstructing health care reform. It was the Democrats themselves who torpedoed the legislation. Joe Lieberman, the Senator from Tel Aviv, held the legislation hostage by threatening to join the Republicans in their filibuster if the public option was not dropped from the Senate version of health care reform.
Sen Ben Nelson of Nebraska said he would not vote for health care reform if he did not get a huge concession for Nebraska. Harry Reid agreed to an exemption for Nebraska from picking up additional Medicaid costs arising out of the health reform package.
Senator Mary Landrieu, Senator Blanche Lincoln, Senator Evan Bayh all threatened to join the Republican filibuster if the bill was not watered down and emasculated. The bill that came out of the Senate was something that nobody wanted. The majority of Democratic senators felt no passion for the bill because it would not control costs. It does not include a public option - a mechanism for the government to compete with the Pac-Man health insurance companies and keep costs down.
Senator Max Baucus of Montana put the manacles on his fellow Democrats when he made haste slowly in the Finance committee to make sure that Obama's before-the-2009-Thanksgiving-recess deadline would not be met. Max Baucus - but of course - is one of the biggest recipients of political contributions from health insurance companies.
These are all Democrats, except for Joe Lieberman, who is an Independent but who caucuses regularly with Democrats. He would have shown his true colors earlier if he did not caucus with the Democrats, He was, after all, the Vice-Presidential running mate of Al Gore in the 2000 elections. Until he turned traitor, it was generally assumed that he was a Democratic Party statesman in the Senate.
In other words, it was not Republican obstructionism that stalled health care reform, but Democratic obstructionism.
We as a country elected President Obama and a huge Democratic majority in Congress because we wanted transformative changes. We demanded action - bold action. Instead what we got was a limp-wristed approach to governance where Democrats simply laid over and played dead.
They went to the airwaves and denounced Republican obstructionism - which was truly abominable. But Republicans were powerless to stop the Democratic train. Whatever the Democrats wanted they could have gotten, because there were not enough Republican votes to stop them.
What stopped President Obama and the Democratic initiatives in Congress were fellow Democrats.
I wrote that piece in the Las Vegas Sun because I wanted to let my fellow Democrats know that the time for blaming Republicans was long past. We Democrats must figure out a way to pass major legislation by bypassing, by pole-vaulting past Republican obstructionism. We must convince the country that we are capable of "change that we can believe in."
If our Democratic legislators cannot do this, it will be time to turn over Congress to the Republicans because the Republicans proved in the Clinton years and in the George W. Bush years that they know how to pass major legislation with narrow majorities in both Houses of Congress.
