Healthcare bills passing in the night...
November 20, 2009 - 12:37 ET
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PAT: They're conducting this vote tomorrow night 8:00 or 10:00 or whenever they get around to it on a Saturday night. Is it on C‑Span? Are they broadcasting it? Is it out in the light of day? Have they even ‑‑ and as you know, 2,074 pages, nobody none of these guys, or women, have read this bill. But we've heard that's not important anymore, either.
CONYERS: I love these members that get up and say read the bill. What good is reading the bill if it's 1,000 pages and you don't have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill.
PAT: That's one of the most incomprehensible things. I mean, I understand what he's saying. I just can't believe he would say it. And I can't believe how stupid you have to be. He knows what he's doing. He is a lawyer himself, John Conyers. "Read the bill." It's so ridiculous to ask them to read a 1,000 page bill. How ridiculous is it to ask them to read a 2,074 page bill? It's just not going to happen. They have no idea. They have no idea what's in this thing.
And the way in which they are trying to secure votes apparently, there's a good article today says, what does it take to get a wavering senator to vote for healthcare reform? Here's a case study. On Page 432 of the read bill, there's a section increasing federal Medicaid subsidies for, quote, certain states recovering from a major disaster, unquote. This section spends two pages defining which states would qualify saying, among other things, that it would be states that during the preceding seven fiscal years have been declared a major disaster area. Now, there is exactly one indicate that fits that description, and it's Louisiana, surprising ‑‑ surprisingly enough it is Louisiana, the home of moderate Democrat Mary Landrieu who has been playing hard to get on the healthcare bill, and she's undecided on it. So this bill calls for $100 million to her state. They're trying to buy her off. They're trying to ‑‑ with this bizarre, "No, we're just doing ‑‑ no, no, this is for any state that during the preceding seven fiscal years has been declared a major disaster area. That could be any state. If Idaho had that happen, they would get the $100 million as well. " There's one state that fits it. This is an effort to buy off Mary Landrieu. Harry Reid who drafted it can't pass it without the support of Senator Mary Landrieu.
Now, in radio this is called ‑‑ this kind of thing is called payola, and it's illegal. "Hey, if you could, if you could just see your way clear to start playing our new Britney Spears record, why, we could maybe see to it that you and your wife get a trip to Hawaii, hmmm? We'll maybe even throw in a trip for an on‑air contest that you could give away a trip to Hawaii, too. How about it? No? Hmmm. How about $50,000?" It's illegal in radio. Why is this legal in the halls of congress where they're setting the course for our future? It's just, it's incomprehensible to me. So again we have to stand on this and we have to stand on it pretty hard. This is a critical juncture. We've been talking about this for months now. You know how important it is. You know that this sets the stage for the destruction of the U.S. economy. One sixth of the economy will be, will then be under the U.S. Government control.
They're trying to tell you that this is only about healthcare and taking care of people who are dying every day. Oh, they're just, they're dropping dead every day because they don't have healthcare. Dropping dead right now. And just be piled up on sidewalks of the streets of major cities and minor cities all over this country and I just, I'm sick about it. And these Republicans don't care about them. They see it, they see it every day, see people dropping dead from lack of healthcare every day, every minute. They don't do anything about it. We're just trying to fix that. Yeah, that's all they are trying to do. We all know better than that. We all know that we have the greatest healthcare system in the world. Are there problems with it? Yes. The preexisting condition thing that precludes people from ever obtaining health insurance at a reasonable rate or a rate they could ever afford is something we have to address. Fine; do that. Do that. Fix that! You don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. This doesn't, this doesn't make any sense, unless, unless you've got some other motive here and that's to fundamentally transform America.
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