Southern Bread

I’ve held off on commenting any more on the whole health care thing. Honestly I’m just tired of the whole thing. I wish they’d just get on with it already. Go ahead and just pass something or don’t and just shut up. Through all of my numerous posts on the subject I’ve pretty much covered most of my thoughts. Of course it’s going to be a complete disaster. Of course it’s going to cost about 10 trillion dollars. Of course it’s going to mean an overall decline of quality in health care. Of course it’s going to do all of those things and a million other bad things that there’s just not enough time in the day to discuss. But that’s just the obvious stuff. The boring stuff.

The more interesting thing to me is that as this process has moved along, the consequences have shifted in a direction that I don’t think was ever anticipated. In order to get this thing passed, they are having to break all of the “rules” in the senate and house. The whole thing with reconciliation being used in the Senate and the new proposal of the so-called “Slaughter Solution” in the house is frightening. Not in some Glenn Beck, we need to go back to the Constitution sort of way. That’s naive. None of these “rules” are constitutional any how. No, the real problem is that the more of their own rules they break, the more they get used to not having any rules at all.

Once they break a rule, it’s dead. As soon as they violate their stupid reconciliation rule, the whole process of filibuster is gone. They will never again need anything other than a 51 vote majority to pass anything. That’s the definition of tyranny by the majority. And, of course that violates the constitution in every shape and manner, but what’s the constitution? It’s a dead piece of paper. It’s meaningless. The sooner people understand that, the sooner we can move on and stop buying into the notion that politics is ever going to be “good.”

The health care “bill” has become an end game to an entirely new endeavor. It’s not about health care any more. It’s become a starting point that will kick off a long, systematic dismantling of any and all congressional limitations. I foresee that in 20 or 30 years there will be no recognizable rules in congress any more. They will pretty much write whatever legislation they want and pass it with bare majorities in each house. There will be no more limits on them. And when there are no more checks on their power, God help us all.