Representative Joe Wilson shouts in the House Chamber to President Obama during a speech on Health Care Reform, “You lie,” and is forced to apologize to the President directly and compelled to apologize in the House where the incident occurred. He chooses only to apologize to the President. This did not make him many friends in the Democratic Caucus. They could not bully him into a formal apology in the Chamber. What happens next, the Democrat House votes to rebuke him in a meaningless resolution. Of course, the vote is along party lines.

A few weeks later, Representative Alay Grayson of Florida, who also happens to be a Democrat, says while debating health hare reform on the House Floor:

“If you get sick, America, the Republican health care plan is this: Die quickly. That’s right. The Republicans want you to die quickly if you get sick.”

And, what happens to Grayson: Nothing! The Democrat Congress does nothing. Speaker Pelosi says she will not force him to apologize or withdraw his statement. A resolution along the lines of the one rebuking Wilson is introduced in the House by the Republicans and fails. This is just another example of the Democrat double standard that exists in Congress.

But, the deeper question is this: has the debate over health care gotten to the point where the Democrats say that Republicans want Americans to die and Sarah Palin throws remarks out like “Death Squads.” Has it all come down to fear mongering and hatred on both sides? What happened to the intellectual form of debate, not only in Congress, but in the media as well?

A few weeks ago, I wrote “Why We Can’t Sign onto the Democrats Health Care Reform?” In that article I attempted to give a carefully thought out argument relating to conservative issues in the current Democrat proposal. I am not in Congress. Why can’t our elected leaders do the same? Why must they resort to fear and hatred? Is it because they have no faith in the American public to understand policy decisions? If that is the case, they are deadly wrong. We do understand and that is why President Obama and the Democratic Congress cannot get HR 3200 passed in its current form despite their overwhelming majority.

Senator Baucus of Montana, Chairman of the Senate Finance Committee is fighting to get his proposed bill through the Committee. The bill has been in the mark-up phase for about two weeks. Numerous amendments have been added to it such that it has been reported to be now over 1,000 pages long. Here they go again.

And, now, Congress is debating whether this bill or HR 3200 will be available online for 72 hours before any vote on them. Why are they even debating this? Wasn’t that one of President Obama’s main campaign promises? Did he not promise more transparency in government? Didn’t he want to stimulate fair and open debate?

The very liberal “Saturday Night Live” ran a skit last week in which President Obama was parodied. The main point of the skit was not that the President is too liberal, but that the left should be just as mad as the right because after nine months in office, the President has done absolutely nothing. And, one of those “nothings” is more transparency.

Both the Congress and the President do not want America to see either proposal before they are passed. They do not want any more debate. They know that if intellectual debate continues, the current form of Health Care Reform will fail. At first Senator Baucus’ bill looked like it would work. It was just a bad enough proposal to get both sides a little angry. It smelled like an old fashioned form of bipartisan compromise.

However, to the dismay of the Democrat Leadership, it did not contain the required public option. The Democrats from the far left have sworn that a bill without the public option will not happen. The Republicans will not vote for any bill with a public option. The middle of the road Democrats, the Blue Dogs, are the key. So, maybe the plan is to just sneak the public option in at the last minute, create a sense of urgency and convince the Blue Dogs to vote for it. This is not transparency. This amounts to lies and deceit. Hey, maybe Wilson was right?

I have another question regarding this issue. Why will this miraculous form of Health Care Reform being proposed by the Democrat Leadership not take effect until 2013? Maybe, because the President and Congress both know what a disaster it will truly be and they want the President safely into his second term before the disaster strikes. Again, this seems deceitful. Hey, maybe Wilson was right?

President Obama says he wants the bill to be revenue neutral and will sign it in no other form. Yet, neither the President nor Congress has any plan on how to pay for it and keep it that way. Other than higher taxes that is. Oh, I’m sorry; the President and Congress are not calling them taxes. Remember, Obama promised that no one making less than $250,000 per year would have higher taxes. So, how is this bill being paid for: penalties. Sounds to me like taxes, after all if it smells like a duck . . . Again, maybe Wilson was right?

But, I digress. The point of this article is supposed to be about civilized debate. That is what we need. We need health care reform. We all agree on that. Maybe Congress should stop trying to bite off more than it can chew and debate the real issues on health care reform. Only, after real civilized debate will we be able to come up with a plan that actually works and makes both sides a little mad and both sides a little happy.

As I have stated before, the Republicans want the following issues addressed and debated. If the President wants this bill to be bipartisan and wants some Republican support, we need the following to be debated:

  1. Coverage for Pre-existing Conditions;

  2. Tort Reform;

  3. Insurance availability across state borders;

  4. No coverage for illegal aliens;

  5. No coverage for elective abortions;

  6. A means to pay for it that makes sense across the board and that will somewhat revenue neutral. (Anyone that thinks this is not going to cost some money is dreaming).

The Republican Party does not and has not ever wanted people to “die quickly.” It does not want people to die at all. But, it does want a carefully thought out plan that protects the people, the sovereignty of the states, and is fiscally sound. Representative Alan Grayson is definitely wrong and should apologize to the American people for his outlandish and hate filled statement.