Posted on 11/15/2009 2:18:21 PM PST by Former Military Chick
A FUNNY thing happened in Ida Grove, Iowa, last Saturday. Funny and a bit sad. Steve King missed his son's wedding. The weather was perfect. The traffic was light. Steve really loves his son, Mick, and has no problem with his new wife, Stephanie. He wanted to be there and could have been, but instead he was in Washington voting against a healthcare reform bill in the House of Representatives. Despite his vote, the bill passed.
What was King thinking? Did he miss the most important day in his son's life because he believes the Democrats are wrong to try to extend health insurance cover to the 46 million who lack it, or because he thinks they are going about it the wrong way? He did not. As a fellow Republican with more in the way of name recognition said yesterday: "This is not about healthcare. This is about power and political control."
That Republican was Dick Armey, an icon of the anti-Clinton movement of the early 1990s and a hate figure for the Left, but also a keen student of US social history.
He knows full well that America's employer-based health insurance system exists largely by accident. It started as a 50c-a-month scheme for teachers, offered in the 1920s by a Dallas hospital looking to keep its wards full.
Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar. .End of sidebar. Return to start of sidebar. It grew as a result of bureaucratic accident and business opportunism, not legislation, and for decades it offered superb care at reasonable prices. It doesn't any more. It denies cover to many and doles out too much care to many more at prices employers and taxpayers can no longer afford. Few serious politicians in either main party deny that large parts of it are failing.
The central issue for congress is not whether healthcare needs fixing or even how: it's by whom.
Deep down, Barack Obama believes it's his turn. He ran for president promising change, and won. "Change" could mean anything to anyone.
That was its chief merit as a slogan. But this administration believes in its soul that the many meanings of the word should include a willingness to expand the role of the state itself if nothing else works. On economic management, that meant taking controlling stakes in banks and car giants to stop them failing. On healthcare, it means proving that the federal government can move into running a nationwide low-cost insurance program, and not screw it up.
My father-in-law believes a screw-up is inevitable. For his generation of Eisenhower Republicans, it is axiomatic that anything the private sector can do, the public sector can do only worse. Dick Armey and the army of Tea Party activists that he informally leads go much farther. They call the slightest expansion of the state a step towards Marxism. They say so politely, seriously, despairingly, on battle buses and in town halls across the country, and it is a great mistake to doubt their sincerity.
Never mind that the most progressive healthcare reforms debated on Capitol Hill since Obama entered the White House are still so private sector-dependent that in Britain no right-wing Tory could advocate them without risking his seat. Never mind that the most state-phobic conservatives are also among the most enthusiastic supporters of a gigantic and reasonably effective government-run machine at the heart of American society, foreign policy and economic life the US military. There is a new insurgency in US politics that believes the Democrats' pursuit of a public healthcare option is politically, constitutionally, fundamentally unAmerican.
The insurgents also smell blood. As Armey said, this is about power and political control. Obama has staked his presidency on showing that he can win reforms that eluded Clinton in 1994 and generations before that. He has majorities in both houses. Even the legal tussle for a disputed Minnesota Senate seat went the Democrats' way, adding a self-important comedian to their caucus in the upper house and giving them, in principle, a filibuster-proof majority. Yet the President seems unable to use it.
His first deadline for a healthcare bill to reach the Oval Office sailed by in August. Christmas is the next, unofficial, deadline. That looks likely to be missed as well. Each day of delay on healthcare is a day of delay on everything else the White House wants Congress to do, starting with once-in-a-century financial regulatory reform and the climate change legislation that has become a test for how the rest of the world judges this administration's break with the last one. Even Afghanistan is waiting. One reason for Obama's interminable delay over requests for more troops is his fear of splitting the liberal base on which robust healthcare reforms depend.
In truth, "robust" already sounds ambitious. The Tea Party insurgency has blunted the health crusade from the Right. Democratic infighting over tax-funded abortions may do the same from the Left. Slippage deep into next year is entirely possible. So is complete failure: if Obama fails on healthcare, what remains of the bubble of hope he created in his 2008 campaign will deflate faster than a blood pressure cuff in an overpriced private hospital. He will be, at best, a Clinton facsimile; at worst another Carter, undone by his naivety and shorn of unused majorities in next year's mid-terms.
It is a prospect that sets Steve King's pulse racing. That is why he came to Washington on Saturday instead of watching Mick wed Stephanie. It is also why Clinton told a Democratic power lunch on Tuesday to stop bickering over details and get healthcare done. A bill -- any bill -- would silence the President's critics and kick-start the rest of his agenda, he said.
Power drains from those too afraid to use it. It is draining from the White House to a handful of senators who could make or break Obama's presidency.
The Times
This article gives much to chew on, but in the end the author is right there are senators who may break Obama's presidency.
I wont shed a tear.
It’s just another kitty to rob....like SS, Medicare, Medicaid....He’s already planning on “stealing” half the money from Medicare...What a game....moving the pea when we aren’t looking....
Wow, and that loser Jeff Flake from Arizona couldn’t be in Washington to vote against Crap and Tax because of a family obligation. What a creep he’s turned into. Word is that someone has something on him. He used to be one of the loudest voices in Congress, and now he doesn’t make a peep.
That is not what we have here. It is NOT a slight expansion for this health care debacle. We're talking trillions and we're talking life and death.
I hope someone bought Mr. King a beer. Great piece, thanks for posting.
I am generally impressed by the articles printed in their world section, when it comes to US news coverage as well as their editorial coverage on US issues.
So, I am glad you found it of interest.
As I said, I did not know that we had a congressman, who had to make a tough decision, country and duty or son’s wedding and chose what he took an oath for, so I do applaud King.
That is a guy who takes his oath of office seriously. I’m sure he and his son talked it over before. Tough choice...thanks to a Pelosi Saturday night sneak. Maybe that is why King has been telling it like it is lately! The guy has been on fire. I hope he keeps it up.
His family supported him in his decision.
That’s what I admire about Steve King!
Wow what integrity. That must have been a very tough decision especially when so many Reps votes were bought by the O admininstration.
I wish we had him representing our district, instead we have that POS Braley who claims credit for Cash for Clunkers. I am really hoping the person running against him sticks that $24K per clunker gouging of the taxpayer up Braley’s spout. Guys like King give me hope for chang.
change.
I don’t think it was a tough decision at all. There was never any doubt. He told his family a week before the wedding he would probably not be there and they supported him.
(I added the missing colon after "life.")
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,...
Maybe not tough to decide but a tough thing to do.
Probably. BTW, I love your tag line.
Thanks. Not original but used with permission.
Flake is the Goldwater apologist who may not know that Goldwater turned left after 1980.
Pelosi knew that A)the vote was going to be squeaky close;
B)King’s son had that wedding on the schedule for some time and she probably hoped he would skip the vote which makes her worse than pond scum for scheduling it late Saturday night and C) there’s no tricks that the wicked witch of the west wouldn’t pull to get her way...I pray that we get so many democrats out of the house in 2010 that she NEVER sees the inside of a gavel again!
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2384316/posts
Ping to Number 20 and my letter to Rep Flake.
Quoting from my open letter to Rep Flake that is on the above thread, “Isn’t this in direct conflict to your statement on November 5, 2008 in an article for the Washington Post, “I suggest that we return to first principles. At the top of that list has to be a recommitment to limited government.”?”
In my opinion and many others he has become part of the Washington Elite.
I don’t have it any better. I’m represented by Boswell, a Nancy Pelosi robot!
I thought this might be of interest to you.
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