Organizing for America | John Penaloza's Blog: The Audacity of Hubris

The Audacity of Hubris

By Primary Colors - Jun 17th, 2009 at 2:22 am EDT

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Tags: health care reform, public option health insurance

This week, so-called 'Blue Dog' democrats and centrist GOP members have been meeting secretly and at length to produce proposals meant to derail a central tenet of President Obama's health insurance reform plan, a strong public health insurance option. Available nationwide to anyone who chooses it, such a plan would be able to negotiate with health providers and drug companies on behalf of its members (American taxpayers) and pass on the savings in the form of affordable premiums. Recent surveys show that 73% of voters nationwide (77% Dem, 79% Ind, 63% Rep) support health reform that includes such an option while only 15% are estimated to support reform that does not. So why would middle-of-the-road Democrats and Republicans work so hard to undermine something that most of their constituents desire? Because the disconnect between the motivations of our congressional representatives and the interests of the voters they supposedly represent has never been greater. Healthcare lobbying groups have reportedly committed some $100 Million to be spent over just the next few weeks in an all-out assault on the Obama health care initiative. What percentage of that amount might be destined for the campaign funds of past recipients, many of them part of this GOP/Blue Dog alliance? I'd bet it's safe to guess that it's probably a similar portion of the funds that mortgage industry lobbies mobilized to defeat a measure that would have empowered bankruptcy judges to re-write the loans of millions of homeowners on the brink of foreclosure. The measure was widely seen as the 'teeth' in Obama administration measures to deal with the mortgage crisis, and they were conveniently pulled by the same cadre of legislators now collaborating in rare bi-partisan fashion against the physical welfare of their electors and the American people as a whole. Enough is enough. I just hope that as Democrats we have the guts to field strong primary opponents to the Blue Dogs that share the idealism of our President and not the self-centeredness of this faction so obviously gone astray.

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