Hypocrisy, Hyperbole, and the Death of the Democratic Party

"Health care is complex," wrote House No. 1 and No. 2 Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer in an op-ed piece in today’s USA Today. "It touches every American life. It drives our economy. People must be allowed to learn the facts."

The people, Madame Speaker, already know the facts. Unlike the members of your Congress, the American people have read the bill, and know the ramifications. Unlike the members of your Congress, the American people understand the natural force which is the free market, and they know what will happen – that, while public and private options for health insurance may exist temporarily, private insurers will never be able to compete with a federal government that prints its own money and sets its own rules; that costs will go up for private insurance, and employers from coast to coast will soon find it more cost-effective to pay a fee and deny private insurance for employees, forcing them to enroll in the public option.

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This unwanted, unnecessary reform will be the slow death of private sector health care. It will pull the plug on American ingenuity. It will systematically numb the quality of care. And it was designed this way. And we all know it.

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The people, Nancy, have read your thousand-page health care bill. And because health care is so complex, because health care touches every American life, when their elected representatives reluctantly return to their district for recess and town hall meetings, the people have questions. About the facts. And when those questions are answered with the same collection of lies, misrepresentations and misdirection peddled each and every day from Capitol Hill – not to mention in your USA Today commentary – they understandably get louder. And when rooms are stocked with burly and intimidating union supporters, and when doors are closed to the public, they understandably get frustrated, and understandably get angry.

See, Congress hasn’t much had the American people in mind recently. You’ve thrown the nation into debt which we will not be capable of bearing for long. You’ve abandoned all promises of transparency and bipartisanship, taking steps to shut down, shut out and shut up any and all opposition and dissent from Republican Party officials and individual Americans alike, whether the issue be so-called economic stimulus, or the global transfer of wealth, destruction of the economy and death of American exceptionalism disguised not-so-cleverly as energy and environmental legislation. You don’t listen. So we shout. And you don’t like it.

That’s where you get the idea that we’re "[d]rowning out opposing views." The problem, however, is that it is the American people who are gasping for breath, who are begging to be heard, who are clamoring for a chance to ensure that our children and our children’s children are not worn raw from the bondage of debt.

And you dare call us un-American?

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August 14, 2009