California Conservative

My first reaction to Steny Hoyer’s whining presentation was that he should whine from a different hymnal because this speech was from a discredited hymnal:

“One of our two great parties is now an organization committed to an unprecedented level of lockstep opposition to the president,” said Hoyer. “A ‘Party of No,’ whose political strategy is an investment in failure for our country and paralysis for its institutions.”

In a 30-minute speech yesterday to the Center for American Progress, Hoyer cited a number of instances in which both parties in the last half-century worked toward compromise on major legislation: civil rights in 1964, Medicare in 1965, Social Security in 1983, tax reform in 1986, No Child Left Behind in 2001. He also included environmental legislation under Richard Nixon, welfare reform under Bill Clinton and the 1956 interstate highway bill.

“No one expects Republicans to roll over for President Obama,” said Hoyer. “But the ‘Party of No’ strategy is so disappointing because the history of Congress is full of loyal oppositions that shared responsibility for governing in trying times and shaped some of the most important legislation of their eras.”

HINT TO STENY: The loyal opposition’s first responsibility is to oppose irresponsible legislation.

Thus far, the GOP has opposed the Democrats’ radical agenda. There’s nothing mainstream about the Democrats’ slashing the Medicare home care budget. There’s nothing mainstream about passing a $787,000,000,000 bill that’s more about paying off the Democrats’ political allies without reading the legislation. There’s nothing mainstream about passing a national energy tax that will (a) cripple job creation, (b) “necessarily cause” energy prices to skyrocket and (c) cripple the economies of Ohio, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.

The problem isn’t the Republicans’ opposition to President Obama’s and the Democrats’ agenda. The problem is the Democrats’ radical agenda. We know it’s a radical agenda because Rasmussen’s polling consistently shows the American people preferring the GOP’s position on the 10 most important issues currently confronting us.

“Republicans again and again have chosen slogans and symbolism over constructive contributions. When President Obama proposed a budget with a detailed focus on education, clean energy, and health care reform, Republicans could have worked to put their stamp on it. Or they could have proposed a substantive alternative. Instead, House Republicans spent most of their energy lambasting Democrats—releasing an 18-page document that famously included more pictures of windmills than charts of numbers.

Two months into President Obama’s FY2010 budget, the deficit is already almost as big as the Bush administration’s biggest deficit. Perhaps Mr. Hoyer would like explaining why Democrats voted for such an irresponsible budget. I know many people living here in America’s heartland would like to hear that explanation.

Leader Hoyer says that “Republicans could have worked to put their stamp” on health care reform legislation. That’s a bald-faced lie. The bill that passed the House was crafted in Speaker Pelosi’s office, an office that was shut to Republicans’ suggestions. Is Leader Hoyer suggesting that the House GOP was able to give its input via telepathy? It certainly can’t mean that Republicans like Paul Ryan were allowed substantive input into the bill.

Mr. Hoyer whines about the House GOP not going along with Rep. Waxman’s national energy tax legislation. Why should they vote for it when that legislation would’ve driven gas prices higher, caused home heating bills to spike and sent inflationary shock waves through the economy? If Mr. Hoyer is going to whine about this stuff, then I’d like to hear Mr. Hoyer’s explanation of the usefulness of any of President Obama’s and Speaker Pelosi’s agenda.

I know that everything they’ve done is part of the progressives’ wish list for the past 50 years or more. Being part of the progressives’ wish list doesn’t explain how it helps people. Being part of the progressives’ wish list doesn’t explain why their legislation is the best solution for the most important problems facing our nation.

We won’t get an explanation from Mr. Hoyer (a) because he’s Speaker Pelosi’s puppet and (b) because explaining the Democrats’ agenda is too much like defending the indefensible.

Again, on health care, the Democratic plan faced months of debate before it came up for a House vote; but from the beginning, Republicans made clear to the Democratic leadership and chairmen that they were not interested in participating. What’s especially remarkable about Republican obstructionism on health care is that a central plank of the Democratic plan—an individual insurance mandate—was the Republican alternative during the Clinton administration. Since then, millions more Americans have lost their health coverage, and the average premium has more than doubled—and Republicans now argue against the policy they once supported. Similarly, after proposing hundreds of billions of dollars in Medicare cuts, Republicans are now protesting our plans to save Medicare money as part of health care reform. That looks to me like a party determined to ‘break’ Democratic presidents, in the words of Senator DeMint—even as its constituents continue to suffer under a broken system.

What a moronic argument. Republicans now oppose something that they supported in 1993. John Meynard Keynes’ quote fits here perfectly:

When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?

Steny’s line that Republicans proposed Medicare cuts is BS, too. when Newt Gingrich proposed shrinking the Medicare budget, he did it in the context of changing Medicare policy, too. (In the real world, that’s what’s thought of as reform.) When the Democrats proposed cutting Medicare by $460,000,000,000, they didn’t offer those cuts in the context of changing Medicare reform. They did it within the context of using existing policies. That’s why it’s considered cutting Medicare.

The Democrats’ health care legislation doesn’t increase Medicare solvency. The Democrats’ health care legislation DOOMS Medicare. The Democrats’ health care legislation doesn’t first guarantee that it doesn’t do any harm. Had that been the Democrats’ starting point, their legislation would look dramatically different. It wouldn’t look anything like the legislation currently being debated in the Senate.

In the Senate, of course, the minority’s obstructive power is even greater. The filibuster has turned from an exceptionally rare tool of passionate opposition, into a routine hurdle. Political scientist Barbara Sinclair found that the last Congress, with a Republican minority in the Senate, set a filibuster record—and that while just 8% of major bills faced filibusters in the 1960s, 70% do today. That goes far beyond the Founders’ plan for the Senate’s ‘cooling’ function—that is a recipe for a Senate practically paralyzed.

Mr. Hoyer must think he’s talking to a bunch of first graders. Theoretically, the Senate has greater obstructive powers. This year, Republicans can’t mount a successful filibuster because the Democrats have a filibuster-proof majority. (I’d further add that obstruction is a positive thing if it’s used to prevent radical legislation that would hurt our economy and our health care system.)

Steny Hoyer’s contrived diatribe is proof that he’s a whiner. It also proves that he’s trying to shift public opinion to his side. That won’t work because he’s whining from a tired, discredited, liberal hymnal. Mr. Hoyer knows that the Republicans can’t stop anything in the House because they need 41 or more Democrats to side with them to defeat the Democrats’ bills or to put one of their bills over the top.

The American people have shown where they are through the TEA Parties, the townhall meetings where the constituents knew more about the legislation than the legislators knew and at the voting booths in New Jersey and Virginia.

What’s really happening here is that the Democrats don’t have enough Far Left lunatics like Henry Waxman, John Conyers, Maxine Waters and Dennis Kucinich to pass their radical agenda without bribing some of them into abandoning what little’s left of their principles.

Mr. Hoyer is a whiney, pathetic man singing a whiney refrain over and over and over again. It’s long past old. It’s rapidly approaching ancient. It’s time for the Democrats to start thinking and putting together appealing policies.

I’m not holding my breath on that.

Technorati Tags: Op-ed, Steny Hoyer, Health Care, national Energy Tax, Medicare, Home Care, Budget Cuts, Democrats

Cross-posted at LetFreedomRingBlog

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 8th, 2009 at 12:35 pm and is filed under Author: Gary Gross, Democrats, Economy, Energy, Health Care, Obama, Pelosi. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.