Today, the Senate Finance Committee voted 14-9 to release a malodorous gas into the halls of Congress:
Democrats on the Senate Finance Committee, with the vote of a lone Republican, approved Chairman Max Baucus’ $829 billion health care bill 14-9, kicking off what’s expected to be a long and arduous path through Congress for final legislation.
The “long and arduous path” will include writing the bill. The commiteee, including alleged Republican Olympia Snowe, has scrupulously avoided actual substance. The Baucus bill is vapor.
This process is far different than the way you learned in 9th grade civics class how a bill becomes law. Nowhere in that class were you told that a bill passes one committee (Senate HELP) and a description of a bill passes another Committee (Senate Finance), then the Senate Majority Leader writes his own bill without a transparent means for all Senators and the American people to participate in the process.
In other words, there is no actual Baucus “reform” bill. There is only an amorphous cloud hanging over the U.S. health care system, like one of those poisonous London fogs.
This is nothing to celebrate. It stinks.
UPDATE:
Dan Riehl has an interesting theory on Senator Snowe’s incoherent voting patterns. Where’s global warming when you need it?
I honestly think that the climate in Maine has damaged most everyone’s brain. And Vermont may not be much better. They’re worse than Canada up there when it comes to socialism.
Meanwhile, Brian Darling if the Heritage Foundation discusses the conspicuous dearth of transparency that has characterized the machinations of the Senate Finance Committee:
Post a Comment