Government Health Care – Coming to Congress in January

26 Oct, 2008 by McQ

Print this article Font size -16+

Even more of a reason to be quaking in your boots.

“I pledge to you that I will be there next January on the floor of the United States Senate,” Mr. [Edward] Kennedy told the cheering crowd in Denver. “This is the cause of my life, new hope that we will break the old gridlock and guarantee that every American – north, south, east, west, young, old – will have decent, quality health care as a fundamental right and not a privilege.”

My guess is, Ted doesn’t have much time left. Consequently, he’s approaching this as a legacy issue for him. And the stars, it appears, or at least he believes, are lining up perfectly for him.

“Were Obama to win, [Mr. Kennedy] will have significant influence on an Obama administration?” Mr. Pollack predicted.

So why wait, right?

Mr. Kennedy’s goal, his aides say, is to introduce a universal health care bill as soon as the new Congress convenes next year and to push quickly for its passage – a much-accelerated timetable compared with the last time that a health care overhaul was on the agenda, at the start of the Clinton administration.

“Senator Kennedy has spent the last several weeks laying the groundwork for reform so that we can be ready to go in 2009,” said his spokesman Anthony Coley. “This is and has been the cause of Senator Kennedy’s life.”

Monetarily chest deep in the financial bailout and the take over of a significant portion of the economy, Kennedy will be pushing, in January, for another 1/7th of the GDP to be taken by government as well. And he will use his every tool he has available to get it passed, to include his own health if he thinks it will emotionally sway enough to pass this.

As you might suspect, he has ‘bi-partisan support’:

Among those who are receptive to a bipartisan plan and who have participated in the initial talks is Sen. Michael B. Enzi of Wyoming, the ranking Republican on the Senate health committee, which Mr. Kennedy leads.

About those tax cuts for 95% of Americans (see “snake oil“)…

[Crossposted at QandO]