WHAT ARE THEY THINKING IN WASHINGTON?

Republicans didn’t lift a finger, write a letter of complaint, or raise their voices while President Bush, manufactured a phony reason ( a causus belli) for a war in Iraq, and in its pursuit spent (or will spend) some $3 trillion taxpayer’s dollars. The vast costs over the next decade may, as some have estimated, reach to the level of $8000 dollars for every man woman and child in the US. Even today we continue to spend approximately twelve billion dollars a month to maintain our military forces in Iraq where they remain encamped and reviled by the Iraqis as occupiers. In Afghanistan , the still burgeoning war in that blighted land is estimated to have cost nearly one-quarter of a trillion dollars to date---and according to Secretary of Defense Gates’ dreary prediction in today’s (August 14, 2009) newspapers “the fighting will go on (there) for several years”.

But in Washington, an attempt by our President to spend a little money on health care is met with Republican (and Blue Dog Democrat) bellicosity and chicanery! The present bill in Congress (HR3200), would, by some estimates, cost between $600 billion ( $0.6 trillion) and $1 trillion dollars over the next ten years. Using the lower estimate that’s just 50 months or a bit more than 4 years worth of Iraq War expenses! Or only a fifth, or 20%, what Bush spent on a needless, bloody, war that brought only misery and death. The proposed health bill is a considerable expenditure, but is only a small fraction of what we have wasted on military adventurism during the Bush years. Rather than weaken us, this bill would improve our nation’s over-all health , make our businesses more competitive, reduce health costs, and provide care for the vast majority of the 30-40 million Americans who now have no health insurance.

I find it ironic and hypocritical that the anti-health-bill cabal of Republican Senators and Congressman (and some Democrats too) the vast majority of whom heartily supported the disastrous Bush-Cheney’s Iraq War and remained silent while its costs skyrocketed to astronomical levels as they continued to support it to the very end. They kept mum while slurries of taxpayer dollars were funneled into the coffers of the large military-industrial corporations--which after-all do provide largess to many in Washington.

However, when it comes to addressing the health needs of the nation’s families and those of the common working man these Congressmen and women are roused to anger and bellicosity in inequitable objection. What can one think of their behavior? And what must we imagine of those who, I might add here, while they are speaking so eloquently and angrily to deny access to health care to their constituents and the rest of us, are the happy beneficiaries of the best, most expensive, government-sponsored health-care system in the nation—just a mere shadow of which they aim to deny to the rest of us. Sadly, I suppose it is very clear what they are thinking.

RJK