Congressional Inaction

The talk through most of the halls of Congress in recent days has been about the stands of various leaders in the fight for health care reform. As an issue he promised to tackle upon taking office, President Obama has been taking efforts to try and effect change for the better in terms of health care coverage and how it is provided to people who are currently out of work or are in need of affordable health care due to other reasons. What has been happening however is a lot of posturing by both political parties in an effort to make the change they want to see and the unfortunate thing is that that means that nothing is happening. Since taking office, Obama has talked about having bipartisan cooperation in an effort to make change that will get this country back on it's feet again. Unfortunately, there are some in Congress who seem Hell-bent on stopping change no matter what the consequences are.

Now I'm not naive enough to assume that whatever Obama says should be accepted without question and at face value. I agree that there should be debate and that there should be open dialogue. However, open dialogue and debate can only happen when all parties having the 'conversation' are willing to hear what their compatriots are saying. What appears to be happening more and more often with Republicans is that they outrightly object to whatever Obama or Democrats propose and simply paint a portrait of a President standing on a bully pulpit backed by his party's leaders and attempting to ram their changes through Congress. I'm sorry, but as I recall, the bill passed through the Senate with 60 votes which means some Republicans didn't exactly feel like they were being forced into something.

Still, it's fine if you don't agree. We don't need a country full of yes men. It's good to have debate and discussion over what problems you have with a proposed bill. But when you do nothing but talk about wanting to 'scrap the bill' and to 'start over' it sounds more like little kids to me than Congressional leaders. People with big egos often talk like that. They aren't willing to hear what others have to say. They often say that it should be their way or the highway and if they don't get their way then there is hemming and hawing like no one's business. Take for example the ever eloquent (and I'm being extremely sarcastic here) Sarah Palin. Sure she'll offer up plenty of soundbite worthy clips degrading the government and the President in particular but I can't help but notice two things. She stepped down from office and gave up leadership of her state which strikes me as being very childish but more importantly, she never offers up any concrete alternatives. I guess she can't write all that much on the palm of her hands.

I think that Obama believes that open dialogue and discussions can lead to compromise but what he has at least bullied to make clear is that health care reform will happen and it's up to opponents to step up and make arguments that will make their proposed changes part of the bill. But like Sarah Palin what I see a lot of in Congress is objection for the sake of objection. They object because the proposal comes from someone they are opposed to. There's no real 'meat' to their objection, its simply because they don't want to agree with the person. Then by misrepresenting why they object ("the bill is being 'rammed' through Congress") they paint a completely different picture. I say stop the words and take action. Object; that's your right as our leaders in Congress, but offer up alternatives that you are willing to compromise on. That would be even better.