Demand That Your Representatives Sign the Pledge

We’ve posted a lot of information on the so-called “stimulus” or recovery act as  the Administration now calls it.  The promise was that job losses would halt immediately if C0ngress passed the thousand page bill immediately.  When the final votes were taken the final version of the bill had not yet been printed.  There was one copy, a previous version of the bill with handwritten edits, cross-outs and margin notes.  No Congressman or Senator who voted for the stimulus had read it or knew what was in it.  As we’ve shown repeatedly, it has not halted job losses.  It’s a failure.

Two weeks ago the House passed another giant piece of legislation, the 1,200 page energy/global warming bill.  This one came with three hundred pages of fine-print amendments that were only partially written.  That’s right, now that the amendments have passed, whoever controls the writing, can write anything!  Your representative does not know what he voted for.

A group called “Let Freedom Ring” has developed a simple pledge for Congressmen and Senators to sign.  Here it is:

Below is a 3.5 minute video about the pledge and the group circulating it.

While Liberty Works certainly supports this pledge, we are dismayed that we The People have been reduced to making such a pitiful plea to arrogant, autocratic politicians.

It is a direct, unambiguous violation of the US Constitution for the government to do any of the following:

• Regulate the price or terms of a health insurance policy;
• Provide health insurance or medical services to anyone except military personnel and government employees;
• Control the prices of medical services or drugs;
• Regulate local hospitals;
• Require that hospitals and clinics get permission from the government before buying equipment or machinery or buildings;

Yet the government does, and has done all of the above for decades. The result of continuously escalating government intervention is a chaotic mishmash of government and heavily regulated private sector insurance and medical services.

Now, under the leadership of Barack Obama, Democrats in the House and Senate are striving to dramatically increase government intervention, as if a lack of enough bureaucrats were the problem, and thousands more pages of fine print regulations would somehow lower the price of and improve the quality of medical care.

There is simply no historical example of improvements in medical care from government intervention.  Obama-care should not even be under consideration.

But, at the very least, Congressmen and Senators should read the wretched thing before they vote on it.  Perhaps this pledge is the best idea to prevent passage.  The bill will be be thousands of pages and few if any Senators and Representatives can actually comprehend it all, understand how it will all work and what the actual consequences will be.  In reality, there is no way to predict the consequences of new government intervention so vast and complex that it takes thousands of pages to describe.

Of course it would be an improvement over recent experience if the bill were actually written in advance, so that the version Senate and House will vote on could indeed be posted on the Internet for 72 hours.  But one has to ask, what good is  72 hours for the public to digest thousands of pages of legalese?  Why not 72 days, at least?

Why is Obama-care so urgent?  Why is it so important for Congress to pass a sweeping “overhaul” that will effect every American, for decades to come, before September?  Because the longer the details are out there the more opposition will develop!  Obama and the Democrats know they have to pass it quickly, before The People find out what’s coming at them from Washington, or it won’t pass at all.