The Smoke Break

You want some brie with that whine?

Felididades?

By

DocO

Good day, Comrades.  Welcome to the United Soviet States of America.

His Transparency’s campaign promise to transform America, in part through health care “reform”, is our sickening reality after the Senate passed the “fixes” to their legislation demanded by the House, and the House in turn passed the Senate’s version of their demands, despite total opposition from Republicans and a number of Democrats.

Veep Biden commemorated the historic moment of the bill becoming law with the sound-bite of the day, “”This is a big f#@%*!g deal,” earning praise from his handlers and indulgent smiles from the left wingnuts.

Mr. Obama couldn’t resist ribbing his deputy, Biden said, telling those attending his morning briefing, “You know what the best thing about yesterday was? Joe’s comment.”

Biden said he quipped, “If you thought it was so good, why didn’t you say it?”

Apparently, Mr. Obama’s Press Secretary was equally impressed by the Vice President’s ability to articulate the momentousness of the occasion. Gibbs tweeted: “And yes Mr. Vice President, you’re right…”

Certainly Congress giving the federal government control over a full fifth of the private sector and of American citizens is cause for such silly celebrations.  It’s taken the progressives 100 years of plotting and scheming and slowly twisting the intentions inherent in the basic, good and moral nature of the average American citizen to coerce them to submit to the ideology of spreading the wealth, as was so clearly stated by Michigan Representative John Dingell (D) the other day:  “Let me remind you this has been going on for years. We are bringing it to a halt. The harsh fact of the matter is when you’re going to pass legislation that will cover 300 American people in different ways it takes a long time to do the necessary administrative steps that have to be taken to put the legislation together to control the people.”

 Yet even though the pigs are busy taking flight today, seems they are headed straight for the Democrat’s giddy poke in the form of taxes, both direct and indirect.

  • Turns out that some kids with pre-existing conditions will have to wait.  Another four years.  The iron-clad guarantee of coverage for everyone with pre-existing conditions won’t kick in until then.  Notes the Associated Press:  “Full protection for children would not come until 2014, said Kate Cyrul, a spokeswoman for the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee…. That’s the same year when insurance companies could no longer deny coverage to any person on account of health problems.”
  • No one is safe from the tax increases baked into the legislation.  Senator Max Baucus (D-Mont.) admitted: “One other point that I think it’s very important to make is that it is true that in certain cases, the taxes will go up for some Americans who might be making less than $200,000.”
  • There is no relief in sight for the jobless, who are going find more company in the unemployment line as the largest private corporations are forced to pay more in taxes.  Caterpillar said it would cost the company at least $100 million more in the first year alone. Medical device maker Medtronic warned that new taxes on its products could force it to lay off a thousand workers. Now Verizon joins the roll of businesses staring at adverse consequences and AT&T has announced that retiree benefits will be impacted.  And don’t expect a expansion of small businesses since it looks quite likely that staying small and on the federal dole (meaning, every taxpaying American is paying for it) will be the preferred choice to keep small business costs from skyrocketing.
  • There’s a requirement that businesses include the value of the health care benefits they provide to employees on W-2s, beginning with W-2s for 2011. 
  • Make no mistake, no matter what your income, you’ll pay double the penalty for nonqualified distributions from health savings accounts, to 20%, beginning in 2011.
  • No matter how much you make, there’s a limit on the amount that employees can contribute to health care flexible spending accounts.  A meager $2,500 a year.
  • A ban on using funds from flexible spending accounts, health reimbursement arrangements or health savings accounts for the cost of over-the-counter medications goes into effect starting in 2011.
  • Take a hike.  The floor goes up from 7.5% on itemized deductions for medical expenses to 10%, beginning in 2013. (Those age 65 and over are exempt from the cutback, but only through 2016.)
  • Even though the excise taxes for “Cadillac plans” will be directly paid by the insurance company, economists of all persuasions expect those costs to be passed along to policyholders.  Meaning, your premium is going to go up.  
  • Expect your cost to go up to pay a big portion of the numerous fees that the health care bill will impose on the pharmaceutical industry ($27 billion from 2011 through 2019), on medical-device manufacturers ($20 billion from 2013 through 2019) and on health insurance providers ($60.1 billion from 2014 through 2019), and on indoor tanning services (a 10 percent excise tax).

But hey, Hugo Chavez is happy now.  Felididades!  He calls it “a miracle” that represented a major “success” for His Transparency.  Above all, what Castro found “really incredible” was that it had taken the United States “234 years” to pass such legislation, “something that Cuba was able to do half a century ago.”

Now while all of this is going on, perhaps one of the biggest pigs of all is about to come flying in.  This year, the system will pay out more in Social Security benefits than it receives in payroll taxes, an important threshold it was not expected to cross until at least 2016, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

Oops.

Feeling a little sick?  You have an appointment scheduled.  On November 2nd.

Dividing With Flexible Definitions

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It would be funny if it were not so dangerous to realize that according to the progressive liberal Democrats, under Obamacare someone up to the age of 26 is considered a child but some honest-to-god children with pre-existing conditions won’t be allowed coverage until 2014.  Yet a 15-year old girl, who is unable to drive, drink, vote, or sign a legal contract can give her consent for an abortion without her parents’ knowledge. 

True story:

The girl attends Ballard High School in Seattle which has a teen health clinic inside. The clinic is run by Swedish Medical Center and administered by the King County Health Department.

According to the girl’s mother, who did not want to give her name, her daughter was given a pregnancy test at the school clinic which was positive. She was then told by the nurse that she could have an abortion at a nearby Planned Parenthood clinic without her parents’ knowledge.

The girl then called a taxi, which picked her up at the school and drove her by herself to Planned Parenthood. The mother says once at the clinic a Planned Parenthood worker discouraged her daughter from informing her parents. She claims the worker told her that if she kept quiet the procedure would be free, but if she told her parents they would have to pay for the abortion.

The mother acknowledges she signed a consent form at the beginning of the school year giving the school permission to administer health care off campus. She assumed that meant in cases of emergency. Nowhere on the form is abortion mentioned.

A King County Health official would not speak about any of the details surrounding the case, but did say that no laws were broken. In Washington State a girl of any age can get an abortion without her parent’s being notified. It’s one of 15 states without either parental consent or parental notification laws.

And some wonder why entitlement mentality derangement syndrome is so pervasive in our society.  We let children believe they are mature and experienced enough to make their own, personal decisions like get pregant and abort an unborn baby, yet allow them to demand we continue to take care of them when they become adults and should be taking care of themselves.  I see this as a “divide and conquer” strategy of progressives, designed only to destroy the family and I can only imagine the anger and hurt that has occurred within the family in the above story because of this ideology.

In The Aftermath

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President Walking Eagle is going to sign the Senate version of health care “reform” into law today.  And there will be great rejoicing among the progressive liberals who have managed by both hook and by crook to force another monstrous and unsustainable entitlement program onto the backs of the average American.  Not out of some noble and heartfelt sense of fairness, mind you, but from an egotistical and cynical belief that only government – a small, select group of intellectual “elite” – can do for people what people should be doing for themselves.

It is the 180-degree opposite of the intentions of our Founding Fathers, no matter what they say.  Or, in the case of the Speaker of the Nuthouse on Sunday night, try to say as she failed to pronounce the words of the Declaration of Independence properly, let alone state them in the right order.  Which only goes to show how little attention such people pay to the documents that created what was arguably the greatest nation in the history of man.

But I digress.

In the aftermath of the progressive liberal arm-twisting, threats, and taxpayer-funded bribes that pushed socialized medicine into American reality, it is interesting to note that lawsuits have already been prepared to challenge its legality.  How far they will go when the Senate bill creates a whole new army of IRS agents with neither the billions in funding required nor any legal power to enforce the individual mandate remains to be seen, but the very fact the individual mandate exists, that inactivity in the marketplace has become a crime is, indeed, unconstitutional.  (But, hey, those 16,500 new IRS agents are new jobs!)

Adding to what will be the circus is Senator Chuck Grassley’s announcement yesterday that during the Senate consideration of the House’s “reconciliation” legislation he intends to (again) introduce an amendment that would apply the health care “reforms” to the President, Vice-President, cabinet members and top White House staff .

“It’s pretty unbelieveable that the President and his closest advisors remain untouched by the reforms they pushed for the rest of the country.  In other words, President Obama’s health care reform won’t apply to President Obama,” Grassley said.  “Last December, the effort to apply any new law to administration political leaders was rejected by the Senate Majority Leader.  But there’s no justification for the double standard, and I’ll continue to work to establish fairness.”

The Senate legislation passed last night by the House of Representatives includes an amendment Grassley sponsored and got adopted by the Finance Committee last fall to have members of Congress and their staffs get their health insurance through the same health insurance exchanges where health plans for the general public would be available.  During the closed-door negotiations on the bill late last year, the Senate Majority Leader carved out Senate committee and leadership staff from this requirement.

Subsequently, Grassley and Senator Tom Coburn attempted to offer another amendment to restore the requirement during Senate debate on the health care bill, but the Senate Majority Leader would not let their amendment to fix this loophole even come up for a vote.  In addition to Senate committee and leadership staff, the amendment Grassley and Coburn filed during the Senate debate would have made the President, the Vice President, top White House staff and cabinet members all get their health insurance through the newly created exchanges.  It would not have applied to federal employees in the civil service.

Grassley said, “It’s only fair and logical that top administration officials, who fought so hard for passage of this overhaul of America’s health care system, experience it themselves.  If it’s as good as promised, they’ll know it first-hand.  If there are problems, they’ll be able to really understand them, as they should.”

Grassley said the motivation for his amendments is simple:  public officials who make the laws or lead efforts to have laws changed should live under those laws.

Americans have been griping for years about the perks and benefits Congress has voted themselves at the taxpayer’s expense and how the Senate responds to yet another clarion call for personal accountability – in public, we hope – will serve to put big targets on the backs of those who vote against it.

 

A Fatal Blow To The Republic

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I’m not sure where we are this evening, dear readers, but we’re certainly not in the Republic of the United States any more.  At 1045 p.m., the House of Representatives voted to change this great nation into a banana republic by passing the Senate’s version of health care “reform”.  They then voted to send their even more restrictive and more debt-containing “reconciliation” bill over to the Senate.  A Senate that has absolutely no obligation to even consider it, mind you, let alone actually pass it into law. 

Michigan Representative Bart Stupak and most of his pro-life Democratic delegation voted “yes” for this blatant reversal of the Hyde amendment prohibiting the use of taxpayer funding of abortions, based only on a worthless piece of paper that His Transparency agreed at the last hour to sign as an Executive Order.  An order that in first draft merely reiterates bits and pieces of the Senate bill and has absolutely NO weight behind it since an Executive Order can’t trump law.

As a lawyer, Stupak knows all this, which makes him a traitor of the worst sort.  But, as is said, once a Democrat, always a Democrat and so it is that Americans, if they still believe in the inalienable Rights given to them by the literal blood and sweat of the Founding Fathers, now have a long, hard road ahead.  Life as we know it is going to be messy for a good long while since there will be immediate court challenges filed against the unconstitutional aspects of the Senate bill, including the individual mandate that NOT doing something now becomes a crime.  In 38 states, attorney generals are readying lawsuits to exempt their states from the legislation.  And the true conservative part of the GOP has begun the effort to gather support for an outright appeal of it.

And yet most of us have to get up tomorrow morning and go about our regular business of making a living and living our regular lives.  It’s a surreal feeling tonight and I weep with both Lady Liberty and Justice.  I weep because the America I so dearly love does not deserve this usurpation of her liberties, this castration of those things that have made Her the most powerful nation on earth, even though a majority of her citizens were stupid enough to believe that “hope and change” meant something a little less tyrannical.

Immigration reform is next, you know.  The Democrats are hoping that an infusion of millions of grateful new citizens via amnesty, though they are today all criminals, will help them next November.  No matter there is then the risk of these criminals legally displacing more American workers at a time when America’s unemployment rate still hovers near 10%.  No matter that hard-working Americans will have even more health insurance (and abortions) to subsidize with their tax dollars.

The road ahead is, indeed, going to be long and hard.  And bloodier than previously anticipated.

May God have mercy on us.

Quote Of The Day

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“I feel rude trying to inject some fact into this kabuki theater.”

(House Representative John Linder during floor debate on the Senate health care “reform” bill)

By The Dawn’s Early Light

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Will today be another day that lives on in infamy?  This morning, I wonder.  After much bluster and nonsense yesterday, while thousands of red-blooded American taxpayers gathered at the Capitol Building and the Capital switchboard and computer systems nearly went belly-up from the millions of calls and emails in protest of both health care “reform” and the process by which such ursupation of American liberty was being done, House Democrats backed down on “deem and pass”, that ridiculous parlimentary procedure that would have had them voting to agree that they voted to agree the Senate bill was passed as is.

This is a good thing.  It is one less piece of fabric in Nancy Pelosi’s skirt under which House Democrats can try and hide.  Today will be a straight vote in the House on the contents of the Senate’s version of health care “reform”.  Complete with its taxpayer funding for abortion.

The House will then vote on their demands to the Senate that are intended to amend the Senate bill.  But with the Senate bill passed as is in both Senate and House, His Transparency can sign it into law and the Senate is under no obligation to even consider the House amendment bill.

Which leaves Democrats in both houses of Congress in a bit of a fix.  House Democrats will sign the death warrant of their political career by voting for the Senate bill, even if they vote again in favor of their own amendment legislation.  The Senate Democrats believe they have already caved to the wishes of the same constituents with their version so will sign their own political career’s death warrant if they later pass the House’s amendment legislation, which puts even greater penalties and taxes in place on Americans than what they passed in great haste last Christmas Eve.  And the entire process by which today has been reached has left a bad taste in  the mouths of even those who are in favor of these tyrannical violations of Constitutional freedoms.

Let’s not forget that a rally for amnesty for illegal immigrants is scheduled to take place in D.C. today.  A whole clammering crowd of those who wish only to take advantage of the labors of those who have followed the laws of this great land and, if the Senate bill passes in the House, will end up having their health insurance premiums subsidized by honest, hard-working American taxpayers.  Rather ironic, don’t you think?

Unless the Senate bill fails to pass in the House today the November 2010 midterm elections are certain to be a not just a bloodbath, but a total rout.  Not only of Democrats in Washington but of the Democratic party itself.  For the progressive liberal path upon which Americans have been led by Democrats, lo these last 100 years, is now at long last being seen clearly for what it is:  the death of the Republic.  And though generations of Americans have sat back and allowed the inch-by-inch encroachment on their inalienable Rights and their freedoms, the day has dawned when that line that must never be crossed is right in front of them.

One might almost feel a certain pity for those in Congress today.  They are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.  But this did not become the most powerful nation on Earth without reason.  And that reason is the sane minds of the Founding Fathers, who with preternatural wisdom and foresight created a system through which the best of what is Man could flourish.  It was birthed by the literal blood of patriots then, and will be defended and protected with the figurative blood of patriots today.

One nation. 

Under God. 

Indivisible.

With liberty and justice for all.

House Will Cave If Senate Swallows

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The  changes that the Nuthouse wants to see put in place if they agree to pass the Senate’s version of health care “reform” are now available for our weekend’s reading pleasure.  Frankly, as I begin the task, it again becomes clear that no matter how the poor CBO attempts to score any of this nonsense, it’s going to cost every working American one hell of a lot more than the unholy Trinity of Obama, Pelosi, and Reid would like us to believe.

For example, the $750/employee penalty to be levied against employers who don’t provide health insurance will almost triple to $2,000/employee.

All income, whether taxable or not, will now count towards calculating how much you will have to pay out to help subsidize premiums for other people.  This gets a new name for IRS purposes, “modified adjusted gross income”.

Even though by the time they are 27, the vast majority of normal children are out living on their own and for a few years have been able to sign legal contracts, vote, drink, and be sent to war, the federal government will consider them as helpless and let them remain health care “dependents”.

We, the taxpayers, get to foot the bill of a billion dollars just so the feds can “administer” all the nails in this coffin.  Paid for, in part, by taxing investment income starting in 2012.

All 50 states will have their new Medicaid enrollees paid for by the federal government.  Translation:  you and me are going to pay for all the “newly insured”, as the Democrats like to call them.  Through 2016.  Then the percentage paid by us…I mean, paid by the federal government will drop to 95% and then slide down until it bottoms out at 90% after 2020.  And we…I mean, the federal government is going to pay 100% of the going rate for the services of Medicaid primary care physicians.  But “disproportionate share hospitals” will see their Medicaid funding cut starting in 2014.  At the Secretary’s discretion, of course.

And we can’t forget to subsidize those uninsured in U.S. territories like Puerto Rico. 

There’s one great joke hidden in Section 1304:  $250,000,000 allocated to fight Medicare “waste and fraud”. 

And why the concern about the Social Security Trust Fund, eh?  A whole section is devoted to making sure this “act” has no impact on something that was always supposed to have been held separate.  As if Congress is suddenly afraid they’re going to raid that empty cookie jar?

Then there’s the $2 billion set aside for training.  And a whole section devoted to the “SAFRA Act”, which includes funding for federal Pell Grants, an additional $13.5 billion for student loans through 2012, a nod to the race card with monies allocated for “historically black colleges”, and a whole reworking of how loans are paid back (and not paid back).  Exactly how this will help health care in the United States requires tenuous reasoning at best.

It is said there is nothing new under the sun, and in the case of these Democrat demands for modifications to the Senate health care “reform” bill, it’s still true.  Funny that with abortion funding being a big red flag in the House, there’s absolutely no mention of rewording the Senate bill.  Which, of course and as it has always meant, we, the taxpayer will be funding abortion.

It is being reported that the phones of those unrepresenting representatives in the Nuthouse are either busy or going unanswered, and tens of thousands of emails continue to be ignored.  Yet the unholy Trinity continues to look into the camera and say, with a straight face, that this usurpation of 1/5 of the private sector is what Americans want.

On the day when the Real Clear Politics poll shows Obama’s job approval rating is now lower than his disapproval rating.

Cue the flying pigs.

Tyranny Stands Before Us

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I read the latest news about the Democrats’ strategy to pass so-called health care “reform” and hear the soft sounds of the Founding Fathers weeping.  Now dawns the day I feared when Americans decided to blindly cast a majority vote for “hope and change” that was designed as nothing more than to cloak taxation without representation.  

Tyranny now stands before us.

I’ve never seen such insanity emanating from Washington, D.C. and I fear for my beloved country.  Looking at the larger picture, I’m aghast at the sheer laziness of so many generations of Americans that has allowed the progressive liberals to lead them by the nose down this wicked path to enslavement.  A laziness that thinks it’s perfectly fine for the government to keep stealing more and more hard-earned taxpayer money in order to spend it on what is, in the end, not really help but instead simply entitlements for a never-ending cast of know-it-all progressive liberal “intellectually-elite”-defined “victims”.  Actions have consequences, intended or not, and outside of some Ivy League fantasy they are the individual’s responsibility.  Whether from having borrowed or spent more money than can possibly repaid and therefore losing your house or failing to use birth control and getting pregnant, stupidity doesn’t make you a “victim”, it just makes you…stupid.  And no one else should be forced to bail you out.

Still, there are times when people honestly need help, but such charitable endeavors rightly belong to the private sector.  Neighbor is the one to help their neighbor, not the federal government.  The job of the federal government is by Constitutional design little more than to keep the country secure, to maintain interstate infrastructure, and to help keep relations between the states smooth.  But Americans have continued to take the easy way out, handing over bigger and bigger chunks of their paychecks to old Uncle Sam instead of writing a check to charity themselves or, heaven forbid, actually volunteering their time and getting their hands dirty.  They hand over their personal responsibility to help their neighbor through ever-increasing payroll deductions and then lay claim to virtuous deeds performed on their behalf after a hefty skim off the top to pay bureaucrats double the going price in the private sector.

It’s hogwash.

It didn’t used to be that way in America.  And when the federal government wasn’t running the private sector and doing for the individual what is the individual’s responsibility to do for themselves that was when this country was great and it was what made this country so powerful.  People directly helping other people, not sitting around and selfishly waiting on the federal government to “spread the wealth”.

To the nuns and the Catholic Health Association, and anyone else who now suddenly, conveniently thinks the Senate health care “reform” bill is “good enough” in its abortion language because the House is willing to circumvent Constitutional checks and balances to pass it on partisan party lines based solely on some flim-flam sham of a promise to “fix it all later”, I say this:  you have no right to demand that any American involuntarily donate to your cause.  Willing or not, who do you think supports your efforts now?  All charities are given tax breaks that come at the expense of the general population, regardless whether those within the general population agree with their work or not.  Don’t demand that we now be forced to subsidize abortions with our tax dollars because you, personally, want to “help” more people.  Wanting to help is all fine and noble, but it belongs to the individuals within private sector to fund at their discretion, not the federal government.

To members of Congress, particularly those in the Nuthouse, listen and listen good.  A majority of Americans think your ideas about health care “reform” are flat-out wrong and a full 3/4 of Americans think Congress is doing a  piss-poor job and taking this great nation in entirely the wrong direction.  And, though it may surprise you, a majority of Americans DO care about process and slaughtering Constitutional checks and balances in order to violate the Constitution’s declared inalienable Rights of Americans is seen clearly for what it is.  WRONG.  We understand what is at stake here, we see the dangers to liberty that now have faces and names, most with a “D” after them.  Unlike you, we balance our personal budgets and we know that saying you’re going to cut something where there is no realistic chance of that happening but instead spending those “savings” elsewhere is a double-dip.  We know that giving someone money for their health insurance is just a backdoor subsidy that simply frees up their own money to be spent on a policy that covers abortions and in the real world we call it enabling.

Bottom line:  the majority of Americans aren’t stupid.  And so today we weep.

But tomorrow we vote.

A Jury Of His Peers

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Does any of this sound familiar?

“…accused of engineering a kickback scheme with two attorneys, accepting bribes from an attorney who argued a case before him, having a corrupt relationship with bailbondsmen and helping them with their business, lying to the FBI and Senate, and not telling the truth in his own bankruptcy filing.”

Could be any number of unrepresenting representatives currently scutting around the corridors in Washington or Obama appointees, couldn’t it?  Instead, it is federal Judge Thomas Porteous of New Orleans who was so accused by a 4-article impeachment vote in the Nuthouse last Thursday.  Included in that august voting body is Representative Alcee Hastings (D-FL).  Hastings was a federal judge in Florida and was removed from the bench by the Senate in 1989 but later won a seat in Congress and has served there since 1993.

Justice is alive and well in America.

“Better Than Nothing” Is A Dangerous Game

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His Transparency makes a great show of what his version of so-called “bipartisan” legislation might look like, but where’s the bill, eh?

Kathleen Sebelius says, “…the American people are desperate.”

Tom Daschle says, “Every time we do [try healthcare reform], the same predictions and the same dire consequences are announced.”

David Axelrod says, “Make my day.” 

The truth is that the American people are, indeed, desperate.  Desperate for proper, Constitutional authority-based leadership in Washington.  Leadership that does not confuse health CARE with the explosion of the business of health care INSURANCE.  Leadership that strives to protect individual, inalienable rights and the inherent responsibilities that go along with them.

The majority of Americans are more familiar with the alleged health care “reform” bills in both the House and the Senate than are most of their unrepresenting representatives.  And the majority of Americans do NOT want anything to do with either one.  The majority of Americans understand the dangers of the federal government usurping control over their access to medical care and control over the kind of care they may or may not be allowed.  The majority of Americans are now wondering just why student loans need to be a part of the “health care reform” package.

And in ways that go beyond simply the horrible matter of the Senate bill allowing federal taxpayer funds to be used to pay for abortions, the majority of Americans do NOT want to be forced to pay for other people’s choices.

This one should have been tossed into the trash a long time ago.  But the Democrats are twisting arms, cutting both deals and throats in a last-ditch attempt to salvage the chance to satisfy their insatiable appetite for control over the lives of others with what amounts to a nothing more than a rotting, stinking heap of unsustainable, unconstitutionally-mandated entitlements.  Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN) calls the Democrat’s latest push for overwhelming government control “a political kamikaze mission”.  And to be sure, next November, those in Washington who fail to heed the voice of the American people will find themselves in that long, long, progressive liberal-created unemployment line.

It’s too bad they can’t be ridden out of town on a rail instead.