By Donna Smith
November 7, 2009
So, I wake this morning to see that Speaker Pelosi lied again about why she just could not allow a single-payer amendment to survive the legislative effort in the House on healthcare reform.
Early in the week she said that she couldn’t let the Kucinich amendment survive because it broke the President’s promise that “you can keep what you have if you like it.” See my blog on Michael Moore’s Mike & Me blog for my remarks on that subject.
So, out went the amendment voted into the bill with those ever-prized bi-partisan votes that would have allowed states whose voters and lawmakers pass single-payer plans to be granted necessary federal waivers to do so (read that again, folks, lest you miss the House’s direct squelching of the right you have in our own states to determine the best policy).
Then yesterday we read that praise-worthy as Anthony Weiner’s single-payer substitute amendment was–the one promised to a vote by Speaker Pelosi last July–that it just couldn’t be offered because that would mean the Speaker would have to allow other amendments too–like the abortion funding amendment.
Sorry, she told Mr. Weiner, but I have to be fair about this. The fluttering began and they all praised one another for being so damned agreeable.
But read it, don’t weep. She’s decided–as Gomer Pyle would say “Surprise, surprise, surprise…”–to allow right-wing crazies another shot in offering their anti-abortion funding amendment.
I say don’t weep because at some point you actually get mad enough to call them out. If an anti- reproductive rights funding amendment becomes law in this bill, it is a slap in the face to so many various groups that it isn’t to be believed. The Republicans and the Blue Dogs do their own big share of lying when they pretend to care about life. Come on, we all know that’s just not reality.
So long as they are passing laws on the federal level that allow 45,000 people to die every year in this nation because they have not been allowed to receive the healthcare that was available to those with the means to pay for it, these folks have no claim to any right to life at all. And so long as they are passing laws on the federal level that allow me and millions of others to go bankrupt even with the health insurance they are forcing us all to buy, they have no claim to protecting my hard work and effort to achieve my own American dream.
Tell the truth, at least. This is all about protecting power and re-election and the money that fuels that process. Damn the people. They’ll just plan to buy us back to the polls with the crappy campaign ads that will commence shortly after the last chorus of “Jingle Bells” in December. And the insurance companies are going to have a very happy holiday season indeed.
Donna Smith is a community organizer for California Nurses Association and national co-chair of PDA’s Healthare NOT Warfare campaign.