Posted on 04/03/2010 8:21:47 AM PDT by ConservativeHideout
* Emotion * Feel good rhetoric * Guilt * Political correctness
These all seem to be the underpinnings of the what the left sometimes uses to justify their legislative decisions. At least that is what appeared to be the case when Representative Phil Hare (D – IL) was approached at a town hall meeting recently. In a video that has gone viral after being posted on youtube, you can hear the good Congressman say, “I don’t worry about the Constitution on this.”
Let that sink in.
We have an elected official publicly stating that he disregards what he took an oath to uphold and defend. It would seem that the Constitution needs to be defended from him. But let’s have a listen and then I will discuss his words a bit further.
Before I get to the discussion on his words, and in the interest of fairness, Rep. Hare has released a video in an effort to clarify his own remarks.
Okay, in the first video he begins telling a story about someone taking their child to the hospital. Rep. Hare says,
“It’s when you take your child to the hospital and you think its really bad and you heart is thumping and bumping and bumping and bumping while you’re waiting for the doctor to tell you what it is and then the doctor comes out and says its going to be okay, except you don’t have insurance and you’re stuck with a ten or fifteen thousand dollar bill and your heart starts pumping again and you’re “What am I going to do?”
Let’s deconstruct this.
First of all, I have taken my children and other close family members to the hospital and I can well understand that feeling you get when waiting for the doctor to find out how your loved one is doing. When you are waiting to find out if they will be okay, or if you need to brace for the worst. That is a terrible feeling and an awful experience to have to endure. I have been there, done that and without going into a lot of personal details, suffice it to say that even when I had to wait to hear the worst from a doctor, not once did I worry about the ensuing hospital bill. Not even when I did not have health insurance, for I knew that there were avenues for me to pursue and that my thoughts had to be about my family who was in the hospital. The finances could wait, in fact they did wait and after the ordeal was over, I made arrangements with the hospital and worked things out. Was it easy? No. But then that is life, isn’t it?
Additionally, the doctor would never mention the fact that you don’t have health insurance, because the doctor is just a tad bit preoccupied with saving the life of your loved one. Doctors in hospitals never even know whether you have insurance or not. That is the job of the admitting staff and the billing department.
Further, Rep. Hare says something about being stuck with a ten or fifteen thousand dollar hospital bill and you don’t know what you are gonna do. Well, how many people think nothing of going into debt to the tune of twenty, twenty five or even thirty thousand dollars just to purchase an automobile? Do they worry and turn to their government? No, they make payments and pay the car off. This is no different and for a lawmaker to use this emotional rhetoric to justify passing a piece of legislation is reckless and very unprofessional.
The exchange between Hare and some of his constituents goes on from there and he is asked, “Where in the Constitution…” by another person when he cuts that person off, retorting, “I don’t worry about the Constitution on this, to be honest.”
Then in his rebuttal video he says that his words were taken out of context. That he meant he wasn’t worried that the health care bill would be ruled unconstitutional. Hmmm, that is a new one on me; taking your own words out of context. I am curious, how does one do that? Well Rep. Hare, I am afraid you can’t. You were asked a direct question about where in the Constitution it authorized Congress to force people to purchase a product, in this case health insurance, as a condition of citizenship. Your answer was, “I’m not worried about the Constitution on this, to be honest.” I do not see how that can be construed any differently. Not once did in that video did someone ask you if you thought it would be ruled unconstitutional. The constituent was asking where you thought the power to force purchase of health insurance was shown in the Constitution. Even a few seconds later when Hare asked the person to restate the question, he responded that he did not know where in the Constitution it gave Congress that authority.
One would think that anyone voting on this legislation would at least have an idea of the Constitutional authority granting them the power to force purchase of said insurance. Now I will admit that the people asking him the questions were pretty combative, and it seemed he lost his cool later on in the video when he left the room, not bothering to answer any more questions. But for him to say that the Constitution does not matter to him on this, whether he was mad or not is very revealing.
Also, in the video he purports to have read the bill not once, but THREE times. That is over EIGHT THOUSAND PAGES. I would say that if this is true, then Rep. Hare has an awful lot of free time on his hands, because not only is it a lot of reading, that reading is dry and convoluted legalese; not something you can skim over.
What we have here is another example of an elected official that is woefully out of touch with the American people. All I can say is, thank God my representative is John Shimkus. I have met the man and I can assure you that he would never disregard the Constitution in this callous manner.
Let me wrap this article up with a quote from Barack Hussein Obama, “…we’ve got to make some honest decisions, and that’s what elections are for.”
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