Sunday, March 21, 2010
As an historic U.S. House vote looms, the debate on healthcare reform continued Saturday not only nationally but in the St. Louis area.
As many as 300 protesters lined Manchester Road on Saturday morning protesting the healthcare reform bill that may be voted on this Sunday.
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About 300 protesters—many of them Tea Party activists--opposed to the healthcare reform bill that may be voted on by the House on Sunday, appeared outside U.S. Rep. Russ Carnahan, D-3rd District’s office on Manchester Road.
They lined up along Manchester Road, on both sides of its intersection with Brentwood Boulevard, waving as passing motorists honked their horns.
Many carried signs that ranged from “No Socialized Medicine,” “No vote, Russ,” to “Don’t tread on Me.” While several said the healthcare system needed reform—just not this legislation.
“Reform yes, but the government doesn’t need to do it, what they need to do is start over,” said Victoria Bader of Frontenac. Bader questioned how the House may vote on the bill.
“Locking Republicans out of the process is the most severe form of arrogance,” she said. “And claiming we didn’t come up with a better solution. I’m tired of people playing politics with my tax dollars.”
Danielle Sanders at age 21 was one of the younger protesters. “I don’t think they (the federal government) need to be touching our health care,” said Danielle Sanders, of Florissant. “Obama needs to keep his hands off of it. I’m a young citizen I pay enough taxes and my taxes are going to be raised and because of it, and I’m done paying.”
Another protester, JoAnn Raisch of Afton, said the bill is one more step toward a redistribution of wealth in the country. “Someday we’re going to get one giant debt card and Washington will take the rest,” she said.
But away from the picket line, the reactions to health care reform were more mixed. And Carnahan hasn’t wavered in his support for the healthcare reform bill he will vote on.
“They (the Tea Party people) don’t know what they are talking about,” said James Barnes of North County, leaving a grocery store about a mile north on Brentwood Boulevard from the protest. Barnes said Saturday afternoon the protests are an effort not to allow President Obama to make changes.
“People are complaining that healthcare premiums will go up because of the Obama plan, but they are actually going to go up either way,” he said. “So even if they don’t do anything at all, health care (costs) are still going to go up, the health care system is still going to be completely going in the wrong direction”
Barnes said the details of the healthcare proposal have been fuzzy and hard to understand. But insurance providers and HMOs haven’t provided their own plans that deal with issues such as prevention of disease.
“I’m concerned about it, I think all the people protesting probably have insurance,” said Julia McDonnell of St. Louis, also grocery shopping. She and a friend with her said they were supportive of action to cover people without medical insurance as opposed to inaction.
But McDonnell said she wasn’t sure she could support the present bill simply because there hasn’t been enough information about what it will do. “They are not letting people know what the details are,” she said.
Liz Minton of Clayton said she was not sure if she was for or against the reform bill. “I just don’t think we have a clear enough picture of exactly what they are going to do,” she said She said she tried to learn more. “When I did try to educate myself, it just went around in circles.”
Meanwhile, the other main focus of the Tea Party protest on Saturday—Carnahan—is poised to support the bill.
Sara Howard, a spokesperson for Carnahan, said the congressman has looked at the text of the bill to make sure it includes several provisions. The bill will put stronger controls on insurance companies from dropping or not covering patients with pre-existing conditions and making sure insurance options are open for small business.
Along with covering the uninsured, the bill included options that may help people who already have medical insurance, she said.
Howard said about 28,000 people in the 3rd Congressional District currently don’t have healthcare coverage. “We can’t afford not to do something,” Howard said. “We’ve heard from too many constituents who are struggling.”
Another Democratic congressman, Lacy Clay, is also supporting the bill, said Steve Engelhardt, a local spokesman for Clay. “The calls to this office have been overwhelming in support,” Engelhardt said. “There are 80,000 people in the First District without insurance coverage.”
Protesters, however, say the healthcare debate has energized Republicans in Congress in opposition.
“Republicans who were kind of conservative but went along with things into more strident, and more outspoken conservatives,” said Bill Hennessy, an organizer of the protest and rally on Saturday.
U.S. Rep. Todd Akin, R-2nd Dist., has become "a lion," Hennessy said.
Hennessy and other protesters said their opposition will continue even if something is passed this weekend. They say they fear the cost will be too high if the bill is passed.
“I think that we’re headed for a very long hot summer of extremely contentious protests, leading to an incredible election,” Hennessy said.
Hennessy said he doesn’t trust Obama concerning the election, calling him “despotic.”
“I think the elections in November are in jeopardy,” he said.
Comments
RussWeiss (anonymous) says...
Hennessy also wrote at the St. Louis Tea Party web site: "The Deem and Pass concept is tyranny, plain and simple. Unable to secure the votes to pass an unpopular bill by the rules, the Democrats changed the rules so that no vote was necessary. That’s tyranny."
Not true, Mr. Hennessy.
Deem and pass, also known as the self-executing rule, has been around since the 1930's. The Democrats currently in Congress did not change the rules. This rule has been used hundreds of times, 85 times in just the past 5 years. Under Speakers Gingrich and Hastert, deem and pass was used 202 times from 1996 through 2007.
I imagine he's also calling these Republican Speakers "tyrannical"? Or maybe not since I don't recall him protesting during this 12-year period.
March 20, 2010 at 6:37 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
tea_rebellion (anonymous) says...
RussWeiss ... let me get this straight ...
The Republicans did it so it's okay?
Bush spent the country to the edge of oblivion and since there were no protests, Obama should be allowed to push us the rest of the way over the edge?
That makes it less tyrannical?
Not to speak for Mr. Hennessy, but I'm fairly sure he would still consider an unconstitutional action by Republicans ... an unconstitutional action.
In 2008, phone lines in DC were melted down when Wall Street and automaker bailouts were announced UNDER BUSH. John McCain alienated his voting base to the ruination of his candidacy over immigration reform in 2007. The average citizens of this country are outraged at what their government is shoveling. Hence, the elections of 2006, the change we were promised in 2008, and now the boiling over discontent of the Tea Party.
But if you are still framing it in "Democrat" and "Republican" terms, you haven't figured out the Tea Parties at all. Hint: Google NY-23
March 20, 2010 at 7:30 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
whennessy (anonymous) says...
It would be odd to hear a freed slave criticize the tools chosen to break his shackles, now, wouldn't it?
For the most part, Gingrich's terms as Speaker involved reducing government's extra-Constitutional abuses, not extending them. Gingrich--and, to a degree, Clinton--made us freer. Tyranny, though, seems to be the driving passion of our current leaders and their sycophants like you.
Or, Mr. Weiss, are you one of those who decries equally the man who pushes an old lady OUT of the path of an on-rushing bus, and the one who pushes an old lady INTO the path of an on-rushing bus: after all, they're both the kind of men who like to push old ladies around.
Finally, reasonable men scale their outrage and their actions to the enormity of the crime. Never before has a Congress and a White House conspired to seize one-sixth of the U.S. economy as they do now. Having socialized two-thirds of the U.S. auto industry, having laid its eyes on our financial system, Barack Obama now seeks to socialize the life and death business of medicine. That is crime that requires unprecedented resistance. And we will offer the resistance necessary to stop or rescind his naked and tyrannical power grab.
March 20, 2010 at 7:39 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
tea_rebellion (anonymous) says...
"Never before has a Congress and a White House conspired to seize one-sixth of the U.S. economy as they do now."
Come now ... Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon Johnson, Nixon's wage and price controls ... need I go on?
The difference is that they had complicit help from media, academia, and industrial captains. Although this same alliance exists, today, the game is different with peer-to-peer contact through the Internet. One's cynicism with the system does not need to be kept to oneself, anymore.
Yet.
March 20, 2010 at 7:48 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
whennessy (anonymous) says...
tea_rebellion,
Granted, TR, FDR, LBJ, and RMN abused the Constitution like a hungry dog on a meaty bone. But Obama, Pelosi, and Reid have left no doubt this legislation is step one toward seizing an entire business sector--healthcare. That's unprecedented. None of those presidents controlled anything close to one-sixth GDP in a single business (except for defense, which is a Constitutional duty of federal government).
For instance, total federal spending in 1965 at 17 percent was about the same healthcare's share of the economy today. Even during Nixon, the government spent only 19 percent of GDP. http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=3521&type=0. And those expenditures were spread across the full spectrum of government activities--some legal, some not.
So, while your examples are true abuses of government power, I believe they pale in comparison to what's happening this weekend.
March 20, 2010 at 8:28 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
tea_rebellion (anonymous) says...
Your statement was they never "conspired" ... I'm merely suggesting they did not succeed. ;-)
I would argue that the FDA, the nationalization of our education, Social Security, and other efforts previously took enormous amounts of our freedom and moved them to the government - we simply no longer count those as parts of our economy. Fannie and Freddie controlled how much of the mortgage business, and that in turn is how much of the economy?
More accurately, I believe, is to say that all of those things passed with wide bipartisan support. To me, that makes them no less shameful, but it at least gives them a tint of legitimacy. If the current health care bill passes, it does so over staggering amounts of protest (literally).
The levers of power in Washington are too large. I have been warning people of this for decades. I have been to a few Tea Parties, and it is an awesome experience. To show up at Carnahan's office today, to have people passing out copies of the Constitution, to see hundreds waving the Gadsden flag across our nation ... and to know that the movement is still gathering momentum? It is beyond what I ever dreamed possible.
If certain vested interests want to label us as "racists" (never mind a black family member who enjoyed coming along, today) and "bigots" while the overwhelming majority of us are not, let them. I can think of few things that launch Americans to action better than being unjustly accused.
March 20, 2010 at 8:54 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
Towncar07 (anonymous) says...
I think that the tea-baggers are but one of a force of many that will coalesce into one voice that will definitely put a cork in this hijacking of America.
OB sounds so good, his press is supportive, his logic so reasonable,and his goals so patriotic, but the trouble is that when it comes time to pay-up, the the finger goes down all of or throats. The piper will be paid, and the piper's finger goes right up our collective butts.
As I have stated before, this Grand Plan was thought of long ago...and not very far away.
March 20, 2010 at 9:01 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
RussWeiss (anonymous) says...
My original comment was based on Mr. Hennessy's statement "the Democrats changed the rules ...". The rules were not changed by anyone. The concept of "deem and pass" has its origins in the Constitution, specifically Article 1, sections 5 and 7.
Supporters argue that Section 5 clarifies that the House can "determine the rules" under which they pass legislation. Since the HCR bill did pass the Senate (with 60 votes) the House can argue that the "Y" and "N" votes have been recorded as described in Section 7.
Ironically, Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Louise Slaughter challenged a law passed in 2006 by "deem and pass" in Public Citizen Vs. U.S. District Court for D.C. They charged that the Decifit Reduction Act of 2006 was invalid because the bill was passed to Pres. Bush without passing both chambers of Congress in the exact same form. In particular, they argued that "the statutes enactment did not comport with the bicameral passage requirement of Article 1, Section 7 of the Constitution."
The court upheld the law even though it was passed and enacted using "deem and pass".
Ironic and hypocritical now that Pelosi has considered using "deem and pass" to finish HCR. However, the latest reports from D.C. claim that the Speaker has decided not to do so in this manner.
Still, this legislative "end-around" has been used hundreds of times. It makes no difference who uses it or when it's done. Until the Supreme Court decides its legality, it will continue to be used no matter which party is in the majority.
The rhetorical technique you imparted about the bus and the old lady instead of refuting my argument that the Democrats had not "changed the rules" was weak at best.
March 20, 2010 at 9:15 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
whennessy (anonymous) says...
But weak rhetorical techniques are my singular strength, Mr. Weiss.
Have fun,
Bill
March 21, 2010 at 12:18 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )