« Obama's top PR tricks |
Blog Home Page
| Is health care reform really in big trouble? »
July 22, 2009
Obama: 'Shut up and pass health care'
Rick Moran
You will recall that President Obama did the same thing with the stim bill; told Congress in no uncertain terms that the situation with the economy was so dire that passage of the bill - even though no one had read it and that it hadn't been debated in Congress - must be done immediately.
It worked with the stim bill. Why not Obamacare?
Bill Kristol writing in the Weekly Standard Blog:
"The time for talk is through." -- President Obama, talking to liberal bloggers on a conference call Monday night.
The Democratic bills in the House and Senate are a thousand pages long. They're still changing as committees try to mark them up, or as they mark up other versions of health insurance legislation. There's huge uncertainty about how lots of provisions in the bills and under consideration would work--OMB Director Orzsag and HHS Secretary Sibelius couldn't answer straightforward questions on Fox News Sunday and Meet the Press. Nothing goes into effect in any case until 2013--except the tax provisions, which would begin in 2011. Yet President Obama wants everyone to stop debating and deliberating, and act now--because he and he alone has decided "now is the time to go ahead and act."
Congress should assert itself, stand up for the deliberative and democratic process, and defy this presumptuous presidential diktat.
The time to debate is now. There's plenty of time to act later.
I can't recall President Bush ever urging Congress to just shut up and pass anything. The arrogance of this man is breathtaking. That he would demand that the Congress stop debating and pass what's on the table might be the way that Mayor Daley gets things done in the City Council in Chicago but is a far cry from the historically deliberative nature of our Congress.
God knows what's in the Obamacare bill because a final one hasn't even been drafted yet. And we're supposed to just take Obama's word that this is the best option available to fix health care?
The Democrats are such lily livered cowards they will never say anything to dispute Obama's diktats. But the GOP should oppose this hasty, ill advised bill to the last vote if only to maintain the integrity of the legislative branch.
Hat Tip: Ed Lasky
|
|
|
Share