After President Obama finished his speech calling for an up-or-down vote on health care reform, a caller to C-Span spouted the usual right-wing complaint, “Why do we have to rush this?”
I could not help but chuckle.
How can anyone with a straight face still complain about rushing, after the health care debate has now dragged on for over a year?
(Not counting the previous 97 years since Teddy Roosevelt first advocated for universal health insurance.)
The President astutely summed up the past year:
…every idea has been put on the table. Every argument has been made. Everything there is to say about health care has been said and just about everyone has said it. So now is the time to make a decision…
Mind you, nobody — and I mean nobody — is saying we don’t have a health insurance problem.
And if you have a problem, the responsible thing to do is to solve it.
If you agree we have a problem, but your argument is after every idea has been proposed, debated, refined and compromised is to still do nothing — well, that may be how Congress rolled in the Bush Era, but that is the definition of irresponsible.
If those who cried “too fast!” really just wanted to get some different ideas on the table, well the President just gave conservatives that opportunity last week.
For the most part, conservatives passed up the opportunity and just recited half-baked talking points. Yet the President managed to ferret out the few sincere ideas that were raised and has now incorporated them into his proposal.
Whatever shred of an argument there was before about moving too fast, it is utterly non-existent now.
The majority of the country supports the main provisions of the President’s proposal. It is time to act on their behalf.
