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One advantage of seeing our stalwart solons engage in such a heated, drawn-out legislative tussle as the present health care debate in Congress is that it’s so edifying for the masses. The debate allows many ordinary citizens to see first hand that their own representative is, indeed, dumber than a dust bunny.
Take Jim Inhofe. Please! Known as “the dumbest senator of them all” (a hotly-contested honor), this Oklahoma Republican conceded to a local reporter that while he doesn’t like the Democrats’ health insurance bill at all, he really knows nothing about what it actually does. “I don’t have to read it or know what’s in it,” Inhofe explained, “I’m going to oppose it anyways.”
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And they say there are no more giants under the Capital Dome.
Moving from ignorance to spooky, several lawmakers fall into the Twilight Zone, reading things into the reform bill that aren’t there. Rep. Steve King of Iowa, who seems to gargle every morning with a tall glass of goofiness, told MSNBC that the House bill “cancels every [health insurance] policy in America.” Uh… sir, no such thing exists in the bill.
But, wait – Rep. Michele Bachmann says she’s seen this apparition, too. Known as the “Wacko of Central Minnesota,” Bachmann ominously warned on Fox News that the bill will outlaw the “Purchase [of] private health insurance.” Later, apparently struck by a megaton surge of wackiness, Bachmann got so feverish that she blathered to a crowd, “What we have to do today is make a covenant, to slit our wrists, be blood brothers on this thing. This will not pass.”
Each of these congress critters who’re so dead set against extending good health coverage to you, get excellent socialized health care for themselves, courtesy of you and me, the taxpayers. And, luckily, their coverage does include mental health benefits.
“10 of the Nuttiest Statements Elected Officials Have Made in the Health Care Battle,” www.alternet.org, November 7, 2009.