Thoughts Spurred by Today's Health Care Debate Voting

Following today's health care moves to decide if the Senate will even have a health care "debate" after the Thanksgiving break left me with some thoughts about the day:

* The Republicans insist on mentioning the Health Care Reform Bill is 2000 pages, as if that is a bad thing. Remember, they also thought giving short answers wasn't enough detail. I wonder, what is the magic number of pages that is just right for a health care reform bill? 42?

If someone passed something that would cost hundreds of billions over 10 years, wouldn't you want a lot of guiding detail in the bill? After all, the Afghanistan and Iraq authorizations were pretty short in contrast and look where that got us.

* Republicans keep mentioning the Health Care Reform Bill is $848 billion dollars, but they always leave off "over 10 years." In other words, the defense budget is approximately 7 1/2 times more in spending each and every year than the health care bill, and is on a current projection of over 6.4 trillion over 10 years. At a time where President Bush gave us our first two trillion AND three trillion dollar budgets, 85 million dollars really isn't much.

* The GOP keeps talking about fiscal responsibility, but their credibility on it is somewhere around that of Bill Clinton talking on female interns, or Senator Craig talking about sex in airports, or Dick Cheney talking about nuclear weapons in Iraq, or Rep. William Jefferson explaining money on ice, etc. The Presidents with the largest 8 year growth rates in the last 29 years since Jimmy Carter are all Republican. Forbes does a good job of explaining why they lack credibility on fiscal responsibility.

* To put Senator Reid's health care reform bill in perspective, President Bush's tax cut in 2001 cost about 2.5 trillion dollars over 10 years, compared to $848 billion over 10 years to make sure people have adequate health care. President Bush's economic policies only fostered TWO recessions in America in eight years, and more than doubled the deficit after the annual budget had a surplus to start paying down the debt, but Republicans insisted that it was more important to cut taxes on the richest in America than it was to pay down the federal debt that was about five trillion dollars at the time.

* You wonder where the GOP gets the name "the party of NO!" until you think through their positions. They told us minimum wage would hurt American workers, yet it never has, but they keep parroting it. They told us women shouldn't have an equal rights amendment passed for equal pay, women shouldn't have the right to vote, that gays shouldn't serve in the military or get married, that we shouldn't have public schools, that we shouldn't have public social security or medicare, that we shouldn't have vaccinations, that we shouldn't have unemployment, that we shouldn't punish corporations for hurting people, that we would destroy our economy if we protected the environment, and so on. Their answer continues to be cut taxes, invade nations, and find your own damn solutions to your problems. Why should anyone vote for them again?

I am sure I had more, but these were the thoughts I remembered throughout the day. Add your thoughts about it.