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December 20, 2009

Olympia Snowe on Senate Health Care Bill (Updated)

Topics: Political News and commentaries

She's the only Republican the Dems thought they could entice on board there massive train wreck of a health care bill, and she says she won't be voting for it. The vote is scheduled for 7:00PM EST, Christmas eve. It will be the equivalent of putting coal in the stocking of every American, for generations to come.

Update: Jennifer Rubin writes that Snowe has had it:

Obama has finally managed to do it. He first lost David Brooks -- and now Sen. Olympia Snowe. In her statement of opposition to ObamaCare, Snowe detailed some substantive concerns, but basically she got fed up with the bullying:

[...] It defies logic that we are now expected to vote on the overall, final package before Christmas with no opportunity to amend it so we can adjourn for a three week recess even as the legislation will not fully go into effect until 2014, four years from now. ... Ultimately, there is absolutely no reason to be hurtling headlong to a Christmas deadline on monumental legislation affecting every American, when it doesn't even fully go into effect until 2014. When 51 percent of the American people in a recent survey have said they do not approve of what we are doing, they understand what Congress does not -- and that is, that time is not our enemy, it is our friend.

Therefore, we must take a time out from this legislative game of "beat the clock," reconvene in January - instead of taking a three week recess - and spend the time necessary to get this right. Legislation affecting more than 300 million Americans deserves better than midnight votes on a bill that cannot be further amended and that no one has had the opportunity to fully consider - and the Senate must step up to its responsibility as the world's greatest deliberative body on behalf of the American people.

It's significant that the not-very-conservative conservatives hovering around the middle of the political spectrum have thrown up their hands in collective disgust, recognizing that ObamaCare is not about reasoned policymaking but about brute political strength.

Indeed, what the Dems are doing defies all logic and common sense and is geared more toward transforming America into a nanny state and increasing Dems' power than anything having to do with truly reforming health care to bring down costs and insure more Americans.

H/t - Kristofer Lorelli

Posted by Abdul at December 20, 2009 10:59 PM

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• Olympia Snowe on Senate Health Care Bill (Updated) - Dec 20, 2009