Five hundred pound gorilla

By Mike Canaday and Melody Gustafson
WASHINGTON -- At long last, the vehemently embattled heath care plan is a done deal after a stealthy late Sunday night House vote. The Republicans and the surveyed Americans’ efforts both were unable to stop the Democratic majority from pounding a whopping entitlement expansion into unwilling American throats.

CNN reported Mar. 22 that those making under a certain income yearly will benefit from government subsidies that will help to pay their premiums. This bill entitles additional citizens to benefits.

A CNN broadcast Mar. 22 showed clips from House Minority Leader Rep. John Boehner chiding the other lawmakers for the unfortunate outcome and the deplorable way the legislators burned the midnight oil, to hurriedly and recklessly turn out a shoddy, red-tape nightmare from their secret meeting. Boehner said that the House passed legislation that “no one finds satisfactory.”

Will this bill flower into a saving grace or oppress, as the last nail in a coffin?

Proponents such a Pelosi and Obama orchestrated every low-down trick up the sleeve to railroad this hateful, foot-tall stack of garbage into law. They had to drop abortion from the bill, and toss the national student loan overhaul in the brew to clear the air for what is euphemistically termed “landmark legislation.” It isn’t surprising either, that normal operating rules designed to ensure fair, productive government required suspension for passage. Reconciliation, they call it. We call it a sneaky way to lessen the votes needed for passage and limit opposing debate.

What does the nation’s student loan apparatus have to do with our heath care anyway? Nothing, but a desirable, feel-good law became an underhanded political gimmick on a bargaining table. Yes, it’s clever, but it seems unethical.

Now the Fed will have a monopoly on the student loan market. Aren’t competition-crushing monopolies illegal in this country? Americans will have to sit back and watch while the billions of dollars that the bill will “rescue” from the private lenders get lost or remanded to health care. The legislators acquiesced in order to boost Pell dollars and in turn, provide education to poor Americans. Some have written opinions that the money will help pay for health care, and some think it will pay on the deficit. Political promises are as good as the best laid plans in the devil’s company.

The people accusing Obama of a socialist agenda certainly have a stronger argument today. This bill is the first of its kind in that it requires a person to buy something, and its buddy bill in reconciliation snatched an industry from the private sector. No one will bat an eye to discover in 10 years that Pell grants are scarce, health care quality has declined disgustingly, and the insolvent bureaucracies shoved through at the speed of light back in 2010 became more costly and ineffective than Congress itself.

With 1/6 of the economy at stake, it puts the government deeper in your pockets. Jail time and taxes are the instruments of conformity. The evaluation of a person’s financial status will now be more of a bureaucratic priority. The federal government, empowered overnight, will not only have control of overseeing your finances via tax income statements, they will have your medical records as well. The fed will be looking over your shoulder more and more now. Obama is now your newest senior family member telling you what you must buy and do, when and where.

All the other entitlement programs have a new partner on their bench. This partner is wearing the same jersey, but looks like a 500-pound gorilla. Please post a comment on our site on this issue and let your ideas be known, for or against. There is no shortage of noise from the pundits and politicos, but let’s hear from the ones who will live and roll with these changes.