Were I a member of Congress, my hackles would rise when a candidate for president looks straight into the camera and says, “I will repeal Obamacare!”
Since when can a president repeal any law? That’s what legislators do.
Tuesday night, Newt Gingrich not only told his TV audience he would leave 50 million Americans without health coverage, yank young men and women off of their parents’ insurance policies and let health insurance rates continue to rise unabated, but would also repeal the laws Congress passed these past two years in an effort to rein in the nation’s financial industry and lessen the prospects for another recession.
All by himself. And in the first two hours of his administration so the reforms could be celebrated at the inaugural balls. To which arrogance let us all say, JEEZ!
Well, I know. Political candidates must be allowed a huge margin for exaggeration. They know they can’t do what they promise to do. So let ’em spout. No harm done, right?
Wrong.
The primary harm done is to pretend the situations which prompted Congress to act in the first place weren’t real and so no action was needed. At this stage of the 2012 presidential campaign, the Republican candidates — every last one of them — have campaigned against the health care reform act and not one of them has proposed to deal with America’s health care problems in a constructive way. All eight, or was it nine?, attacked the President’s plan that Congress passed into law; not one proposed an alternative.
A majority of the country’s economists agree the primary drivers of the recession were unbridled greed and an appalling lack of regulation of the financial industry. The administration and Congress accepted that analysis and passed laws to regulate the industry in the hope of preventing a recurrence of the devastation.
The Republican presidential candidates now oppose these laws, too. They were singled out Tuesday night by Gingrich for immediate repeal. He would order Congress to act so he could sign the repealers immediately after taking the oath of office. Right there on the Capitol steps.
You get the picture: “Nice Congress! Good boy! Here, have a treat!”
Another phony problem solved. Not only is America without a health care worry, its financial industry will work best if no one looks over its shoulder. The recession was caused by having a Democrat in the White House.
Who, in either party, truly believes such stuff?
LET US ALL HOPE the conversation turns real in the general election. The debates should be over the best way to control health care costs and extend health care to all. It should be over how to restore the economy and bring federal taxing and spending back into balance. It should be over ways to stop the separation of the American people into economic classes that are so vastly unequal that communication between them becomes impossible. It should be over America’s role in world affairs. It should be over the most practical way to assure excellence in the American education system, from pre-school through graduate school, for every person, as the surest way to create a strong and successful nation.
These national goals can be achieved only if Americans work together at the tasks. Nothing happened in Florida Tuesday that gave a whisper of hope for that unity.
