Kill the Bill

Update: Dean is right: KILL THE BILL.

For the first time in recent memory I agree with Markos Moulitsas, master of all things Cheeto. This is his "tweet" from last night: Insurance companies win. Time to kill this monstrosity coming out of the Senate.

As far as I can tell "monstrosity" is exactly the right word. What the bill boils down to now is a mandate forcing people to buy a service whether they want it or not, ( A proposition I'm still convinced will wreck the entire bill once litigation commences.) a huge transfer of tax payer money (all borrowed in our name from the Chinese) to health insurance companies, and some stricter regulations that are past due and could easily have been passed in this Congress this year - with a 2 page bill.

Yet the bill won't die. Democrats, throwing self preservation to the wind, will pass this beast - and they will call it reform. They and Obama will claim "victory", with the main talking point being something about "trying to get this passed for 60 years...". Though, one has to wonder if FDR and Truman aren't spinning about now.

The excuses for all the bills flaws are on deck:

"We can fix this bill later",

"Social Security wasn't perfect when it passed either" and so on and so forth.

These bromides have little relationship to reality. Congress will certainly move Right in 2010 - and there will be no "fixing" of the bill in the next 11 months. Increasingly desperate Blue Dogs won't have it. After the midterm the Democrats will be severely weakened.

Further, the "Social Security and Medicare needed work after passage too" excuse misses one essential fact: It's not the 1930s or the 1960s. The nation was in debt then too - but we were still a good bet for lenders. Fiscally, the United States is a shadow of what it was even 15 years ago. Going forward the health care bill is not "fixable" for one simple reason: The country doesn't have the resources to fix much of anything. The congress seated in 2014 is not going to be ponying up cash to make health care work - it's going to be trying to keep the heat on in the capital building...and, one presumes, throwing what bones it can to the Chinese.

Like all things in the Obama era, this bill is about short term theatrics. (See Obama parachuting into Copenhagen on the last day of the conference for another example.) Reid is perfectly content to go over the falls for Obama. He's probably already ceded his own re-election and figures what the hell... As for the rest: they are either in safe seats, not running, or too drunk on being "historical" to see their political doom in the rear view mirror.

I shall mark this day in my calendar: I'm with Cheeto Man today.

Kill the Bill.