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Every Presidential candidate promises bipartisanship. Why? Because every Presidential candidate knows that the people that he needs to get to vote for him do not want business as usual.
And every President, when he gets in office, realizes that bipartisanship doesn’t work—that in order to get his big ideas through, he’ll have to work with his party alone and try to get the thing he wants through with the votes he has… or so he thinks.
Tyranny and the United States
The truth is that we are fed up with the status quo. We are tired of people with radical ideas believing that they have mandates because they squeeze by in an election and attribute and then getting us into more and more government. We’re tired of politicians that claim to have all the answers and then, even if they get their legislation passed, it just puts us under more tyranny.
We’re a divided nation—one with two very different sets of beliefs on a number of topics, but instead of trying to make it so we can live together in peace, each set of leaders inflicting or promoting their beliefs at the cost of the other universally.
Our Constitution was set up to limit government and to push as much rule to the closest government to us (local and state) rather than at the federal level. That way there could be groups of people that have a specific set of beliefs could be together, and we could still live in harmony. Now we force people to live under laws they consider immoral or illogical, and we continue to perpetuate and encourage animosity when we should be going after harmony.
Universal Health Care
No where is this more pronounced then what’s going on in the Federal Government with health care. President Obama believes that he has a mandate to provide Universal Health care at the federal level. Multiple states already have health care programs for everyone, but he believes we need another.
But President Obama believes in this so much, and wants it to work, that he’s willing to reach across the aisle and consider all sides of the issues before implementing a health care solution. He wants overwhelming majorities, and won’t make a move until everyone in the country both understands the problem, the solution and what he wants to do.
Well, that’s what we’d hope for, but instead what we’re getting is a series of procedural moves so that he can get the largest addition of spending added to our federal government through the Congress with the smallest number of votes possible. Does that sound bipartisan? Does that sound like something that’s in the best interest of the country?
First, the guy who previously imhabited the white house wasn’t the least bit bipartisan. I sincerely hope he was included in your rant.
“Multiple states already have health care programs for everyone, but he believes we need another.”
That made me laugh. The only state I’m aware of that covers everyone is Massachussetts. What are the others with full coverage? Other states have programs for very low income residents. Some, like PA, are trying to expand their programs into middle income families.
I don’t see what the issue is with everyone in the country having health insurance. Why would you want millions of americans to be without it? That’s a mentality I have great difficulty understanding. If you don’t want the government to do it, who should take over that responsibility?
Spare me the nonsense about people not willing to work because they’re all lazy on welfare. That’s an old, tired, sterotype-filled argument.
Great for the states who have it, bad for uninsured people living in the rest of the states.
Musicguys last blog post..Happy Darwin Day!
I believe I stated in the content of this post that every Presidential Candidate makes the promise, and every one of them breaks it. That being said, a lot of what former President George W. Bush did in his first term was (annoyingly) bipartisan. He passed “No Child Left Behind” with Sen. Ted Kennedy, and even the authorization to go to war in Afghanistan and Iraq as well as the Patriot Act were overwhelmingly bipartisan given his approval rating at the time. Bush did not veto a single piece of legislation until his party lost the Congress (House and Senate) in the last part of his term. That’s a record as far as our country is concerned.
And, for the record, I wish he were more partisan and actually stood for liberty instead of expanded government.
As for my statement about health care programs, I did not mean “universal care in the states” because you’re right– Mass. is the only one with it, though I would consider New York close as well.
Arguing over why we should or should not have health insurance for everyone is a little out of scope here– I believe I’ve written on the topic before, and I’ll be visiting it again in the near future, but in short: the foundation of the argument is flawed (the numbers on how many are uninsured are misleading, the reason why they are uninsured is missing, etc), the argument for it doesn’t take into account the law of unintended consequences (the power of “free”, the shortage of doctors, and the elimination of competition), and the care would stink (just look at England and Canada).
And how come we didn’t ever hear about this ‘reconciliation’ gimmick during the Bush years? The Dems filibustered so much – I remember Russ Feingold boasting about holding up something – Patriot Act, I think. And there was the judicial appointments. If Reid and Obama push this one through, this will set a precedent for decades. The minority will be as good as potted plants.