Ambrose: Fighting back against Congress

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Here's my vow -- to vote for no one for the House or the Senate this next November that does not first pledge to do everything within the person's power to rescind any health care-monstrosity that gets visited upon this nation by what currently seems a derelict Democratic party.

It's true that despite all the sound and fury, after all the hoopla and posturing, we still have only an outline of what we might get. The reason is a rush to do anything to please the great idol Obama, the extraordinary extent of change being sought, the mystery of how differences between the House and Senate versions might be resolved and the purposeful obfuscation of morality-challenged legislators who have plenty to hide.

But that outline tells us of extraordinary costs and an approach that could well represent a tipping point in this country's economic decline while it reduces freedoms, rations coldly, does nothing to improve health care and could worsen it over time. What is more, the march toward disaster has taken on the aspect of inevitability. It seems increasingly likely that sometime early next year we will see final passage of some such bullying behemoth of a bill pasted together by a conference committee.

The opposition must, of course, continue to fight, showing that with all the prudent alternative actions available, there is no way advocates can justify this assault on the country. About all advocates can do is tell you what's wrong with the present system even though the legislation we've seen does not even try to address some of those issues and is, at the same time, so massive and clumsy that its unintended consequences could go every which direction -- including the direction of human tragedy. To the elderly in particular, I say: Watch out.

How in the world did we get so close to something like this? Part of it has to do with what the French writer Alexis de Tocqueville warned about when visiting this fledgling democracy in the early 19th century -- that this "American republic will endure until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money." We've already created a welfare state with programs about to go bankrupt, and this will take us even closer to that denouement as still more freebies are extended across a wide swathe of Americans. Deficits will increase and taxes go up and many will see higher premiums than they've previously seen as their insurance policies take care of others beside themselves even though some of those others are richer than themselves.
A second factor bringing us to this fix is the hubristic belief that it is a perfectly legitimate and practicable function of government to undertake the colossal reshaping of human institutions. There are just too many variables to get such a thing right, too many ways to go wrong, too much central planners can never figure out, and even assuming that were not the case, that the social sciences were capable of precise predictions of outcomes, you'd still have political interference making a messy, dirty actuality out of a neat, clean abstraction.

The third factor is simple irresponsibility, hardly a new thing in Congress, and hardly an affliction of just one party, but a disgusting and baffling characteristic. How is it that elected leaders of this great land of unending promise continue to put their own petty interests above all else, taking wild chances with the general welfare?

If the worst comes to pass, voters must hit back at the ballot box, beginning with an insistence that to secure their votes, congressional office seekers will pledge to rid the nation of any such abomination that has come our way. There must be other exhibitions of integrity and wisdom, of course, but for me, at least, this pledge will be crucial.

(Jay Ambrose, formerly Washington director of editorial policy for Scripps Howard newspapers and the editor of dailies in El Paso, Texas, and Denver, is a columnist living in Colorado. He can be reached at SpeaktoJay(at)aol.com.)

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