Until recently, I was only dimly aware of Congresswoman Louise Slaughter. She's the one who came up with the Slaughter Solution which, it turned out, was too duplicitous for House Democrats in the end.
Listen to her here. I know that most politicians bend the truth from time to time, but it's amazing to watch her lie in a most obvious manner about what Rep. Ryan is saying AS HE IS SAYING IT. Just amazing. Maybe she is so used to bearing false witness against Republicans that she forgot she was on TV. Or maybe she is willing to put her reputation for honesty at risk in order to interrupt him, so that citizens would not understand the bill he was describing. The Democrats have gotten a lot of mileage out of the lie that Republicans had no ideas or plan for health care reform. The press has pretty much backed them up in maintaining this fiction. I believe that she and her Democratic colleagues were desperate to prevent a cogent message from the Republicans from being heard.
Either way, politics can sure lead people to act in despicable ways.
Her attempt to obfuscate Rep. Ryan's explanation seems to me to be one more example of the Social Democrats' will to power, rather than concern for healthcare. But maybe she just has a different, "progressive" moral system now, where noble intentions concerning the "collective good" outweigh the culturally accepted markers of individual morality.
Michael Medved:
After the House of Representatives voted on Obamacare, Representative Louise Slaughter, the New York Democrat who chairs the Rules Committee, told the Wall Street Journal: “It makes me so happy that, after 100 years, we can finally catch up with the rest of the world!”. Does Ms. Slaughter really believe the U.S. has lagged behind the rest of the world since 1910? During that period, we saved the planet in four major international conflicts while our surging economy brought higher living standards to most of the world. The key distinction between Democrats and Republicans involves attitudes toward America. . .Another Social Democrat who looks at the world through "two left eyes", apparently. She will probably feel good about helping people in my generation, and thay may actually happen. But the benefits are not sustainable over time. One charitable explanation for the inability of Social Democrats to plan intelligently for the future is that they believe that the rich will find a way to save themselves, and everyone else, after the Social Democrats' terms of office are finished. That sort of "hope" is not working out too well in Europe right now. But I bet it won't take us too many decades to "catch up" if serious changes are not made to the bill she supported. In the U.K.:
Under government medicine, all health care is necessarily political. Why anyone would want to live in that world is beyond me. Here is the latest from Great Britain, where the Labour government is trying to keep budget cuts secret until after the election:
Tens of thousands of NHS workers would be sacked, hospital units closed and patients denied treatments under secret plans for £20 billion of health cuts.
The sick would be urged to stay at home and email doctors rather than visit surgeries, while procedures such as hip replacements could be scrapped. ...
Documents show that health chiefs are considering plans to begin sacking workers, cutting treatments and shutting wards across the country.
This one is especially scary:
In the East region, covering Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Essex, Hertfordshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, up to £2 billion is to be cut. The SHA proposes shifting services out of hospitals and making social workers take over some treatments.
Hey, that makes sense: they have a shortage of doctors and a surplus of social workers, so let's have the social workers start diagnosing diseases and performing surgery. That's what I call a death panel!
A few questions for Representative Slaughter:
Who in the world is going to lead the world in medical innovation now? Canadians with their egalitarian health care system? They have been sponging off the Americans and have avoided the expense of new development. And Obamacare discourages medical innovation by our pharmaceutical, medical device and biotech industries.
Government scientists are good at glamorous basic research, but terrible at the drudge work it takes to bring a "safe and effective" drug to market. Maybe India will take over medical innovation. If we're lucky.
How will Europe be able to sustain its social programs when President Obama drops U.S. defense of Europe? Can't pay for defense and health care, too. Trouble is, the Europeans have factored American military support into their budgets (at least unconsciously).
In what way do you think that placing massive debt on young Americans and future generations constitutes "catching up with the rest of the world"?
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