Excerpt
The day before Sunday’s health care vote, President Obama gave an unscripted talk to House Democrats. Near the end, he spoke about why his party should pass reform: “Every once in a while a moment comes where you have a chance to vindicate all those best hopes that you had about yourself, about this country, where you have a chance to make good on those promises that you made ... And this is the time to make true on that promise. We are not bound to win, but we are bound to be true. We are not bound to succeed, but we are bound to let whatever light we have shine.”
And on the other side, here’s what Newt Gingrich, the Republican former speaker of the House — a man celebrated by many in his party as an intellectual leader — had to say: If Democrats pass health reform, “They will have destroyed their party much as Lyndon Johnson shattered the Democratic Party for 40 years” by passing civil rights legislation. (NYT Editor: The quotation originally appeared in The Washington Post, which reported after the column went to press that Mr. Gingrich said it referred to Johnson’s Great Society policies, not to the 1964 Civil Rights Act)
I’d argue that Mr. Gingrich is wrong about that: proposals to guarantee health insurance are often controversial before they go into effect — Ronald Reagan famously argued that Medicare would mean the end of American freedom — but always popular once enacted.
But that’s not the point I want to make today. Instead, I want you to consider the contrast: on one side, the closing argument was an appeal to our better angels, urging politicians to do what is right, even if it hurts their careers; on the other side, callous cynicism. Think about what it means to condemn health reform by comparing it to the Civil Rights Act. Who in modern America would say that L.B.J. did the wrong thing by pushing for racial equality? (Actually, we know who: the people at the Tea Party protest who hurled racial epithets at Democratic members of Congress on the eve of the vote.)
And that cynicism has been the hallmark of the whole campaign against reform.
Also, on this issue:
"Chamber Won’t Push for Health Repeal" by Elizabeth Williamson, Wall Street Journal 3/22/2010
Republicans in Congress shouldn’t look to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to support a repeal of the health-care overhaul, the group’s chief executive said today.
In an interview with Wall Street Journal reporters and editors, U.S. Chamber of Commerce President Thomas Donohue criticized the health care legislation as a “very, very expensive” and disruptive change to the nation’s health-care delivery system. A companion bill that completes the overhaul legislation cleared the House last night and is expected to cross the final hurdles in the Senate this week.
But Donohue made it clear the chamber won’t be spending any of its substantial war chest on a campaign, favored by Republicans, to repeal the legislation. The Washington-based chamber, which represents three million businesses of all sizes, spent heavily in an unsuccessful effort to kill the health bill. Minutes after Democrats won passage in the House Sunday night, the chamber issued a statement calling the vote “a wrong and unfortunate decision that ignores the will of the American people.”
But once the bill becomes law, Donohue said, “If people want to try and repeal, let them. We’re not going to spend any capital on that.” Instead, he said the chamber will push for changes to the bill when it enters the regulatory stage, always a key pressure point.
In the 2,800-page bill “you’ve probably got 15,000 pages of regulation before this is finished,” he said. “We have to see what we can do to deal with some of the issues that seem most egregious,” and mount challenges in Congress and potentially in the courts, he said.
“There’s never been a bill this size ever written on anything that doesn’t go back for adjustments and refinements,” Donohue said. He added that the chamber will make its views on the bill known in “the court of public opinion, and maybe…the elections.”
In the chamber statement last night, Donohue vowed that “Should the legislation passed by the House today become law, the Chamber will work through all available avenues—regulatory, legislative, legal, and political—to fix its flaws and minimize its potentially harmful impacts.”
The chamber already is laying plans for the election season. “Through the largest issue advocacy and voter education program in our history, we will encourage citizens to hold their elected officials accountable when they choose a new Congress this November,” Donohue said in the statement.
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