Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Can Liberal Catholics Who The Support Health Care Bill Do Two Things!!

Please Pretty Please. First say no to abortion in the health care bill. Your progressive pro-choice friends will cave on this at the end. Do you actually think they will not!! After coming this close? Plus the public supports that.

Second can we please get rid of the freakin Death Panels. Yes I said Death Panels AKA as the horrible Medicare Advisory Board with base committee closure like powers. I KNOW I KNOW you have declared us all scare mongers that are concerned about this but it is a problem

Are Catholic supporters of the Health Care Bill really for this:
A case in point is the apparent effort by Senate Democrats to prevent future Congresses from pulling the plug on the noxious death panels … er … the Medicare Advisory Board, without a super-duper majority vote. Sen. Jim DeMint has pointed out that through a mere rule change, the Senate Democrats are trying to impose a 67-vote requirement, which will be nearly impossible to achieve, of course, to knock out the panels in a future Congress. So if for example the controversial mammogram guideline is enacted by the Medicare Advisory Board along with other “effectiveness” measures, there will be little a future Congress can do about it.

A Republican Senate adviser says: “The bill changes some Senate rules to say we can’t vote in a future Congress to repeal the IMAB (death panels). A Senate rules change would require 67 votes for cloture on the bill, but [Senate] parliamentarian decided its a “procedural change” not a “rules change” so they only need 60. … [It makes] no sense.” He says it is still possible to “find a way to kill the death panels even though the bill changes the rules to say we can’t (maybe deny them funding would work, we could change the Senate rule it creates in a later Congress with a 67 senator vote), but it’s clear the health bill changes Senate rules and needs 67 votes for cloture.” We are apparently in a Brave New World of making up Senate rules. The adviser remarks that Senate parliamentarian Alan S. Frumin “seems to be in Reid’s back pocket and is making stuff up to save the bill.”


In a brief survey of other Senate offices and some legal gurus, the initial reaction was the same: “One Congress can’t bind another.” It is at the very least dubious constitutionally and unseemly in the extreme. This is legislative bullying at its worst — rushed, nontransparent, with an anything-will-fly attitude. Once the public gets a whiff of this and the other shenanigans, one can imagine that their already negative reaction to the bill (the
latest poll shows that the public disapproves by a 56 to 36 percent margin, and 72 percent don’t want any public money going to subsidize abortions) may turn to rage.

Of course how this is legal I have no idea. I WILL LOVE THE SUPREME COURT ARGUMENT ON THAT!! However this is just bad bad bad. Why in the all that is holy can this be squared with Catholic Social Justice I have no idea.

So its a good idea that now the people I elect can not make needed changes without having some SUPERDUPER majority. I can't comprehend how people don't see how this will bite them back.

I mean what if the GOP (it appears some have a view that the GOP will be out of power forever) gets some mean old evil Republicans on this panel and there is a GOP President and they have the majority. I can hear the screaming now!!! That is is so unfair I want to change that. Sorry too late!!! Bad Bad Bad idea.

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