Tornado Alley (PROG)

[wbmw]

Geo, I'm going to break up my response into a couple of posts, since there's a lot I'd like to respond with.

my main objection is twofold:

1) how could fixing the health care system possibly take 2000+ pages to repair? how do student loans figure into health care? and we can trade stories back and forth about the myriad of provisions in the bill....

2) I firmly believe this HC bill is no more than an an instrument of "social justice" and a framework for some type of socialist structure.....

I'd like to cover this, first.

On the 2000+ page bill, I realize the number sounds big, but have you seen the text? It's not like it's written like Harry Potter, and if it were, it would probably be more like a 600 page bill. Seriously, the margins are hugely indented, it's all double-spaced, and the text is fairly big. Here's one place you can download it.

I actually counted about 180 words on one of the pages. Compare that with about 400-500 words on the typical page of a novel.

You might then ask, why is it worth even 600 pages of Harry Potter sized font? You can continue this line of questioning, but the bottom line is that it's a complex process. The bill reforms one of the largest sectors in our country, it's all written in verbose legaleze, so that it conforms to the law of the land, and it covers hundreds of corner cases that were the subject of much debate over the last year.

In short, it does what it's supposed to do, and if it were possible to be any more efficient, it would have been.

I find it to be one of the weakest criticisms to defame the health care reform bill based on the number of pages. For one thing, there are reasons why it's so long, and for another, it should be about the content, not the length.

In terms of your question on student loans, I expect that it was a means to win over more votes from Congressmen in states where this kind of reform was a top priority. That's a segway to another point I have about the way Congress conducts business, and the fact that not every vote is based on the "right thing to do", but rather conditional on favors or other horse-trading - which is another thing that I suppose legitimately frustrates people like yourself.

Firstly, though, I want to say that I support the student loan reform. It was like a good side-effect of an otherwise political consensus-building tactic. It essentially removes the banks as the middle-men between the students and the loans. Most student loans have always originated from the government, but what had happened previously was that banks would take these loans - which were backed by the government and therefore contained no risk of a student defaulting of payment - and the banks would add huge surcharges, fees, and absurd interest payments that were causing great difficulties when students graduated and couldn't find a high enough paying job to pay back the loans. It actually bankrupted quite a few students out of college, which is criminal IMHO. The government fixed it by taking the banks out of the equation, and putting common sense limits in place to how much a student has to pay back, as a percentage of what they are making in their first jobs. It's a really good thing for our country that this passed.

As for the larger subject of horse-trading, yes I agree that our government would be FAR better if Congressmen simply voted unconditionally. I can tell you, the way that voters incentivize the behavior of Congressmen by continuing to vote for them when they do this, I can't see it getting fixed any time soon.

But if we take it as it is, here's the conundrum with the Democrats:

They basically have about ~50 Senators and about 45% of the House that pretty much agrees on Progressive policies, and will vote unconditionally. However, in order to pass legislation, the House needs 50% of the vote, and the Senate needs 60 Senators to vote for cloture in order to avoid the fillibuster and bring a piece of legislation to the floor.

Not every American realizes this, so when they hear that the Democrats own the seats in Congress, they get the impression that they can force just about anything through. NOT TRUE.

It actually takes a lot of arm-twisting, a lot of convincing, a lot of favors, and a lot of politics, just to convince the last few holdouts to support a new law, and it's ESPECIALLY true if that law is as big as health care reform.

So if you're saying that this means Washington is broken, then we actually agree! But we can't fix it by throwing the baby out with the bathwater, and punishing all the Congressmen within a given party, because there are quite a few of them who work really hard to do the right things.

It also means you can't punish Pelosi or Reid because they are the arm-twisters and deal-makers. Their jobs are to build consensus and get the bill passed. Blame instead the hold-outs who need the arm-twisting. Or blame the party who has done everything in their power to obstruct and delay the parliamentary process of lawmaking, regardless of whether they actually believe in the legislation.

I'm speaking of the Republicans, who tell you that they are trying to protect you from Democrats and Socialism, but who are even voting against their own ideas, after the Democrats embrace them. That's the silly part. Democrats have actually embraced Republican ideas, but when those ideas actually end up in a bill, the Republicans vote against them. The hyper-partisanship is out of control, and it's past the point of reasonable compromise. It's like taking your girlfriend to her favorite restaurant, and she still dumps you.

Lastly, let me say a few words on Socialism. First, what does it mean to you, because many social programs have improved the wellbeing of our country. You can criticize Social Security and Medicare for losing money in a down economy when there are fewer payroll revenues due to unemployment, but would you get rid of them altogether? Would you get rid of the Socialized military, or the Socialized fire and police? Would you scuttle the Socialized highway system, or the Socialized agencies that protect our airways, our food supplies, and our water systems?

The idea that Socialism is bad is mostly a relic from our country's fear of Socialized Russia and the other Communist countries who moved to an authoritarian rule. But in this modern age, we should be able to tell the difference between a Socialized Authoritarian system, and one that's Democratically ruled, such that the voters can just as easily strip the government of powers, as we can give those powers.

We like our Socialized systems, and there are legitimate arguments over what to socialize and what not to. We had that argument about health care, and we decided to keep the private industry intact. Of course, the reform meant fewer profits for the health care industry in order to insure more Americans, but I think the benefit to our society will be greater for having done so. I'll explain more in my next post, but I'll leave you with what I've written so far to think about. Thanks for the discussion.