The House of Representatives voted in a 219-212 decision Sunday to pass the massive health care overhaul bill that’s being dubbed Obamacare. This piece of legislation is one of the single biggest and most sweeping reforms of its kind in the nation’s history. This is the type of legislation that affects everyone.
When Barack Obama ran for president in 2008 he promised America a “New Age of Bipartisanship.” Well, where the hell is it? I’m still waiting for his infamous “Change We Can Believe In.” A new age of openness was promised along with bipartisanship and none of those were evident in Obamacare. The House passed a bill through a little used budgetary procedure with ZERO Republican votes. That’s right, ZERO. The man who promised to elevate politics above party lines just helped pass a bill in which he could not convince a single Republican to vote for it. Using common sense, wouldn’t at least a few Republicans vote for this bill if it was everything the Obama administration and Democrats would like you to believe?
The Democrats say that this bill will lower the deficit as well as provide insurance to millions of uninsured Americans. Well, how does that work exactly? How is adding a massive — and I reiterate — massive new government program which will cost about one trillion dollars going to lower our $13 trillion debt? Do they still think that we can pay for things with “Hope and Change?” The only way to lower the deficit is by cutting government programs, instituting new taxes or a combo of both. This bill does none of this, except precede massive new taxes that are likely to pay for this bill.
If you want to see our national debt spiral out of control in real time, I encourage you to go to http://www.usdebtclock.org. It has an amazing amount of information, all in simple red and green. We need more fiscally responsible solutions to our health care crisis rather than massive new government programs.
With this new bill, do you know who will be in charge of your health care? The IRS. That’s right. The same people who are in charge of making you pay your hard earned money to the government will now be in charge of enforcing health care regulations. We will be fined for not having health care and will be forced to pay or face the consequences, and we all know what kind of things the IRS can do to you. We, as students, have already seen some of the fines and regulations that can come with this legislation at our own University. At N.C. State we are going to be required to have proof of insurance or be “fined” for not having it in the form of a student care plan. This is what is going to be done to every single American in the United States.
Is this what we wanted, more government control? This is the question we must ask ourselves as November approaches. That is when we must make our stand. We must tell all of our elected representatives how we feel about the way they voted. They must be held accountable. They are the employees and we are the bosses. What happens when employees do not listen to the bosses’ orders? They are fired. In November, it will be time for the American people to fire their employees in Congress and tell them enough is enough. We are finally ready for the change that was promised many, many months and years ago.
