Congress poised to criminalize Self-government and Independence

In a short column written for the Washington Post, Ezra Klein explains why the Town Halls during the Congressional break are likely not to effect the final outcome of the health care debate which he considers something of a foregone conclusion. In other words, says he, Congress is most likely going to pass the health care bill, and the alien-in-chief is, of course, going to sign it into law. This in spite of all the opposition fireworks we saw at tht Town Halls last month.

Klein's take on the matter is almost identical to my own, which I've expressed here and elsewhere a number of times over the past months since the health care debate was first initiated in Congress. My perspective on this issue is a pretty simple one -- Democrats, who currently hold a clear super majority in the House, and a not so clear but nontheless large majority in the Senate, have been chomping at the bit since they lost their majorities back in 1992, waiting for the moment they would regain power enough to push their socialist agenda through without serious opposition.

I'm not much of a candy eater myself and never have been, but I'm reminded here of when I was in basic military training. For about the first two and a half to three weeks of basic training, my comrades and I were all deprived of, among other things that before we'd taken for granted, access to any kind of candies and soda pops. When we were finally let out onto the break area for an hour one evening, well, I must have eaten about six candy bars and drank about as many pops. Again, I've never liked candy very much, but the idea that I had been denied access to it for upwards of two and half weeks drove me to injest as much of it as I could while I could for fear I might not get another chance, or that it might be long in coming. I think that's similar to what's happening here. If you give them free reign, or virtual free reign, if but for a couple of hours, so to speak, the Democrats and the RINOs in both houses of Congress are almost sure to take full advantage of it, and damn the consequences, really. Like myself at that youthful age, they're very much immature and display a real lack of self control (not to mention common sense). Indeed, I would say that our word for the 'Gamers' -- "Arrested Adolescents" -- applies in this case as well. On the other hand, Mr. Klein and I could both be completely wrong about this, not about the immaturity and hell-bent attitude on display in the U.S. Congress, but about the ultimate passage of the health care bill. I don't think so (that we're wrong), but there is that remote possibility. We shall see in due time.

Klein's article is posted beneath the fold. (H/T: VFR)

The State of Health-Care Reform

The research seems pretty convincing that impressive speeches don't do much to transform the dynamics of presidential approval. But then, tonight's speech doesn't need to do much. And it doesn't need to do much because health-care reform is in pretty good shape. Bills have now passed four of the five relevant committees. The outlier committee, the Senate Finance Committee, is circulating its outline and seems likely to pass a bill within the next week or so.

At that point, the bills will go to the floor of the House and Senate, where passage isn't certain but seems pretty likely. And once the bills pass the House and the Senate, final passage of the conference report (the merged bill) is a good bet. And the president's signature is then a sure thing.

That's the context for Obama's speech: It's sort of health-care reform's version of the State of the Union. And the State of the Process is strong: The legislative politics of health care are in considerably better shape than August would have suggested or the ongoing coverage has really articulated (in part because the Finance Committee was gummed up until this week).

Obama's job, then, isn't all that difficult: It's bringing public perceptions of the health reform process closer in line with the underlying reality. And that underlying reality is that the bills are fundamentally pretty similar, there's a fairly high level of consensus, and there are some crucial elements that need to be worked out over the next few weeks, and seem like they will be. The town halls made health-care reform seem chaotic and incomprehensible and disorderly, but at the moment, it's really anything but. In fact, it's closer to agreement than it ever has been before.