Mar 22
Huizenga Vows to Work to Overturn the Democrats’ Health Care Mistake
As expected, the U.S. House voted Sunday to approve a federal takeover of the American health care system, despite the overwhelming objections of the American people.
Next January, if I have the honor of becoming your next congressman, I pledge to work with other Republicans and other like-minded colleagues to repeal this intrusive, unconstitional legislation, and begin an effort to enact common sense reforms that will lower the price of health care for all Americans.
By the end of 2009, most pundits considered the Democrats’ health care reform plan to be dead on arrival. They read the polls, watched the citizen protests and recognized that the American people were confused and worried about the plan, and wanted Congress to take a fresh approach to the issue.
That’s precisely what should have happened. Instead, President Obama, Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi decided to ignore the will of the people and plow forward with their plan, changing the rules along the way to make approval easier.
It was embarrasing to watrch the Democratic leaders bribe members of their own party, like Sen. Ben Nelson of Nebraska and Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana, to gain their support. And it was frightening to watch the fiasco over the weekend, as the President duped anti-abortion Democrats into supporting this bill by promising to issue an executive order to keep federal health dollars from paying for abortions.
Most analysts I’ve listened to say such an executive order would be on legal shaky ground, and could easily be tossed aside by the courts or rescinded by Obama himself. That means the legislation passed yesterday, with no restrictive language, leaves the door wide open for federal funding of abortions.
The legislation also has the potential to greatly increase our already frighteningly large national debt. While the Democrats argue that the program will pay for itself, or even lower deficits, history teaches us otherwise. They promised the same thing when they enacted many other massive entitlement programs, and most of them are headed for the financial rocks.
Perhaps the biggest tragedy of this whole process is that the federal government missed a golden opportunity to actually address the biggest health care problem in our nation – the skyrocketing cost of health coverage.
Republicans argued that measures like tort reform, allowing health insurance to be purchased across state lines, and opening up more insurance competition within individual states, would naturally drive costs down, allowing more wage earners and small businesses to purshace their own coverage without taxpayer assistance.
The Democrats were deaf to those common-sense proposals, and instead settled on a plan that only puts an expensive bandage on the problem.
The only question that remains is whether the American people will let the President, Reid and Pelosi have the final say on this matter. I don’t believe they will. I think voters will remember this day, go to the polls in November and send dozens of brand new representatives to Washington, D.C. to straighten out the mess that’s been created.
I hope I have the chance to be among those new members who Congress who will work toward fiscal sanity and common sense solutions to our nation’s challenges.
