The most important thing to understand about the Democrats' domestic agenda is that they care more about establishing government control over our lives than they do about the stated policy goals of their proposals.
It's true of their fraudulently named stimulus packages, their cap-and-tax scheme and especially their universal health care plans.
With all of these programs and more, their driving aim is not only to acquire power for the sake of acquiring it but also to use government to impose their values on us and, effectively, destroy our personal liberties. The subject of liberty — the very impetus for the founding of this nation — is rarely mentioned in the public debate.
That is why we'll never convince them with evidence, from the growing scientific skepticism about global warming to the proven failed track record of Keynesian economics to the universal failure rate of socialized medicine throughout the world.
But it is also why they'll never persuade the public to go along with their mischief if the facts get out, which explains their unilateral declaration of a consensus on global warming and their refusal to debate the issue, their historical revisionism on the failures of New Deal stimuli, and their perpetual urgency in rushing their entire agenda through simultaneously — before the public can even digest their proposals, much less organize to oppose them.
Health care is this week's crisis. Here, it's imperative we recognize that they're more interested in imposing their values on abortion, end-stage medical care, and economic equality than in the quality of health care.
CNS News reports that congressional Democrats want abortion to be included as a health benefit in both government and private insurance plans — using taxpayer money to fund abortion on demand. This exposes the lie that they want to reduce the number of abortions. Please.
The plan would also inevitably result in government rationing of care, and the liberals driving the plan, such as Tom Daschle (in his 2008 book, "Critical: What We Can Do About the Health-Care Crisis"), have made clear their opinion that the elderly are the most expendable. The plan would result in government bureaucrats, rather than your doctor, having the final say over your care options.
Then there's the wealth-redistribution mentality forever driving President Obama — his obsession with leveling the economic playing field that underlies all of his major policy initiatives.
This obsession explains why he supports capital gains tax increases even though they would hurt everyone, his endless appetite for soaking the rich with increasingly confiscatory taxes, and his single-minded determination to bankrupt this nation through no-growth deficit spending. It explains why he is willing to destroy our health care system in the name of requiring everyone — whether they want it or not — to have health insurance.
This point was brought home to me when I was listening to an audio clip of Sen. Tom Coburn, a physician, wherein he states that if America had established a government-run health care system like Canada's or Britain's 10 years ago, we'd have 1 million fewer Americans alive today. Coburn bases this on our increased life expectancy. "Our survival rates on cancer, malignancies and coronary artery disease," he says, "are so far better because we have available technology and acute intervention, as well as prevention, that those countries don't have."
When will Americans open their eyes? Everything about Obama's plan is a lie. He says he wants to increase competition and choice, improve the quality of health care, reduce costs, and achieve universal coverage. But his plan would reduce competition, with mandatory government controls and mandates that would require uniformity of coverage. It would dramatically increase overall costs by artificially increasing demand. It would destroy the quality of health care, and it would crowd out and force out private insurers, through stacking the deck in favor of the euphemistically labeled "public option." Congressional Budget Office projections indicate that for all the Draconian coverage mandates, the plan wouldn't even solve the overarching problem of insurance coverage. Of course, the insurance coverage issue has been enormously distorted by this bunch, by their failure to disclose that millions of the uninsured are not American citizens, millions are young and healthy and choose not to buy insurance though they can afford it, and almost half of the uninsured only remain so for an average of four months.
On top of all this, have you seen the horrifying chart being circulated by Republican congressmen illustrating the bureaucratic nightmare that awaits us if we adopt this plan? And for what? Reduced health care quality, choice, costs and availability — in exchange for economy-destroying tax increases.
Now is the time for all good Blue Dog Democrats to come to the aid of their country.
