Republicans are stalling. And if their tactics prevail, it will cost the U.S.
This is typical Republican theater; argue that they’re the party of fiscal responsibility while at the same time acting entirely opposite. Under the last president, with Republicans in the majority, they cut taxes and didn’t fund two wars. The irresponsibility of their actions have gone ignored by most in the media, including the supposedly “liberal” outlets.
Republicans are behaving reprehensibly, because they have become accustomed to claiming a moral high ground. In the case of healthcare reform, Republicans are 100 years behind the times, backing policy from their last popular dead president, who espoused that the government was the problem. The same president expanded government, changed the tax code and ran up the deficit, leaving a Democrat to fix it. That’s the narrative that Republicans are in deep denial over. No amount of Fox/Beck/Hannity/Limbaugh/O’Reilly is going to change the fact that Republicans are not facing the music. 2010 will not be 1994, if the Dems nut it up and pass healthcare reform legislation. The irony is that passing the evil Democratic legislation in front of Congress, which contains Republican ideas (before they flip flopped on those ideas; another in a long list of deep hypocrisies plaguing supposed fiscally responsible conservatives).
That aside, if the GOP continues its strategy of obstructionism, there is a human cost, one that will only ensure future GOP losses at the polls if nothing is done to fix the broken U.S. healthcare system:
The Cost of Doing Nothing on Health Care
Nearly every mainstream analysis calls for medical costs to continue to climb over the next decade, outpacing the growth in the overall economy and certainly increasing faster than the average paycheck. Those higher costs will translate into higher premiums, which will mean fewer individuals and businesses will be able to afford insurance coverage. More of everyone’s dollar will go to health care, and government programs like Medicare and Medicaid will struggle to find the money to operate.
Personal sidenote: I’ve never seen a bigger bunch of low class sore loser pussies than the GOP this cycle. At least in ’94, Newt Gingrich pretended to be an intellectual leader. There is no such thing now. The Tea Party is not even close to having the momentum that Newt had in ’94.
p.s. Dems, time to unify and pass it.