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PrintAugust 4, 2009
Who's the rude one?
What do Americans think of the health care (insurance, according to President Barack Obama [D]) reform? Take away the earnest goobledygook debates on television panels and you get this.
From Fox News:
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Sen. Arlen Specter got a preview Sunday of the tough sell lawmakers will face over health care as audience members booed and jeered them during a town hall meeting in Philadelphia.
But that isn't as rude as it appears; after all just read Senator Arlen Specter's (a new D-PA) explanation of his understanding of the bill.
While supporters offered courteous applause to the officials, Sebelius didn't earn any fans when she said that if lawmakers say they don't understand the legislation voters should urge them to go back and read it.
Specter was shouted down when he said that lawmakers divide up the bills into sections and have their staffs read portions because, "We have to make judgments very fast."
He then said he will have read the Senate bill before he votes on it, which Sebelius pointed out hasn't been written yet.
"The Senate bill isn't written so don't boo the senator for not reading a bill that isn't written," she said.
That explanation, which undermined an earlier failed argument that the legislation should be passed quickly, didn't satisfy many of the more than 400 people estimated in attendance.
So the government is willing to pass a complex law that intimately affects all its citizens while consuming a large chunk of the national economy--and no one voting on it has read through it! The bill's main proponent, President Obama, seemed to have devoted more time selecting a dog for his children, knowing more about its background and health than he does about the health care (insurance) reform legislation he's pushing.
The people in the audience who jeered the lawmakers weren't rude--the lawmakers who are trying to shove this down the citizen taxpayers are the rude ones--they are beyond rude, they are cruel. Hopefully citizens will boo, boo and jeer more.
