Euthanize the House Health Care Reform Bill
Tuesday, November 03, 2009
By Izzy Lyman
John Birch Society
Congressman Bart Stupak
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I had been dying — no pun intended — to go to one of those congressional health care reform town hall meetings.
You know, the ones where the insulated inside-the-beltway politician, with the expensive shoes, has to contend with a rowdy crowd of peasants with pitchforks deep in Flyover Country.
Well, I got my wish.
I saw Congressman Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat of the 1st District, in action. The 57-year-old Stupak, in fact, has been in the national spotlight, of late, for being a thorn in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s side for opposing a provision for the funding of abortions in the oft-changed and recently re-named national health care bill.
As an avowed right-to-lifer, representing a pro-life, pro-Second Amendment district, who lives at the Christian-friendly ‘C Street’ facility run by “The Family” while in Washington, D.C., Stupak seems like he’d be more at home in the conservative wing of the Republican Party.
He has correctly stated that the Hyde Amendment, which was enacted in 1976, makes it illegal to use taxpayer money for abortions. Along with other pro-life Democrats, the Congressman has offered an amendment (or, as the law-school-graduate-in-him calls it, “satisfactory language”) which would prohibit such funding.
Stupak has insisted that by offering his amendment, and getting the chance to vote on it, he will have “voted my conscience, stayed true to my principles.”
For his stand on behalf of the unborn, Terrence P. Jeffrey, an editor at Human Events magazine, the right-of-center publication, dubbed Stupak “the bravest member of the House of Representatives.”
After listening to him at the town hall event I attended in Petoskey, Michigan, I strongly disagree with that characterization. Stupak admitted that if his amendment fails, he could still support PelosiReidObama Care.
Talk about having it both ways. Talk about supporting pre-cradle to grave socialism. Talk about being a squish. Talk about disrespecting his constituents, who turned out by the hundreds to hear and jeer him.
After sitting through his spiel, it was apparent that Stupak, like so many of these politicos, is one of those sanctimonious social justice sorts, so enamored with providing “affordable health care” and taking down the health insurance industry, that he would jettison his own precious principles.
But here’s what also irks: The majority of residents who made the effort to travel to his town hall meetings (There were two in northern Michigan last month.) were adamantly opposed to his so-called health care reform, especially the “public option.”
Stupak wasn’t fazed or even interested in their concerns. The former state trooper mechanically treated the crowd as if he were directing a crime scene. Stupak trumpeted that it was his meeting, and threatened to kick out any over-exuberant senior citizens, since the latter were especially vocal. Signs and banners were forbidden, and “only credentialed media” could record the meeting. Law enforcement manned the school auditorium where the meeting was held. All that was missing was the yellow tape.
In keeping with such authoritarian methods, Stupak showed absolutely no compassion for taxpayers who can’t afford to finance soviet-style medicine schemes or who think it’s immoral for the ever-incompetent federal government to take over yet another private industry.
Further, anti-abortion activists were understandably annoyed with Stupak’s wishy-washy position. Isaac Miller, a Republican activist and resident of the first district, wrote: “If Stupak votes for the public funding of abortion he not only throws out his entire pro-life voting record, he throws out his constituents’ trust as well.”
Given the disgusted, frustrated, and very un-Astroturf-generated response I witnessed at the town hall meeting, that has already happened. Stupak, like the rest of the unprincipled liberal members of Congress who have decided to micromanage other people’s medical care, deserve to be shown the door.
As for the bravest members of the House of Representatives from the Midwest these days, I’d cast a vote for Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minnesota 6th District). This feisty lawmaker crisply described the looming health care boondoogle like so: “This 2,000 page bill includes a job-killing employer mandate, an individual mandate that requires Washington bureaucrats to define what kind of coverage is acceptable, burdensome tax increases, Medicare cuts, and a huge expansion of Medicaid that will break already strained state budgets."
Yes, Ms. Michele is a right-to-life supporter, but she offers no sanctimonious talk about putting forth a pro-life amendment to ‘vote her conscience and principles,’ a la Bart Stupak.
This mom and foster mom is already principled and smart enough to know that the health care scheme advocated by the “gentleman (sic) from Michigan” violates constitutional principles of government.
Isabel Lyman, author of The Homeschooling Revolution
, blogs at http://thecastillochronicles.blogspot.com.
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