REPOSTED WITH COMMENT

Leroy N. Soetoro    View profile
  More options Dec 21, 11:49 pm

Newsgroups: alt.politics.obama, alt.culture.alaska,
alt.politics.usa.congress, a
lt.politics.socialism.democratic, alt.health

From: "Leroy N. Soetoro" <leroysoet...@usurper.org>
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 2009 04:49:39 +0000 (UTC)
Local: Mon, Dec 21 2009 11:49 pm
Subject: President Obama, Congress should set health-care reform aside
Reply | Reply to author | Forward | Print | Individual message | Show
original | Report this message | Find messages by this author

http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/editorials/2010544086_edit20hea...
re.html

THE health-care dance in Washington, D.C., has gone on long enough.
Congress needs to focus on the economy and set health care aside.


This is a change of position for us. This page supported Barack Obama
for
president, enthusiastically. We have supported the health-care effort
until now. We still support universal coverage as a social goal.


But the longer the fight goes on, the more it feels that the timing is
all
wrong. The economy is wounded. Employers are hurting. The time to
think
about loading employers with new burdens is when they are strong. Not
now.


Right now, Congress needs to focus on the economy. It needs to follow
the
lead of Sen. Maria Cantwell and re-enact Glass-Steagall, the law that
separated investment banking from commercial banking and for 50 years
helped maintain sanity on Wall Street. It needs to bolster the
antitrust
laws. It needs to lower the estate tax.


It needs to target the rest of the stimulus money at things that
really
stimulate all of these actions to provide breathing room to small-
and
middle-sized family businesses that were once the backbone of the
economy
and can be again.


It needs to rejuvenate a trade agenda, starting by ratifying the
agreement
with Korea.


It needs to get out of two no-win wars in Asia. These are
"investments"
that will never pay out.


President Obama has promised that any health-care bill he signs will
not
add one dime to the deficit, which already has swelled beyond
anything
since World War II. The president has put himself in a position where
he
cannot keep that promise. He has let each house of Congress come up
with
its own health-care bills.


The result has been chaos: The public option is in then out; the
Medicare
buy-in for 55-year-olds is in, then out. When the congressional dance
stops, the Senate may have 60 votes, but for what? It will satisfy
neither
Obama's frugal promise nor progressives' lavish hopes. Already the
Democratic Party's former chairman, Howard Dean, says the bill is not
worth passing in this form.


You know he's right when you hear statements that something has to be
passed, for political reasons. This issue is too important for that.
It
should wait for a unified proposal and an economy on the mend.


--
from Chicago:
Nancy Pelosi, Democrat criminal, accessory before and after the fact,
to
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Charles B. Rangel of New
York's
million dollar tax evasion.  Charles B. Rangel is still under
"investigation" by a "closed door" House Ethics Committee.