Selling Their Souls: Finance Committee Dems Give Us the Heisman

That raucous noise you heard emanating from K Street in Washington that started yesterday afternoon and carried on into the evening was the sound of health insurance lobbyists celebrating as if they’d just won the lottery. And essentially they had after basically being told by the Senate Finance Committee that their industry would be able, with their blessing, to continue legally stealing money from the American public for the foreseeable future.

The Senate Democrats, five of them in particular and three of them twice in the same session, sold us out. By turning thumbs down on not one but two plans for Health Care Reform that included a public insurance option, Max Baucus of Montana, Kent Conrad of North Dakota, Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas, Bill Nelson of Florida, and Tom Carper of Delaware, served notice that they’re more concerned about the bottom lines of the health insurance companies that have been ripping us off than they are with our bottom lines.

We all knew the Republicans on the Finance Committee, all ten of them, would vote no to any proposal that contained a public option. But we were hoping, against hope it would seem, that when push came to shove the Committee Democrats would somehow find the spine to unite in support of such a plan. Unfortunately, the five listed above all joined the GOP contingent in voting against (15 – 8) West Virginia Democrat Jay Rockefeller’s proposal… and Baucus, Lincoln and Conrad teamed up with the Republicans yet again to defeat (13 – 10) the plan put forward by New York Democrat Charles Schumer.

The sad truth of the matter is that the Senators who have and will oppose any public option plan that’s proposed are little more than paid shills for the health insurance industry. We’ve come to expect nothing less from Republicans…it’s who they are, they’re not our friends…but we sent the Democrats to Washington expecting so much more.

The bottom line, however, is that money talks, and all you have to do is go to the Open Secrets.org website to find out just how deeply into the pockets of our lawmakers the health care sector has gotten. Pay particular attention to the information regarding the shameless five…Baucus, Lincoln, Conrad, Nelson and Carper. They’ve been well taken care of by the industry they stood up for yesterday. Now, if there’s any justice, they’ll be paid back by the voters, the people they stood against yesterday, the next time they face an election.

On a lighter note, former Alaska Governor and Vice-Presidential hopeful Sarah ‘The Quitter’ Palin has a book coming to market. Just four months after the deal was signed Palin’s memoir is finished and will be available in book stores on November 17 (oh goody…just in time for a late birthday or early Christmas present!).

The tome, entitled “Going Rogue”, will have an enormous first printing of 1.5 million copies. As one wag put it on MSNBC last night, “This could be the first time in history that someone writes a book before they actually read one”.

It’s not clear at this point if it will be enclosed in plastic wrapping like all the other first-edition comic books, but we do know this. It was ghost written by a fellow Evangelical Christian…presumably not the Holy Ghost! Nevertheless, that news prompted another observer to ask “…if that means the right wing will push to have it added to the New Testament?”

And so it goes.


SC