It’s pretty certain that five of North Carolina’s congressional delegation will vote for whatever budget-busting health care “reform” package that the House leadership proposes. They are Democrats David Price, Bob Etheridge, Mel Watt, Brad Miller and G.K. Butterfield. All the Republicans surely will oppose the government takeover of health care, and probably Democrats Heath Shuler, Mike McIntyre, and Larry Kissell will as well.
Meanwhile, the latest polls show that 53 percent of the American people are against Obama’s health care “reform” efforts, and fully 72 percent want some significant changes in the bills that are now floating around Congress. Why, then, are the president and congressional Democrats so anxious to go against the will of the people?
Perhaps David Price, being a political scientist, would say he’s serving a trustee role as a member of Congress, meaning that voters sent him to Washington to weigh the pros and cons and come up with his own decision.
Maybe all the others who are going to support these bills would use the same rationale. Maybe they even have polling data that shows that a majority of their actual constituents support massive health care changes, and they plan to do as their constituents wish, which is a delegate role.
But the fact is that no major social legislation in history — from Social Security to civil rights legislation — has passed without a majority of the American people behind it, and without a significant amount of real bipartisan support in Congress. If this is ramrodded though Congress, it will be the first time that legislation so major in scope has passed with only one party supporting it and with most of the American people against it.
And that can’t be a good thing.
