Jim DeMint: Irreconcilable Differences [Health care takeover]

Less than one hour into the President Obama’s health care summit the Senate’s most powerful Democrat reminded Republicans they can jam through a takeover of the health care system no matter what’s said during the next few hours of the meeting.

In his opening statement Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, Nevada Democrat said, “reconciliation isn’t something that’s never been done before.”

By saying this, Leader Reid has shown the irreconcilable difference between the Democrats and the American people who have already rejected their plans.

Americans have said loud and clear they do not want this bill. They don’t believe trillion dollar government takeovers will lower costs, they know it will explode our debt and reduce their freedom. They don’t want government bureaucrats making decisions for them in the most personal part of their lives.

But the Democrats continue to show they aren’t listening. They have been be planning to pass their health care takeover using a complicated Senate maneuver, called reconciliation. This procedure was originally created to resolve budget matters, not to push through a new complex entitlement program.

The summit was held under the pretense that the President would seriously listen to Republican ideas that enjoy popular support (solutions like buying insurance across state lines, tort reform, and tax equity for those who don’t get health coverage from their employer). But by refusing to take reconciliation off the table, President Obama and Democrats are turning a deaf ear to Americans.

A CNN poll released Wednesday found 73 percent of Americans want Washington to start over and begin working on an entirely new bill or stop work all together on health care reform.

Americans are right to be pessimistic. During President Obama’s first year in office he’s spent trillions on a failed stimulus bill and bailing out banks with nothing to show for it.

They want the government to do less, not more. And they are not sitting by quietly, they are making their voices heard in more than just polls.

They’ve rejected the Democrats big-spending agenda in the ballot booths last November by electing Republicans as governors in New Jersey and Virginia. They did it again in Massachusetts by sending Republican Scott Brown, who campaigned on being the “41st vote” to filibuster the health care takeover, to the Senate over Democrat Martha Coakley.

They’ve taken to the streets holding “tea party” protests around the nation urging the government to quit spending and start doing less, not more.

Tens of thousands of people came to the nation’s capitol last September 12 to protest the health care takeover, but President Obama couldn’t hear them. Instead of watching what was happening in his backyard the president went to Minneapolis that day to hold his own health care rally far, far away from the tea party crowd.

The Democrats didn’t listen and pushed a 2,000-page takeover bill that no member fully read. When it came up for a vote in the Senate, Democrats stuffed it full of backroom deals and kickbacks to jam it through on Christmas Eve.

Now, President Obama wants to add in even more spending and more taxes at the last minute. The Heritage Foundation estimates the true cost of the new, bigger takeover will be $2.5 trillion.

It’s obvious the Democrats aren’t listening to the voters and are dead-set on enacting big government policies over the will of the American people.

And, it looks like President Obama is on board with the plan. Otherwise, he’d put an end to the talk of using the nuclear option for government to take over one-sixth of the economy without bothering to get single Republican vote.

If President Obama and Democrats insist on ramming through this government takeover of health care that Americans have rejected over and over, then I’ll use every tool available to me in the Senate to stop it.

There can be no reconciliation or compromise with the destruction of freedom and liberty. Only rejection.

Whose right is health care? Do you think it's yours?
Congressman Anthony Weiner has said that health care is not a commodity. If it isn't a commodity then do doctors and nurses have rights? Assigning health care the status of a right makes health care workers slaves to that right who must serve it. On what ground could a health care worker refuse to provide their products and services since that would violate the patient's "basic human right to health care."
That is a direct loss of individual rights for health care providers. The collective right of the people to receive health care would supersede the provider's individual right to set fees and hours or to change their occupational status or even decide how to apply their skills and knowledge if taken to its logical extreme. A collective right, by practical definition, is a state right because it is a right that is created and given by the government to those it chooses to give it to. It is not a natural right possessed by each person protected by the Constitution from the government. It is also a collective/state right by virtue of the fact that it would supersede individual rights when the two come into conflict. How else would the government view a right that it created and administers vs. one it has no control over?
Of course it isn't stated in any bill that a patient's right to care supersedes a provider's right to set fees and hours etc, but it doesn't need to. Rights, as always, are adjudicated in the courts. The Health Care Reform bills simply establish the foundation for the courts to rule in favor of the collective right.
Weiner’s view is collectivist, fascist and totalitarian. Collectivist because it has to be described as being a right of the many instead of the one and superior due to that fact. Fascist because ultimately the sole authority for its creation and oversight is from one entity the Federal government. Totalitarian because the Federal government is the enforcer of this collective right as well. State and local jurisdictions will have little say about it.
Congressman Weiner's view is the underlying philosophy of all of the Health Care Reform legislation in the House and Senate. Consider this section in the Senate version of the bill; the setting up of community watch dogs that will monitor citizens for various health parameters. Read pages 382 - 393.
TITLE I—QUALITY, AFFORDABLE HEALTH CARE FOR ALL AMERICANS pps 382 - 393
So, even citizens themselves will be subject to Federal regulations on their behavior in order to fulfill the "human right" of universal health care. It isn't the individual's liberty that is being protected by that it is the government's control over its own health care system that is being guarded. How much clearer can it be that these bills abrogate the concept of individual rights? Someone will be checking your lifestyle, according to gov regulations, to be certain you serve the best interests of the "basic human right to health care" ie. "the Public Option."
HCR is not just about rationing care and wealth redistribution. It's about the end of individual rights as the corrosive effects of the new collectivist "basic human right to health care" spreads throughout the legal and political systems like a virus.
I think that the main purpose of Health Care Reform (HCR) is as a direct assault on individual liberties.
Health Care is a Liberty Issue
Conservative Underground - 18 August 2009 - Tim Dunkin
Another Stupid Argument: Heath Care is a Right
Involuntary Medical Servitude
Obama's Authoritarian, Unconstitutional Health Care Proposal
Defining A Right In America
To Americans Who Believe Healthcare is a Right
OBAMA: HEALTH CARE DESTROYING FREE SPEECH
Mandated health insurance threatens freedom, privacy
Second Bill of Rights aka FDR's economic bill of rights
(An early attempt to embed collective rights into American politics and society.)

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