A look back to Dingell’s dad. Time magazine, Sept. 2009
John Dingell Sr.: A Legacy
As Michael notes, the President’s speech begins with a tribute to John Dingell Sr., a New Deal Congressman who was fighting for universal coverage 65 years ago, and whose son carries on the fight. Here’s a story I wrote on the father and the son, all the way back in the pre-internet-link days of 1993:
Snip:
But a different Dingell emerges as he begins to talk about his father. Awe finds its way into his voice as he begins: “Pop was not an ideologue; he was a philosopher. He did a lot of thinking on things where you could make this country better, fairer.”
John Dingell Sr. survived that bout of tuberculosis, defying a doctor’s prediction that he would live six months, and went on to serve 12 terms in Congress, where he was an architect of New Deal programs. When Dingell was a 16-year-old House page in 1943, his father introduced what was perhaps his most radical measure — the first national health insurance bill.
At the start of every two-year congressional session since 1955, when he won the seat left vacant by his father’s death, John Jr., now 66, has introduced virtually the same legislation, putting it in the hopper again and again. It is H.R. 16, which is the number of the Detroit-area district that has been represented by father and son since 1932.
Snip:
But when Dingell Sr. argued that basic health care was something the government owed its poorest and weakest citizens, he — along with Sens. Robert F. Wagner (D-N.Y.) and James E. Murray (D-Mont.), who joined in his national health-insurance proposal in 1943 — was called a socialist and communist.
His son takes a hard-nosed tack aimed at a different constituency.
“I quit talking about the humanitarian concern, because nobody much seems to give a damn about that,” Dingell says. “I talk now about the economic consequences. General Motors spends $1,086 per car (to provide health benefits to its workers). The auto companies are going broke on health care, and every other industry is having similar problems.”
Not surprisingly, Dingell has strong ideas as to what types of health-care reform will actually work. He believes, for example, that only a single-payer system — in essence, a government-funded plan — has much chance to stemming rising costs. Scores of lawmakers are on record as favoring a similar system.
“I’m not going to deceive myself and I’m not going to deceive anybody else to think that any other system than single-payer is ultimately going to resolve the nation’s problems,” Dingell says. “Every country’s tried it, and they all keep coming to the same conclusion — single payer.”
Okay, last snip:
Dingell’s father made his reputation on the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee, where he rose to second-ranking Democrat and where he drafted more than 100 amendments to the Social Security Act. He also wrote major portions of the Wagner Act that created the legal foundation for the modern labor union and many of the laws that still govern banking regulation.
His colleague, John McCormack, who would later become Speaker of the House, recalled on the elder Dingell’s death: “He was always looking years ahead, and a leader in charting the course for a better life for his fellow men.”
He wrote the 1943 health insurance act without a means of funding so that it would fall within the jurisdiction of what is now the Energy and Commerce Committee, where he thought it had its best chance of passage. When Dingell succeeded his father in a special election, that legislation was one of the reasons he asked for an assignment on the committee he now chairs.
Well know I why my Dad said things I can’t post her about Sr. and JR. this morning when he Dingel on WRJ this morning.